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Elizabeth Chadwick is an award winning best-selling writer of historical fiction. She has been writing since she was a teenager, but it took many years and many books before she was finally published. She has had great success since, so it’s a good example for aspiring writers out there to keep going!
In our conversation we talk about some of the historical figures which feature in Elizabeth’s novels, including William Marshal, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Joan of Kent. Have a listen to find out what fascinating lives these people led, and also how Elizabeth separates the myths from the facts in the delicate balancing act that is writing a good historical novel about people who actually existed.
We talk about the Akashic Record, which is a way that Elizabeth’s friend Alison can psychically tap into the past. Alison is able to see, hear, feel, touch, and even taste what has gone before. Whatever your beliefs, this is a fascinating way of researching historical characters and events, and check out this article Elizabeth wrote for The History Girls, on the Akashics: https://the-history-girls.blogspot.com/2015/01/alternative-research-psychic-strand-by.html
Here's Alison's description of William Marshal:
"He has incredible courage. He's like a bouncy castle: very buoyant. He's riding with a lot of highborn people. He's awed by them but not overawed. He feels as if he's in the right place. He has a good sense of his own worth. He's very flexible and alert, responds not just in a chitchat way but deeply and appropriately. He knows how to say the right thing at the right time and it comes easily to him. He's alert and all his senses are awakened. He has dark hair, long cheeks, strong nose. His clothes are intricate. His eyes look dark but inside they feel light. I'm seeing the youth and the older man mingled. It is difficult for others to gauge what he's thinking. He has very dark eyes: might be brown might be blue.
There is a woman laughing and William is making her laugh by telling her jokes about the English being loutish and stupid. It's probably Poitiers they are going to. The woman is Eleanor of Aquitaine (Alison had several stabs at saying Poitiers, and prompted by me. She was unsure how to pronounce it)."
Elizabeth’s website is https://elizabethchadwick.com/
Episode Transcript
Guy Windsor
Elizabeth Chadwick is an award winning best selling author of historical fiction, whose subjects include William Marshal; John Fitzgilbert, William's father; William Marshal's granddaughter, Joanna and her marriage to William de Valance, half-brother of Henry III, which is titled A Marriage of Lions, and an entire trilogy on Eleanor of Aquitaine. She is currently working on a series of novels set in the 14th century beginning with The Royal Rebel, being the early life of Joan of Kent. So without further ado, Elizabeth, welcome to the show.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.
Guy Windsor
It's very nice to meet you at last. My friend Martin Page actually suggested I talk to you and it took us a little while to find a time that worked, but I’m glad we got here in the end. Martin has, what’s the word, politely turned down several invitations to come on the show. I don't know why exactly. I think he should. Let's do a combined two-pronged approach to get Martin on the show. Right. So my usual question I start off with for most of my guests, just to kind of orient everyone geographically is whereabouts in the world are you?
Elizabeth Chadwick
I’m in South Nottinghamshire. About six miles out of Nottingham. But as the crow flies, not that far from Newark on Trent either.
Guy Windsor
So you're sort of in Robin Hood country?
Elizabeth Chadwick
Robin Hood's bit north Nottingham. It’s South Notts, on the Leicestershire border. So it's a little bit further out from Robin Hood.
Guy Windsor
But does Nottingham still have a sheriff?
Elizabeth Chadwick
I think so. I don't take much notice of Nottingham when we're out in the country and closer to Newark, but I think so. But yeah, I suspect.
Guy Windsor
You’ve been writing historical novels for about 30 years.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Longer than that, now.
Guy Windsor
Okay. A long time.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Since I was 15. But not published.
Guy Windsor
I'm just going by what I saw on your website, because that's where I do most of my research.
Elizabeth Chadwick
I began writing historical fiction at the age of 15. But it took me another 17 years to get published.
Guy Windsor
That's actually a useful point to bring up. Because quite a lot of people I know are wanting to write a book or have written books, or whatever, and they haven't published or got it published yet. So knowing that there's 17 years for you between writing the first book and actually getting the first one published. That's actually quite encouraging.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Yeah, well, I mean, it wasn't my first one. By the end of it. It was my eighth.
Guy Windsor
So you wrote eight novels before you got one published.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Yeah, I did. But that was my learning curve. The first ones were quite rubbish. I mean, you're a teenager, you've got quite a bit growing up to do. You're learning your craft. But I began writing it for my own satisfaction and thought, oh, if I learned to type, this will look more like a book. So it was off to night school to learn to touch type. And then when I had it typed, I thought, oh, I could send it to a publisher. So I was eighteen when I began sending to publishers, and getting told, no thanks. But because it was part of who I was, I just carried on doing it and finally got the “Yes, please”, in my early 30s.
Guy Windsor
So there's about 14 years between starting to send your books to publishers and actually getting your first publishing deal.
Elizabeth Chadwick
That first acceptance, yes, and that it was another year before it got published, you know.I
Guy Windsor
I cannot tell you how pleased that makes me. Not that you were struggling for those 14 years to get something published. But because it's really common for people who write books, I want to get into being a writer or what have you, to think that they write their first book, and what's supposed to happen is they write it, and then they send it off to the publishers. And that's that. But eight books to kind of learn the craft and 14 years of sending books to publishers before one of them says yes. My gut feeling is that is probably normal.
Elizabeth Chadwick
I would think so. Yes. I mean, when I was 18, I did send one up to a publisher called Robert Hale. And they said, thank you very much. We looked at this with a fair degree of interest. But I was too naive at the time to realize that a fair degree of interest meant that it was at halfway house. But if a publisher says to you, we looked at this with interest, but no, thank you. It means that you're halfway around the course. I didn't realize that. I just put it to one side and got on with the next one. And then it was later on that I got an agent in mind, this was is in my early 30s, I got the great Carol Blake. I didn't know she was the Great Carol Blake at the time. She just published commercial fiction. But she liked The Wild Hunt, which was my first published novel, and enough to take me on and represent me. And then The Wild Hunt won an award, which was presented that year at the banqueting suite at Whitehall by Prince Charles. So that was a good career start because I’d got a small young family. And to help make ends meet, I was filling shelves at the Co-op at the time in on the twilight shift. So one minute I was on the cat food aisle, the next minute, I was getting a cheque from Prince Charles.
Guy Windsor
If only everyone could have that breakthrough. That's great.
Elizabeth Chadwick
But it was a long incubation period.
Guy Windsor
Yes. And did you ever go back and have maybe not the first one, but books two to eight published?
Elizabeth Chadwick
Yes there’s one. The prequel to The Wild Hunt that came out that won this award. It had a prequel which I was told wasn't as strong as the one that was my debut novel, published debut novel. And so that just got put back in the drawer. But then just for something to do, I put the first couple of chapters of it on my website. And the readers kept saying, where's the rest of it? But it needed a heck of a lot of rewriting, one heck of a lot. And it had been done on an old Amstrad with the whatever their software was called, it wasn't Word.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, I remember those. My dad had one of those in the 80s.
Elizabeth Chadwick
So my husband, bless him, ended up every evening typing a couple of pages on his PC, so that we got a copy in Word, and then I edited it all. And then we presented it when my next book contract came up to my publishers and said, oh, and by the way, we've got this, it's a short one compared to the amount of length that I do. And they took it on and offered me a smaller amount than they normally get. And they published it. So it's called The Coming of the Wolf. And it's the prequel, none of the others have because again, they need writing out from old software or just old manuscripts, and they need one heck of a lot of work. You realize, as you get older and more experienced, when you look back at your early work, you think, oh, my goodness.
