by Roseanna White | Aug 27, 2014 | 20th Century, Remember When Wednesdays
Let’s blame it on being an American–I know little about the details of how a king (or queen) becomes a king (or queen). In my head, it’s an instant thing when the previous monarch passes away. A bit, I suppose, like the swearing-in of the vice president as president when the president dies. It happens within hours. Voila. Done.
And yes, to a point that’s how it is. Researching the Edwardian era, I of course discovered that King Edward died in May of 1910–a mere 3 months before The Lost Heiress begins. But in my head, that meant the transition was already over. His son, King George, became king. Voila. Done.
I honestly didn’t think to look into any more than that while writing The Lost Heiress. I turned it in. No biggie. Then I started my research for The Outcast Duchess, and through that reading realized the error of my ways. And saw that King George’s coronation hadn’t been before my stories started. Oh no. It was smack dab in the middle of Brook’s first Season in The Lost Heiress–June, 1911. A year after his father’s death. A year, obviously, to prepare for the momentous day. In my story–and I didn’t once mention it. Yikes!
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| King George V in coronation robes, 1911 |
Luckily, it’s early days yet in edits, LOL.
Though books set up to WWI are deemed Edwardian, King George V was the king all through my series. And though it was his father who set the standard for the extravagance and luxury that made the era famous, I have to say I think I would have liked George much better. Where Edward was over-indulgent, George was more restrained. Where Edward was uninhibited, George seems to have been composed. They were two very different men . . . and yet, in his journal after his father’s death, George wrote that on that day he lost his dearest friend–his father.
Sniff. Sniff, sniff.
I think one of the things I admire most about this man who is king during my stories though, is his own tale of love.
You see, he wasn’t always the heir-apparent. He was the second son, and his brother was the one everyone thought would be the next king. He thought his destiny was to serve in the Royal Navy, and he embraced that gladly. He fell in love with his German cousin, but the families didn’t approve the match. He proposed anyway–she refused him and married the heir to the king of Romania instead.
Two years later, George’s older brother Albert, the presumed heir, became engaged to a cousin the family did approve of–Princess Victoria Mary of Teck. The family called her May (as there was kinda still a Victoria on the throne at the time…) But only six months into their engagement, Albert died of pneumonia.
It was grief that brought May and George together. They mourned Albert together. They comforted each other. And they fell in love. Theirs was a story of socially-acceptable-matches meeting deep-from-the-heart love…and oh, how history needs those!
Though King Edward was known for his affairs and paramours, King George was known for his dedication to his wife. He had a hard time, he himself admitted, expressing his feelings out loud. So they exchanged love letters all their lives.
Sniff. Sniff, sniff.
Yes, this is a king who deserves some mention in my series! And though in The Lost Heiress I really only mention his coronation a couple times, I’m going to try to put a bit more about him in later books. Because though I’m calling this an Edwardian series, Edward was gone. George was ruling. And he was setting an example that deserves to be noted.
by Roseanna White | Jul 30, 2014 | 20th Century, Remember When Wednesdays
Confession: I knew the Edwardian era followed the Victorian, and that it was because King Edward VII followed Queen Victoria on the throne of England. But it took me a ridiculous amount of time to realize that King Edward = Prince Albert, known as “Bertie” in the reign of his mother. I’d researched Victorian England. I knew about the prince. But I didn’t realize he’d changed his name upon taking the throne, LOL.
That was a pretty easy lesson to learn about the Edwardian days, though. But even that had some details I didn’t realize!
In my research for Scotland, I found this awesome book: Edwardian Scotland by C. W. Hill. It’s proving to be invaluable! And one of the first fun facts I learned was that, not only did Queen Victoria specifically request that her son not change his name, but Scotland as a whole objected to the one he chose and refused to acknowledge the “VII”! They claimed that the first three King Edwards of England were not monarchs of Scotland, and in June of 1901 they began collecting signatures for a petition against the name–which eventually filled five volumes.