Guy Windsor
My first book came out 20 years ago, and I don't dare really look at it. I’m a better writer now, let's put it that way.
Elizabeth Chadwick
It was good enough to be published, though. But mine weren't good enough to be published. They were getting rejections. And so I know that there are bits in them that I think yeah, this isn't bad. But then those are just islands of not bad in great oceans of terrible. But yeah, The Coming of the Wolf has earned out its advance, and it's got lots of nice reviews at Amazon.
Guy Windsor
People who are not in the writing, publishing world, probably aren't aware of how unusual it is for a book to earn out its advance. So it does say something about its quality.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Yeah, it was a lower advance. If you get a lower advance, you earn out faster, I suppose. But most of mine, not bragging here, just telling it like it is, most of mine earn out their advances. But sometimes it takes a little while to earn out the advance. You know, when my agent is negotiating with publishers for the next advance she'd always say, well, I don't know what you're worrying about. She always earns out her advances. Not in six months, I'm a slow burn. One of my greatest bestsellers, The Greatest Knight, it was a while before it got going. But then it's just more or less earned a similar sum year on year on year on year since 2005. You don’t see a huge drop off, you see a bit of a drop off, but no massive drop off. It's just kept on going. But it was a slow burn, it didn't sort of whiz and earn its advance in a year. It might have taken a couple of years to earn its advance, but now it's earning the same sum year on year.
Guy Windsor
So I'm guessing you're one of those authors for whom self-publishing is not attractive because the traditional publishing model is actually working for you.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Yes, the traditional publishing works very well I can earn a living wage from it. If there was a subject, we might come onto it later. Like the Akashic Records, which I think we're going to mention, perhaps later. And then that might be something I would self-publish. So there are perhaps certain subjects where you know, your publisher might not be as enthusiastic where you might as well do it yourself if you’ve got the time.
Guy Windsor
And we are definitely going to be getting onto the Akashic Record later. But further ahead. Now, your fiction is entirely historical fiction. But it actually covers quite a range of periods and styles?
Elizabeth Chadwick
I would say I’d just qualify by saying yes, a majority of my fiction, long fiction is historical. Occasionally I've been inveigled to write for women's magazines, just short stories, which are modern, and a bit out of my comfort zone. I don't particularly enjoy doing them, but they used to pay, not so much now. I used to write occasional modern short stories. But yeah, I started off writing, I suppose romantic historicals with imaginary protagonists. You know the films that used to come on with I don't know Tony Curtis films or Errol Flynns where it was romantic adventure. Swashbuckling. I was quite drawn to that. That was the first thing I enjoyed writing. And my early novels have that imaginary protagonist, romance and swashbuckle. And then they gradually moved over to what you call biographical fiction, but with I agree, a romantic element in them. But there is that difference as they move on up.
Guy Windsor
So how do you choose your subject?
Elizabeth Chadwick
How do I choose my subject? They choose me. I've got an extensive research library, I read something, and something will just suddenly strike me about a particular character or there’ll be a situation. And I'll think, oh, that's interesting. And so I'll follow that interest through and see if there's more to it that I can make a bigger work out of. But at the same time, I have to be aware that as a mainstream, published historical novelist, I have to choose something that's going to grab the general public's imagination, that's William Marshal, Eleanor of Aquitaine. So you have to be aware of what the publisher is looking for, but at the same time, you've got to write something that interests you as well. And so it's just I'll go through and I'll start asking questions of that character of why did they do this? How did they feel when they were doing it? What was the result of them doing this thing? What's their life story? What's their A to B, or A to Z? And if I find it interesting, then we'll give it a go.
Guy Windsor
Okay. So basically a character grabs you in your research, and you sort of empathise your way into seeing their life from their perspective.
Elizabeth Chadwick
I suppose yes, that's one way of looking at it. I sometimes will see an inciting historical incident. I mean, like with the novel called A Place Beyond Courage, which is about William Marshal's Father, he is supposed to have given his young son as a hostage to King Stephen. For his word of honour that he would open the castle gates in a few days’ time once he'd had permission from his overlady the Empress Matilda to open the gates. But instead, he closed the gates and stuffed it to the rafters with supplies. And more or less told Stephen to go forth and multiply. He said of his son. Well all right, go and hang him. I don't care. I got the anvils and hammers to get better sons than him. So.
Guy Windsor
Way to give your kid a complex.
Elizabeth Chadwick
So I looked at this. And I thought, Okay, what's going on here? What sort of man would say that? What's the situation behind this? How did it develop? And that was my starting incident. How did this come about? What kind of man would do that? And then you find this whole complete amazing backstory, and everything turns on its head. You find out that this thing was actually said in a family history that was meant to big up the characters, and it's the only one source for it. You find that anvils and hammers are both the sign of a blacksmith and, obviously, the male reproductive equipment. And, of course, his father was a Mashall which deals strongly with horses and we know that John Marshal had two forges in Winchester to make horseshoes and nails for his soldiers. And you begin to find all these little puns coming in. And you can just imagine the family listening to this story and having a good old chuckle about what granddad John Fitzgilbert said to the king, and this little boy, although he was under threat he was they sent a family servant keep an eye on him, a spy who was spying on it and you find all these little twists and turns which mean that this child was actually probably pretty valued. He's asking to play with the weapons of the warriors he's amongst. These are enemy warriors. He asked the Earl of Arundel if he can play with his nice painted spear. Now you're not going to get an undervalued child going up to somebody and saying, “Can I have a go with that?” Yeah, you're not going to get an undervalued child going up to King and saying, “Do you want to play fighting with me?” You know, they were in his tent, and they were playing knocking heads off some kind of plantain. And the king was calling him his little friend and things. So you've got this lovely, engaging child. And another thing that we found I found later on, was that as soon as William Marshal had the money, he paid for a big feast in honour of his father, and for his father's soul. So we actually have his father's death date there, which was July 1165. But we find that years down the line, he is paying for a commemorative feast for his father.
Guy Windsor
There’s nuance to it.
Elizabeth Chadwick
I traveled with John Fitzgilbert Marshal, and wrote a couple of essays about him and stuff, which I then sent up to the Royal Historical Society and I'm now a member of the Royal Historical Society. So they accepted me into their august ranks. I find that fascinating, that sort of background research, you've got to dig under the surface to get at the stories. It's not all what it seems on the top, you've got layers in the lake.
Guy Windsor
And just remind everyone which book of yours they can read that story in.
Elizabeth Chadwick
It’s called A Place Beyond Courage, which has William’s story in it. And John Marshal has his own fan club.
Guy Windsor
I can imagine, but we do need to talk about his very famous son, William Marshal. Any friend of Martin's has heard stories about William Marshal endlessly because he is a huge Marshal fan. Actually, Martin himself has written at least one novel featuring William Marshal as the hero.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Versus the Assassins. It's very, very good as well. Martin and I have a very similar view on William Marshal. Our takes are very similar.
Guy Windsor
Well, seeing as Martin doesn't want to come on the show. Could you tell the listeners who may not know anything about William Marshal, who he was and why he's cool.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Oh, right, now then, William Marshal. Let me think. Now you see my brain’s gone blank. He was the son of the Royal Marshal. This is the man in charge of getting the show on the road as far as organising the carts, the horses, paying the mercenaries and guarding the court. And William Marshal was the fourth son of John Fitzgilbert Marshal, who was the royal Marshal. And William was born into a civil war, of a second marriage, fourth son, was given as a hostage for his father's word of honour. His father then broke his word in order to keep his castle of Newbury standing against King Stephen. If Newbury had gone down, then Waddingford would have gone down and the whole cause of Henry II, the Angevin kingship would have been in tatters, there was only one man left standing. So William was sacrificed if you like, but King Stephen couldn't bring himself to hang the lad. And William survived, came back to his family, and then went to train as a young teenager as a squire in Normandy, where he excelled the military arts, but he'd also got a bright, engaging personality. That meant that he was noticed by the Angevin royal house, he saved the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine at great cost to himself as a young knight in the service of his uncle Patrick Earl of Salisbury who was like being constable for Eleanor of Aquitaine’s area of Poitou. They were out on a reconnaissance, they’d got Eleanor with them and they were attacked. And Patrick Earl of Salisbury was killed because he couldn't get to his warhorse in time, he had to swap his pallfrey to his destrier, and that was the end of him with a spear in the back. William stood hard, protected the Queen while she got away and was himself captured with a serious thigh wound. She recognized his skill and bravery and took him into her household. And a couple of years later, he was appointed Marshal to her oldest son Henry, who somebody called the young king. He was crowned in his father's lifetime he was the heir to England. And he was very fond of jousting. William Marshal was an expert jouster. He was about 10 years older than this young man. One was about 19, one was in his late 20s. And they took to the tourney fields of Europe, as leaders of the England team. They did have an England team, there was a Flanders team, an England team, a French team. And at first they didn't do too well. They were still learning their craft. But within a couple of years, they were whupping the rest of Europe and were top of the league, and William’s star rose and rose. Then the young man rebelled against his father and William was accused of having an affair with the young man's wife. William in disgrace went off to Cologne on pilgrimage. The three kings had a shrine at Cologne, and it's where people who are accused of things that they hadn't done were, you know, given succor by the three kings.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so we think that William didn't actually do it.
Elizabeth Chadwick
We don't think William had an affair, no, because he wouldn't have been accepted back into the young king’s household afterwards. He would have ended up dead because this happened to somebody else with another knight, who had an affair with some big cheese’s wife. And this guy ended up being suffocated in a sewer, hung upside down by his heels. We think that on balance, nobody can say for sure. But on balance, it would seem that William probably hadn't but was being taught a lesson for being too popular. Going on the battlefield, shouting, “God help the marshal” when you should be shouting “God help the young king”. So the young king then rebelled against his father got dysentery and died with William Marshal at his side. Just prior to this, the two men had been raiding local rich shrines, such as the one of St. Mary at Rocamadour in France. And so the young king asked William to go to Jerusalem and lay his cloak on the tomb of the Holy Sepulchre to atone for all the naughty things they'd done. So William went off to the Holy Land for two years with this cloak. Nobody knows what he did. But great deeds, according to his biographer, that's it. And he obtained his burial shroud, sorry, not his cloak, he obtained his burial shroud from the Templars. So he came back with a couple of silk burial shrouds and a vow that he'd made to the Templars, it wasn't the full Templar vow, because that would mean poverty, chastity, obedience, and you'd be a Templar. But you could be a Templar associate, which is, like these days, we have friends of the church, he was a friend of the Templars, which meant that he could live a normal life but help out the Templars on the side. And he had these burial shrouds that he then put away. And this is just the opening of his story. You know, that's why I could be talking to the next quarter an hour.
Guy Windsor
That's fine. That's what we're here for. There are people stuck in rush hour traffic in Chicago, or Auckland, who are listening to this right now, who are saying, keep going Elizabeth, we're loving this.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Right. So back home with his shrouds, he went off. The king rewarded him with some lands in the Lake District. Well, that's far away from court. I don't know whether King Henry was pushing him off into the wilds.
Guy Windsor
It is a bit like, yes, we love you, but not too close.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Yes. That sort of feeling. So the marshal headed on up to Windermere. He was given an heiress of who was probably of about his own rank, Eloise of Kendall, and he could have married her, but he didn't. He was also given a squire John of Early, who was the nephew of the Bishop of Wells, I think, was a teenager. And John of Early was to remain in William’s household for the rest of his rest of William’s life, becoming a Squire and then an associate, friend, part of his inner council. But William didn't want to marry the young lady. Henry II got into lots of trouble in France, and wrote to William wanting his military skills back and saying, you're always complaining that I've left you out on a limb, well bring your men, I need you. And so that was it. William headed back into the bosom of the court and helped out Henry II. Some of the trouble Henry was that his sons were in rebellion again. I didn't mention earlier that Eleanor of Aquitaine had been in rebellion with her sons against her husband Henry II and had been locked up in old Seram, that is, old Salisbury. And the sons had sort of calmed down after mum was locked up, but now they were rebelling again. William was going to help Henry out against Richard the Lionheart. So there were battles. Henry was really sick, he got anal fissures that were poisoned and that were killing him.
Guy Windsor
That’s a nasty way to go.
Elizabeth Chadwick
It is. We were told this by a chronicler called Gerald of Wales, who mentioned that he's got these. So he can't sit down, he can't do anything and, septicemia or whatever sepsis, is gradually dying of this. And the town of Le Mans was taken by Richard the Lionheart and Henry had to flee, not for his life. I mean, he was dying. He had to flee from Le Mans, leaving it smoking behind him. Richard set off in pursuit because his dad was that close, you know, he was on his coattails. And William Marshal, who was guarding the king turned his horse in the road, facing Richard, who had been so fast to set up after dad that he was only wearing a light helmet. I don't know. Basically, it wasn't the full kit, just basic armour. And William Marshal sort of said “no further”, and rode him down when Richard wanted to keep on the pursuit. And he rode him down and put the lance through his horse. Brought Richard down, and Richard accused the Marshal of wanting to kill him, you know, “Marshal, you tried to kill me,” he said later. And William Marshal said, no, I didn't. I've still got enough strength to know where to put a lance. “If I had wanted to I would have killed you. I'll leave your death to the devil” is what he said.
Guy Windsor
So he could have killed Richard the Lionheart, but didn’t.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Just straightaway. Yes, he charged him, brought down his horse. So he killed his horse, but he could have killed Richard. And then he sped off after Henry. Well, Henry made it to Chinon where he died. And all the servants run off with his clothes and his jewels while people were elsewhere. And the marshal arrived to find Henry sort of lying in a horrible state, dead. So they had to quickly cover him up with whatever they could find and what bits that the servants had left. They’d nicked off with all the good stuff, find a ring to put on his finger. And it was a hot summer. So they transported him to the nearest place, which was Fontevraud Abbey. And Richard joined them there and sort of looked at his dead father and wasn't particularly sad that his dad was dead.
Guy Windsor
At least he showed up for the funeral.
Elizabeth Chadwick
He showed up for the funeral. And he told them, William Marshal was seriously worried that he was going to be in big trouble, what he'd done to Richard, but Richard sort of said, no, I want loyal men on my side. You have been so loyal, when you could have just gone and run off. So he rewarded him with an heiress called Isabel de Clare, who was at least 20 years younger than William, in her late teens, and had vast tracts of lands in northern France, on the Welsh borders, in Ireland, also in England. And so William went from being the owner of a little bit of land in Kendal and a middling knight, to suddenly becoming Lord of Chepstow. He wasn't Earl of Pembroke yet, which was to come later, but to suddenly becoming this great magnate with one of the beauties of the day, 18 year old girl for his wife. So he went straight away to marry her.