Who knew you could object to such a thing?? Not that King Edward gave a whit what anyone else thought of his choice, LOL. He’s called “the merry monarch,” and much of the British empire was a bit torn about him. On the one hand, he eschewed the morals his mother had drilled into them–he was a gambler, a womanizer, and showed blatant disregard for many of the principles they held dear. But on the other hand, he was affable, amiable, and made no major blunders as a ruler. So all in all, he was well-loved…but not a role model.
Of course, one of the best-known traits of the era named after him is the extravagance that the nobility enjoyed. Edwardian Scotland helped put that in perspective for me. When the gentlemen went grouse hunting, they regularly bagged thousands of pheasants. Thousands, in one weekend! And the king’s meals went like this:
Breakfast – haddock, poached eggs, bacon, sausages and kidneys, chicken.
Morning snack – lobster salad and cold game or chicken
Luncheon – eight or ten courses (more if there were guests); the king’s favorite foods were game, so one would often see duck, chicken, York ham, chops or steaks…or for a humbler option, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.
Tea – scones, crumpets, muffins, tarts, cakes, gateaux
Dinner – twelve to fourteen courses (!!!), with more game. This was they broke out things like the “turducken” of their day, like a pheasant stuffed with a snipe stuffed with truffles and garnished with sauce. What did they call that, I wonder? Pheasniples?
And apparently the Kardashians are far from the first celebrities to lend their image to products. 😉 Okay, so we knew that. But I had no idea that the nobility in the Edwardian era–and even the king himself!–were featured in ads. He famously posed for this one for Horniman’s Pure Tea.
Of course, as the title of the book suggests, Edward didn’t confine his time to England–he vacationed every winter in the Highlands, where he kept company with Andrew Carnegie and British nobles in Scotland. He was unfortunately deceased by the time my book starts, so no mentioning the king in the neighborhood for me (pout, pout), but I’m interested in seeing what the royal family was up to by the time my story begins, once I get further in Edwardian Scotland. In the meantime, I’m soaking up all the awesome minutia!
by Roseanna White | Jul 16, 2014 | 20th Century, Remember When Wednesdays
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| Loch Morar, Highlands, Scotland |
It’s been a long, long time since I’ve had to research something totally new. The Lost Heiress may be my first Edwardian English book, but I’ve done the England research about a gazillion times for the previous versions. All I had to do was refresh, and do some year-specific reading.
But then I thought I’d better start the research for its sequel. And oh. Oh gracious. I felt in way over my head for a day or two!
Back seven or so years ago when I was working on the Victorian-set version of this series, I wrote the second book. My original idea came from when I was a teen, and the original title was Blue Skies in the Morning. But when the first book, originally Golden Sunset, Silver Tear became Fire Eyes round about that time, the sequel had to match. So I called it Wind Aflame.
My heroine, I decided then, would still be from Scotland, as I’d always wanted her to be. She would be an heiress, not just to land but to a title–because in Scotland, girls could inherit a title from their father. Her name would be Constance Augusta (as I planned at 14), but she would go by Gusty (same).
At the time, I’d given my hero, Brice, a title that was real but extinct. That was how I came to set that version of the book at Inverness–it was part of his title. This time around, I’ve completely fictionalized all titles, so he no longer has that connection. Which is freeing…to the point of tossing my hands in the air.
Where in the world was I to start? How was I to know where to set this new version (tentatively titled The Outcast Duchess, though we’ll see what it ends up as, LOL)? And why in the world did I only take half a page of notes when I was researching for Wind Aflame??? (Bad, Past-Roseanna! So not helpful to Future-Roseanna!) I reread that old, Victorian-set version and wrinkled my nose. I grant that only a few chapters are set in Scotland, but still. Those chapters did nothing to capture it, and I didn’t get so much as a whiff of the Scots in Gusty, aside from a character occasionally commenting on the accent that was by no means evident in how I wrote her speech.
So then. I got down to business. My internet history is now full of everything from Gaelic words to what girls’ schools in Edinburgh looked like. I’