Guy Windsor
Occasionally, loyalty is actually rewarded.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Absolutely. He right away went to marry her. He had an accident on board the ship, in fact, part of the ship's deck collapsed, where everybody was getting on, and there were a lot of serious injuries. William injured his leg, but he still kept going. She was being held in the Tower of London because she was such a valuable heiress. And he had a struggle to get her out of there because the constable didn't want to let him in. And he wasn't quite sure about everything. But William finally managed to persuade him, took her, married her, presumably at St. Paul's Cathedral. And then they went on honeymoon to a place called Stoke Dabanon, which I visited a couple of years ago with a tour group and they stayed there and had a honeymoon. Nine months later, their first son was born, called William after his father. And Richard the Lionheart, meanwhile, was preparing to go on crusade. And William was one of the men who got left behind to help run the country during the Richard’s absence. Eleanor of Aquitaine was also left as like as a regent. And I suspect knowing the strong relationship between William and Eleanor that she probably handed a list of Richard saying men I want for my cabinet. I suspect that William Marshal, having already done his holy land business anyway. And starting a young family, and having all this ability, was one of the men left to help govern the country.
Guy Windsor
How do you think he felt about being left behind?
Elizabeth Chadwick
I think he'd done his time in the Holy Land. I don't think he was ever eager to go back. He sponsored someone else to go. I’ve forgotten the name of the man, but he paid someone else's expenses. So I presume it was like pray for me at the sepulchre or something. We don't know what he did in the Holy Land during those two years. I mean, I've written about it in a book called Templar Silks. But, you know, physically, we don't know anything. There's only 20 lines in his 20,000 line poem written about his life, which talks about the Holy Land and says, we don't know the deeds he did. We don't know what he did. So he could have lived a lifetime of experience in those at that time. I don't particularly get the impression he wanted to go again. But I could be wrong.
Guy Windsor
Eleanor Aquitaine merits three books of her own in your pantheon of books. So, just who exactly was she? Why was she important?
Elizabeth Chadwick
Eleanor of Aquitaine was Duchess of Aquitaine, which is a huge, huge area of France, includes Poitier and Bordeaux. When her father died when she was 13 years old, some biographers say 15, but I'm convinced it was 13, she married the heir to the throne of France, Louie VII. He was only the heir to the throne for a couple of months after their marriage. And then his father popped his clogs, and he became king of France. And he was 17. So you've got a teenage king and queen of France. They had an interesting time together, no children for many years. There are hints and suggestions that they perhaps tried and went to shrines and asked for fertility. And finally, Eleanor had a daughter. Then they went on the Second Crusade together. And so Eleanor went to the Holy Land herself.
Guy Windsor
Pretty unusual for a woman.
Elizabeth Chadwick
I don't know. I have a feeling with Eleanor of Aquitaine. I mean, there are other I'm sure other women did go on crusade. And I think there were many, many women in that period, who haven't got the spotlight shone on them.
Guy Windsor
They were there but they just weren't written about.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Yes. And it's the same with William Marshal. I've found other people who had really interesting lives, but because they're not written about, they haven't got a spotlight. There were queens of Jerusalem. There was Queen Melisande of Jerusalem. I think she was just slightly before Eleanor’s period. And she ruled Jerusalem off our own bat. But so, I don’t think it was particularly unusual. I think there's a lot of rubbish written about Eleanor, where you've got all this.
Guy Windsor
Okay, top three Eleanor myths… go.
Elizabeth Chadwick
She was ahead of her time. No, she wasn't, she was of her time. There’s another one that actually my publishers have on my book, which says Europe’s most powerful woman or something. Well, she wasn't the most powerful woman. She got squashed by her husbands a lot of the time. It was only when she got out of prison that she was able to exert a bit more authority, and that was on behalf of Richard the Lionheart.
Guy Windsor
That’s funny thing. The great advantage of publishing your own books is you get to decide what goes on the cover. So the publishers can't screw it up. I had one guest on the show, whose publisher misunderstood the word piste to mean ski slope instead of fencing strip. So this bloke who had written books about swords apparently represented his country at skiing. That’s on the back of his book. That's why publishers can't be trusted. But if they pay well, so what?
Elizabeth Chadwick
Well, it's not true. I mean, people perceive her as being really powerful. And there's also a hilarious thing is what she looked like, because we don't know. And yet her biographers, these are people who are writing factual books about her. Okay, so she's ‘a black haired black eye beauty with a figure that didn't run to fat in old age.’ That's one thing. Historian Desmond Seward says that, I think.
Guy Windsor
On what grounds?
Elizabeth Chadwick
I have no idea.
Guy Windsor
There aren’t any contemporary paintings, are there?
Elizabeth Chadwick
There's a church window, which shows her in a wimple and a blue dress, but there's no facial features to say what she looks like. But she's got gray hair by then anyway. And again, it's a medieval cartoon illustration. But Marian Meade, her biographer, says that she was a saucy hot blooded blue eyed blonde. And then I think there's a couple of others who have her as a green eyed redhead.
Guy Windsor
Okay, how is she presented in your book? Or do you not say?
Elizabeth Chadwick
I have her as a dark blonde, with blue eyes. Why? Well, part of it's the other thing we're going to come on to later. And the other thing is that she did have an ancestor called William the Towhead. And being a tow is the colour of straw, which is a blonde, right? So at least I'm basing it on one ancestor, whereas everybody else just made it up as they go along, especially the curvaceous figure thing.
Guy Windsor
When writing fiction, you can make them look however it suits the story, as long as it doesn't contradict the available evidence. So you have license to basically draw her however you however you want.
Elizabeth Chadwick
I would think in that way, yes. But being a saucy hot blooded damsel, you don't know that. That's not appearance, obviously. But that is complete character assassination.
Guy Windsor
She was married to the King of France as a teenager and presumably didn't stray because she would have been executed if she had.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Well, yes, she was married at 13 and a 13 year old, especially married to someone like Louis VII is not going to be promiscuous all over the place. You know, a couple of chroniclers mentioned things later on, when she's an older woman, but one of them is totally ambiguous. And this person was at the time discrediting the whole Angevin royal line by saying they’re monsters. And you find in William’s story, William Marshal this is. He had a poem written of 20,000 lines long, which discusses Eleanor in it and talks of her in nothing but glowing terms, a wonderful gracious lady, and even tells us it's her name, Eleanor means pure gold.
Guy Windsor
That could be metaphorical, but also a physical description.
Elizabeth Chadwick
So it says her name means pure gold. And that's written by a guy who knew her. And all this about Eleanor going on crusade and riding about all dolled up with her ladies dressed as Amazons has been shown to be pure fabrication.
Guy Windsor
So, top three myths around Eleanor of Aquitaine. Firstly, she wasn't that powerful. Secondly, we don't actually know what she looked like. So stop describing her. And thirdly, she definitely didn't cavort around the holy land dressed as an Amazon. Well, there's three pretty good myths.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Not necessarily the top three, she is also given a half brother that she never had, which I found out personally myself. That’s not really a big myth. That's just one that I've written about. Eleanor of Aquitaine and the brother who never was.
Guy Windsor
Eleanor of Aquitaine is obviously this super famous person with all these myths and stuff written about her. Joan of Kent is much less well known, I think. But she clearly rates a set of novels from you, so she must be pretty cool. Who is she?
Elizabeth Chadwick
Oh, great. All right. I hadn’t prepared for this one. I'm still writing about her at the moment.
Guy Windsor
Okay, firstly, we can cut this if necessary.
Elizabeth Chadwick
I’m only on the first novel. But yeah, Joan of Kent was a cousin of King Edward III. And I've called her Jeanette, because that's what her second husband the Black Prince knew her as. She was the daughter of the youngest son of Edward I. Edward I got married a second time after his first wife Eleanor of Castile died. And married Margaret of France and had a couple of sons. And one of the sons Edmund was Joan's father, who was executed when she was only a very tiny little girl. So she was raised at the court of Edward III with Queen Philippa, and she went to Flanders with them as a very young teen, and there she met a household knight called Thomas Holland. And they both fancied each other and ended up indulging in a secret marriage. She was still a very young girl when this happened, from what I can remember, maximum would be working out, 13 or 14. And he was in his 20s. But the marriage was supposedly consummated.
Guy Windsor
Also she's pretty high up in the aristocracy. And generally speaking, women in that position, were considered bargaining chips in diplomacy. So she should have had permission from the King to do it.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Well, nobody knew. They did it in secret, they did in secret in Flanders and told no one.
Guy Windsor
That must have annoyed the king enormously.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Well, when he found out. Thomas Holland, then went off into service to the king. He was at a couple of battles, then went on crusade for a year. And meanwhile, Joan was brought home by her family who then arranged a proper marriage for her to William, the young Earl of Salisbury who is about her own age, an early teenager. And they married, so she had this second bigamous marriage. She didn't dare speak out, because she thought that if she spoke…
Guy Windsor
So they didn't know.
Elizabeth Chadwick
They didn't know. The families didn't know.
Guy Windsor
This is scandal. This is 10 times better than the Kardashians.
Elizabeth Chadwick
So meanwhile, Thomas came back from his crusade. And there's his wife. Well, he had no money because he's just a household knight. And to get this second marriage dissolved, because her mother and her mother-in-law were saying like, oh, no rubbish. Of course it wasn't a marriage, they weren't married. They weren't married. This is the proper marriage. And the only way to do it was to fight it through the courts. Thomas didn't have the money, did he? And so he carried on fighting, trying to accumulate funds. And then the Crecy campaign came up, and Thomas took a hostage, Raoul de Brienne and ended up securing an enormous ransom for him, way above a normal sort of ransom. And the king agreed this ransom. I think it was 800,000 florins, it was more than any other ransom. So why is the king giving? It's a complete hornet's nest of goodness knows what going on. The King gave him all this money. So Thomas could then go to the courts with money and say, look, Joan is my wife. And I'm putting in this lawsuit. He didn't go to the English bishops because he knew they'd be biased towards the Salisbury family into whom Joan had married, so he went to the Pope. And meanwhile, Joan’s second husband, or the bigamous husband and family, locked Joan up so that she couldn’t speak for herself. She was supposed to give a deposition to the Pope to say I'm really married to Thomas Holland, but I was forced into this marriage with William of Salisbury because I was scared. But they wouldn’t let her say anything, they might as well have just put duct tape over her mouth, and sent her off to a manor far away. So Thomas Holland, hearing this, complained to the Pope, that Joan couldn't have her say. And the Pope wrote to the bishops and Archbishops of England saying, this is disgraceful, interfere. That girl has got to be able to have her say. But in the meantime, the Black Death had arrived. So everyone was dying right left and center. The Archbishop of Canterbury I think died of old age and then the next one copped it within a couple of months of the Black Death. So trying to get the paperwork chain going to get Joan freed was all being delayed. And so it was the case in Avignon. That's where the Pope was hanging out at that time, because there were two Popes weren't there. So it was the pope in Avignon. So in between all this getting down to plague ridden England and France to Avignon where the Pope was sitting between two fires, burning incense to keep the cooties away. This lawsuit then dragged on for another four years. And finally, finally, after a lot of red tape and the Pope at last cut through the red tape, and Joan was announced as yes, she was really married to Thomas Holland. They had a second marriage at court and he went on to become Earl of Kent, when his brother in law, the actual Earl of Kent died. And yeah, they had 10 years of married bliss with four children. And then he went on a campaign to Rouen where he passed away. And then Joan was on the marriage market in her early 30s. Proven fertile with two sons and two daughters. And the Black Prince had always loved her. Well, always carried a torch for her. He had given her a silver cup, a few years back, with her name engraved on it, Jeanette, which is why we know that she was called Jeanette not Joan to him. And he gave her this this engraved silver cup, and he was also godfather to her two sons. So when she became available, it repeated itself, it was another secret marriage because they didn't dare tell the king.
Guy Windsor
Oh my god. So she married the Black Prince secretly as well? Wow.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Yes. They had to go and tell the pope and then they had to go and tell dad.
Guy Windsor
That is brilliant. I'm amazed I've never heard of her before. She was fantastic.
Elizabeth Chadwick
She was also involved in the peasant’s revolt. And she was Richard II’s mother.
Guy Windsor
She would be.
Elizabeth Chadwick
And everybody seems to like her. She got a good reputation among the commons. I mean, I know ordinary people can't ever get really get to know royalty. It's like today, we all have our opinions on Prince Harry and Megan Markle, but we don't know. But it was the same as in the commons there. Joan had got a good reputation amongst them. And it was all good old Joan, that sort of thing. So she seems to have been quite popular.
Guy Windsor
Clearly she rates a trilogy.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Well, she’s not actually a trilogy, she’s a duology. The next one is Katherine Swinford, who was married to John of Gaunt. I've glanced at books, because John of Gaunt comes into the two Joan of Kent novels, they do overlap. But I've not done any serious research of any kind on that fully yet.
Guy Windsor
Okay. Now, we definitely need to talk about your research, because the people listening for the last 45 minutes, they're going to be going, how on earth does she have so much history in her head? So, I mean, I personally, I can direct people to your website, which is elizabethchadwick.com. And there's a reference library page there, which is a really comprehensive overview of basically all the useful books covering this period, pretty much.
Elizabeth Chadwick
I have to say it's a work in progress. It's one of those things I keep meaning to get round to increase and to rationalise, but because it's one of those do in a spare moment things, it's not as fully up to up to date, as I would want it to be.
Guy Windsor
The only real problem with it is, people will then go and buy all those books, and then not have time to read yours. My top tip would be go to the fiction first, and then go to the back of the book and find the acknowledgments and sources and whatnot.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Anybody who is on my author Facebook page, I can say that I do a quote of the day from a research book of the day. It's just a paragraph because obviously, you've got to be aware of copyright issues. But I also think they might go out and buy that book while they're buying one of mine. But I do that every day. There's always a short quote of day when I get up and log on. That is just for Facebook. But my author page on Facebook has my research book of the day and a quote of the day from it, it can be anything, just how I'm feeling at the time.
Guy Windsor
If I still used Facebook, I would be there like a shot. But yes, I had to give up the dreaded F. Because it became a miserable time suck.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Yeah, it is a time suck. But anyway, that was by the by.
Guy Windsor
Lots of the listeners will be on Facebook, so I'm sure they'll be going into your page and getting that, because does sound like a good way to start the day. Now, aside from reading, I know you have a background in reenactment. Correct?
Elizabeth Chadwick
I've done reenactment, yes, did it for many years. I’ve still got the stuff. I was a member of a group called Regia Anglorum which at the time were doing sort of around the time of the Norman Conquest and just up to 1200ish if asked by the client and their watchword was authenticity. You know, nobody was were allowed to wear spectacles on site, or to have a wristwatch, and there was an authenticity officer. And you had to have three provenances of an item to show if we could bring it in open public show. And people demonstrating crafts and talking to public, fighting as well. So it seemed a good way for me when I joined Regia to get to handle a mail shirt, get to handle a sword, get to talk to the guys who fought.
Guy Windsor
Did you not fight yourself?
Elizabeth Chadwick
Not at the time, no. I have a sword and I've got a helm. And I've never actually done any fighting myself. I usually ended up with the cooking pot.
Guy Windsor
That seems a little bit cast to type.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Well cooking, I'm good at cooking. I can't sew for peanuts. I couldn't do that do the sewing stuff. And women do fight if they want if they could fight if they wanted to as long as they mostly look like men. Yeah, because it's a reenactment. If you're doing the Battle of 1066, how many women are standing in the front line? Yeah, it’s that sort of idea. So if you're a woman, you wear a mail shirt, and there's no makeup anyway. But the idea is to portray it as it was. Well, that was the idea. I've not been in the group for a couple of years because of personal reasons with my elderly parents. But when I was in the group, it didn't force women into. There were all sorts of crafts that you could do. It wasn't just cooking and sewing. There were other things you could learn and do.
Guy Windsor
So you never fancied learning the sword stuff?
Elizabeth Chadwick
I would have done when I was younger. I think if I was a younger person then I would have learned, I may well have had a go. I used to love swords when I was a lot younger, well I still do love swords. But yeah, I was always a tomboy, and swords and horse riding, especially.
Guy Windsor
They go together very well.
Elizabeth Chadwick
They do go together very well. So yeah, but it's more of a ground view with both. But I learned everything I could from either talking to people or observing, and sort of getting that inside feeling, the gut feeling about it, I think.
Guy Windsor
So the reenactment was useful to kind of give you the perspective.
Elizabeth Chadwick
I remember the first time going to Nottingham castles as a civilian. And there was a guard standing on the gate, a Norman guard with his kite shield and the full kit. And I was just blown away. It was like, wow, I want to do this, I want to be part of it, you know, to actually stand among it. And to have that atmosphere of having people in the costume and doing the stuff. That first time it was just amazing. And I got knowledge I could bring to the group from being sort of quite widely read. And when I was in Regia, and I don't know whether it's changed, because I've been out a couple of years, but a lot of the membership was historians or archaeologists or students doing history. So the amount of knowledge that was there, for example, I wrote a book a bit ago called The Winter Mantle and I needed to know about 11th century coffins. As one does. Yeah, I mean, obscure, so I put out a note on their chat page. Anybody got any information about 11th century coffins? Somebody popped a reply back, do you want early or late 11th century?
Guy Windsor
Those are the right friends to have.
Elizabeth Chadwick
So it's people like that, because they know or they're passionate enough to have the answers. We got another guy who was really interested in the textiles and he got a woollen mill to make him some cloth to a medieval recipe, you know, the weave. And he got to I don't know, native sheep, and the actual widths of a medieval loom. And this was being sold for people to make clothes from, for the group.
Guy Windsor
Do it properly. I have friends who do sort of migration era reenactment, who will spin their own thread, weave their own cloth on period style looms, make their own clothes from that and you know, they're stitched together by hand with bone needles. They take it all the way. I absolutely love that people do that. My area of interest is how you actually fight with the swords. And I'm extremely detailed and nerdy about that. But I kind of let other people tell me how I should be dressing or telling me what I should be eating and stuff. When you do it for a living I think you kind of have to specialise at least a bit.
Elizabeth Chadwick
But, I mean, there are things I learned as well. Just going back to cooking, I bought cooking from a guy called Jim the Pot, Jim Newbolt of Trinity Court Potteries. And I said, I want a late Norman, slightly bit later cooking pot. And he said, I've only got one left and it's got my tea water in it, it was boiling away on the fire. He said, you can have this one, and he knocked a bit off for it. And I tried out a beef and barley stew in it. And I discovered just a really subtle, rustic looking, cooking pot, round in shape with a lip all the way around, that if you put it in at the side of the fire, where it was hot, but not red hot, just in your firebox that it will plip away to itself for ages, it wouldn't burn on the bottom, the top lip remained cool, cool enough to pick up. It didn't boil away. So that told me that a person could just leave their lunch on the fire or their dinner on the fire and go out in the fields and come back and not find like a blackened mess at the bottom of the cooking pot. You don't get this in museums. You can’t do this without experimental archaeology.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. We've had a few experimental archaeologists on the show. Like, for example, Ruth Goodman. She went on at length about the glory of pots.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Yes. Yeah, but swords do fascinate me. But I tend to talk to people well, I would talk to someone like you, or an expert, somebody who knew what they were talking about, or had an idea on use.
Guy Windsor
Well, I mean, if you ever need someone to have a look at anything from the late 14th century onwards, swordfighty feel free. That's what I do. Okay, so let's talk a bit about the Akashic Record, which I got from looking at your website. So most people, I'm guessing will have never heard of it. So if you can tell us what it is, what it's about.
Elizabeth Chadwick
It’s a very loose term we use actually, because it's like a catch all term for what my friend does. I have a close friend, I've known her known her since our children were little and they're now grown up with families of their own. And I just met her at a mother and toddler group, and we got on and so invited each other for coffees while the kids played around our feet. Now she is, let's say, psychic, she has the ability to see auras. And she didn't tell me this for a while, because when you meet somebody and they just become your coffee chat friend, you're not going to go all woo woo on them. And because there's a lot of stigma around this sort of thing, you tend to be very circumspect about who you tell. But as we got to know each other, we became closer friends. She told me and I'm very open minded, quite open to it all. And so we chatted vaguely about this. But then she started working with neuro linguistic programming, and she practiced on clients, she trained in it. And sometimes the person involved would have an issue that went back, say, 20, 30 years. And the issue will be with a person who had passed away. And my friend who's called Alison, Alison could go back to that time, she found, psychically, and find out what the problem was and what that person who'd passed on was feeling. It's not really mediumship. But she could go back to that moment. So one day, we're having a chat, I'm writing The Greatest Knight, I’m nearly three quarters through it. She asked how it was going, we've just got coffee and biscuits, it was an ordinary day. And I said, well, I'm having trouble finding out about William Marshal’s brother’s mistress, and Alison said do you think I might be able to find her? And so she just sort of tuned in, she didn't close her eyes or go into a trance or anything. She just, if she does close her eyes, it's just the better to go inside herself. And she said, oh, she said, I can see this woman swinging a bag on a string round her head. Do you think she's drying a lettuce? She doesn't know anything about the Middle Ages? No, I think you'll probably find it's hawking lure, which of course it turned out to be. And then she saw the scene with this couple and was able to describe their thoughts, their feelings, and it was so amazing that I thought, well, I need to try this again with William Marshal. So we tried again the following week. And what came through was absolutely fascinating. We had this wonderful description of the man. If I’d known we were doing we were doing this, I could have typed it and printed it out and read it out. Because it's just stunning.
Guy Windsor
Well, feel free to email it to me, and I'll put it in the show notes. I’ll make a note to ask you to remind you about it.
Elizabeth Chadwick
It was just a description. Yes, because she wasn't sure if his eyes were blue or brown. And she was seeing the younger man imposed on the older one. But her description more or less matched the one of his biographer, Professor David Crouch, had done. The two dovetailed beautifully. But she'd never read David Crouch, she didn't know the Middle Ages. And there are things that she comes out with, we went to see Henry II at another session. She went she looked at me like goodness, this man never sits still, does he? All little bits come out about the characters. The most interesting one we've ever had. Because she gets words, thoughts, feelings, and it all somehow translates in her head, I suppose it's the vibration, was that at one time, this didn't translate in her head. And we were with Eleanor of Aquitaine going to her divorce settlement from Henry VII. And she’d got his bishop standing up, and he was reading something out in Old French. And it was coming out of my mouth in Old French. So I wrote it down phonetically as best I could. And I sent it off to another friend of mine who's a professor of medieval history, who specialises in the social side of stuff, but reads Old French for a hobby. She wrote back saying, well, this appears to be to do with a land grant and a piece of land. And it was this whole legal document about land that Alison had found, talked about in old French. That was just absolutely stunning.
Guy Windsor
So what do you think's going on?
Elizabeth Chadwick
What do I think's going on? I know she tunes into the energy pattern of that person and that person is still there on another plane. It's not memory, sometimes we’ll actually have the person come through. Not that often. But occasionally the person will come through and will say no, you've got that wrong. This is what it was.
Guy Windsor
Handy for historian. How does she describe Eleanor of Aquitaine?
Elizabeth Chadwick
Do you mean physically?
Guy Windsor
Because there's the myth of what she actually looked like.
Elizabeth Chadwick
It's a dark gold hair. It's not blonde blonde. It's sort of a gold coin blonde. And with a blue eye that she doesn't describe the colours in the blue. She has a blue eye but she said that it’s tight and intelligent, the look coming out of the eye. A little bit like one of the Sitwell sisters in features, quite tall, well made.
Guy Windsor
No information about whether she didn't run to fat in old age.
Elizabeth Chadwick
She didn’t. We first got her through as a very crabby old lady who didn't want to talk to us.
Guy Windsor
Fair enough. Honestly, if I was some high ranking woman of the 13th, 14th century, I would have no particular interest in talking to a pair of commoners 800 years from now.
Elizabeth Chadwick
It was fascinating. She didn't want to talk to us. Certain things she didn't want to show us. And Alison was visualizing it. It's like she's got behind a pair of curtains and she'll suddenly run the curtain back and give us a scolding.
Guy Windsor
So, okay, some listeners are going to be from the, shall we say, hippie dippie end of the spectrum. Some listeners are going to be from the ultra-rationalist sceptical end of the spectrum. And I'm not going to ask you to make an authority statement about the verifiable reality of this. But I'm curious, would you ever put that stuff in a work of nonfiction?
Elizabeth Chadwick
A work of nonfiction? This is really interesting. Not as such, not verbatim. But it really helps me think outside the box and what historians say, because historians are having to form opinions on, say reading a chronicle. And you get this and especially popular historian you will get “Eleanor obviously thought this.” And you can think, well, that's not obvious, or it is highly likely that and again, is it highly likely? That's your opinion mate. So I don't see that what I'm using is any different to using the Akashic Records, if you like, cuts through other people's opinions and brings you back to the basics that way you form your own opinion, rather than taking somebody else's. And I wrote for the Royal Historical Society when I was applying to join a complete essay on John Fitzgilbert Marshal, which was based on an Akashic session, but I didn't actually. I looked up the facts and sort of married them to the insights that I've been given. And so it's a completely factual piece. But it's got the insights from those records.
Guy Windsor
That makes perfect sense. Because I have a bunch of shamanic training in my past. And I'm teaching people historical martial arts. And it would be super easy for me to basically go into trance, go and talk to Fiore himself, get a fencing lesson and teach that. And I never ever do it or go even close to it. Because for me, it is a very, very slippery slope. And I'm teaching people physical skills, which, if they get them wrong, they're going to lose swordfights. And not that any of my students will ever be fighting to the death. But out of respect for the art that we're trying to recreate, we must work as if the swords are sharp, and the person who you're training with is trying to kill you, sort of thing, right? So I can say, well, from this source, for example, Fiore, we know that in this situation, we should do that. And I can point to the book, and I can point to the text and I can point to the pictures. And I can say okay, so we're going to do it like this. And I may be right or I may be wrong, but the process of getting to what we're doing in class is really transparent from available sources to the modern practice. If I put even a whiff of vision into that, it would be really, really hard to separate out what's actual research and what is Guy making shit up. So when I came across this Akashic stuff on your website, I was like, yes, sort of been there. Fascinating stuff. Let's get her to talk about it on the show. But because what I'm doing is so very, very, very nonfictional, I can't go there myself. So I'm kind of jealous.
Elizabeth Chadwick
I’m trying to think of an example of how it works. So for example, when Eleanor got divorced from King Louis VII, in the middle toward the end of that divorce process, Henry II, he wasn't Henry II at the time, but the young Henry came to Anjou. He’s a teenager, think he's about 18, turns up at court with his dad who's 38. Now, you get the biographical historians and looking at the Chronicles and say, ah, well, this is where Eleanor and Henry fell passionately in love and arrange to marry later. And you'll find that said in supposedly factual biographies, nobody knows what happens. Absolutely nobody knows what happens. So I went to the Akashics to find out, you know, did they fall in love? Did they have this tete-a-tete? And what came through was, like Alison said, Well, no, it's the dad. It's 38 year old Geoffrey, who is pushing Henry to marry Eleanor, and saying, it's a good idea, son. I know I was married to an uppity woman, so many years old, and I can give you some good advice on that. So now I look at it from a historical viewpoint. And here you have an 18 year old young man who's looking at a 29 year old about to be divorced woman. He's got his dad with him who's 38 and head of the household. And his dad has been trying forever to get Aquitaine into the Angevin pocket. He's even tried to arrange a marriage with Henry when Henry was younger with one of Eleanor’s daughters, which didn't come off because Louis vetoed it. Now the mother’s come up for sale. So it's far more likely that who's the head of the household, the 38 year old or the 18? year old? He's been trying forever to get Aquitaine for Anjou. So what's going to happen? Who's in charge? And nobody, nobody has actually asked that question. So now the Akashic asks it or doesn't ask it, tells it. But nobody that I've seen in any biographical work, or historian has noticed this or asked it. So that's new research for me. I can go and take that angle. And it's going with what is absolutely logical. The Akashic has shown me, it's like opened the door. What about this? So then I can examine that with historical veracity? And say, which is more likely?
Guy Windsor
Yeah. So let me just put a hypothetical situation there. Say you've seen it a certain way in the Akashic. And you come across a period source that directly contradicts. Which one would you feel most likely to go with?
Elizabeth Chadwick
What I would do would be to probe the Akashic further to make sure that Alison wasn't having an off day, or that her conscious mind was not because there is always your conscious mind there. So you've got to perhaps come at it from another angle, perhaps another person in the room, as in historical person in the room, and look at it backwards, forwards, and just find out, make sure that you've covered every angle on that. And then you look at that primary source, and you ask yourself, who was writing this? What was their agenda? Why were they writing it? How kosher are they? You know, if it’s Froissart, you know, perhaps need a bit of corroboration, or Gerald of Wales, they need corroboration.
Guy Windsor
That’s a very nice way of saying he was a bit of a novelist.
Elizabeth Chadwick
So you need to look then at the veracity for each source. And then think, which way am I going to go? And that comes down to when you're actually sitting there with your hands on the keyboard, then deciding what works best for the novel. That actually brings me on to a question about where you draw the line between truth and fiction, doesn't it? So I'll go with the source, where I think, how likely is this to have happened on a scale of one to 10? And if it's, well, preferably a 10. But if it is between an eight and a 10, then I'll go with it. And if it's under an eight, I'll find another way.
Guy Windsor
Okay. That's a fair and good answer. And it's a difficult thing to really pin down because, particularly for writing fiction, you have to balance the needs of the story against the recorded facts and the gaps between the recorded facts and probabilities here and probabilities there. And it's not quite as straightforward, I think, as writing nonfiction.
Elizabeth Chadwick
I suppose, again, it's not self bragging. But this is what I do. I build bridges. I have certain skills that are much more skillier than others.
Guy Windsor
In some respects, it's a little bit like my job where I have to bridge the gap between what's written in the text and how we actually do it in practice without killing anyone.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Exactly, yes, that's it. It's a similar sort of, you know what I'm talking about the page I'm on. I have to combine them all. And it's like combining them all in a braid that's harmonious. And it's a weave that makes sense and works on all on all levels.
Guy Windsor
And keeps your reader turning the pages.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Exactly. That's it. With writing historical fiction, because people will say, oh, it's story story story, yeah, but what about the facts? So if you're doing your job right, the ones who want the facts will keep on reading, they're not wall banging. The ones who want the story will still be on the edge of the seat at two in the morning and haven't fallen asleep in a snoring pile because it's boring. You've got to do both. And have integrity.
Guy Windsor
I can't actually think of an occasion where I threw a book of yours against the wall because I came across something that shouldn't have been there, which puts you into a fairly select population. Okay, now my last question, what is the best idea you never acted on? Or haven't acted on yet?
Elizabeth Chadwick
Does that mean in writing or in anything?
Guy Windsor
You may interpret the question however you wish.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Well, one of the things that I've never continued with, which I wished I had is riding. Because I learned to ride as a kid, I got given some riding lessons. And we weren't very well off and my parents couldn't afford it after they’d given it to me for my birthday present. But I'd always had, I don't whether that's a past life thing. Whatever. I'd always been passionate about horses. I learned all the colours. I learned the breeds. I learned the gaits, the lot. And I never got back on a horse. I'm now in my 60s. I suppose I could get back on one.
Guy Windsor
Can I just say that my ex-mother-in-law, so my ex-girlfriend’s mother, we were together for like nine years. I still know her, I had lunch with her not that long ago in Helsinki. She's now 88. I think having had two hip replacements, and she has some various medical issues that means she's not sensible to do it anymore. I think she stopped riding eighty five.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Oh, well, I’ve still got time.
Guy Windsor
I might add the queen. The queen was riding her favorite horse a few days before she died at the age of, I think it was 94.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Right. Okay, I am shamed. I have still time to learn to get on a horse again.
Guy Windsor
No, no one is suggesting you get on the horse for the first time in some decades and then go cross country at a gallop jumping over hedges. And actually several of my friends have taken up riding, not in their 60s but in their 40s, and it's been transformative for them. So I can totally recommend you give it a go.
Elizabeth Chadwick
Thank you. But I haven't acted on it yet. In a novel. I've always quite fun to see but never done anything with it is sort of the Arthurian period and Arthur versus the Saxons. I mean, I know that's very sort of naive and without filters. But it always amuses me when we've got the British with Arthur, and then the English come over, and it's all the wonderful Arthur if you like, so we never see it from the Saxon point of viewpoint, the invaders’ viewpoint, it'd be interesting to write a novel from that viewpoint.
Guy Windsor
Where Arthur is the enemy king?
Elizabeth Chadwick
Not necessarily the enemy, I wouldn't know whether he'll be an enemy a king until I started writing it but certainly my viewpoint character would be one of the it the immigrants, I don't know whether that's whether they were Saxon, English dukes, whatever, at the time. But whoever came over, I would like to write one from their viewpoint of that conflict because you never see it. Or not that I know of, somebody may have done that. I don't know. You’re not allowed to nick it.
Guy Windsor
While I have written teeny, tiny amounts of fiction, none of it is historical fiction. And I have no horse in that race at all. And also, let's face it, anyone can have the idea, it’s the execution that matters. And there will be some historical novelist friends of mine who are probably listening to this episode, and probably going oh, that's a cool idea. But even if they did write the same idea, it will be a completely different book to the way you'd write it. So I wouldn't worry about people nicking it.
Elizabeth Chadwick
That’s on my back. That's what has always amused me. I think that was what made me think nobody's ever written about it from that viewpoint. And then you get to 1066. And suddenly, the English and the Saxons are all great guys. And it's those nasty Normans. And then you get to a bit later on, suddenly, they've all been turned into the baddies again.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, it's odd how these things have happened in in history. So what has stopped you from writing it?
Elizabeth Chadwick
Time. It’s like when you say too many books too little time? It's the same with writing. So it's on one of those permanent backburners.
Guy Windsor
Do you actually plan out what novels you're going to write some time ahead or do you just go with whatever jumps onto your plate?
Elizabeth Chadwick
Once I'm writing on the last one of my contract, like my three book contract with Joan of Kent and Katherine Swinford. When I start on the Katherine Swinford novel I'll start thinking, right what's after Katherine? And then I'll have to come up with a three book idea or whatever or pitch some ideas to my publisher. Because I'm mainstream published, it's got to appeal to mainstream publisher as well as me. So if I wanted to do something in an obscure corner somewhere.
Guy Windsor
Okay, but if you decide that you want to write a book like this Saxon King Arthur thing and no publisher wants it, but you want to write it anyway, publishing it yourself is dead easy.
Elizabeth Chadwick
I probably would.
Guy Windsor
I promise you it is dead easy. And if you need any help with it, you can just ask me because I went to self publishing from mainstream publishing over a decade ago. And I make 10 times as much money that way. Because I'm writing really, really niche books they're quite easy to market. And I have a system in place for getting from final draft to published book. It's is just pushing a few buttons really.
Elizabeth Chadwick
So yes, it's mainly the thing will be the time to actually write it.
Guy Windsor
If you do write it and nobody wants it. And you want any help getting it out, let me know.
Elizabeth Chadwick
I have hundreds of thousands of words on the Akashic records, I've got screeds and screeds and screeds of it on this subject, covering all the novels I've written since The Greatest Knight. I'm still considering putting that out for readers. And so I might be getting in touch with you, that just wants tidying up and formatting really. But there is, you know, they are the size of the last Harry Potter novels.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, but again, and you can split it up into several volumes, or you can do it as one volume, or you could do it just as an ebook, or you can do it as a series of blog posts. There are lots and lots of options, and you want to make money from it, As long as it's advertised correctly, so that readers understand exactly what they're getting before they buy it. So they don't confuse it with historical novels. So if it's marketed correctly, I think a lot of your rather large readership will be fascinated to read it.
Elizabeth Chadwick
I think so. Again, on the dreaded Facebook, I put up every Friday, an excerpt from the Akashic records, Akashic Friday, where I go round the novels, each in turn, just put in a couple of thousand words, the research so they can see and that is very, very popular.
Guy Windsor
There you have it. Yeah. Excellent. Okay, so we can expect firstly, riding lessons, then King Arthur and then getting this Akashic Records stuff out into the public where other people can use it, I suppose. Excellent. That's three very good ideas. Well, thanks so much for joining me today, it's been lovely to meet you.
Elizabeth Chadwick
And to meet you. I've enjoyed it. Thank you very much.
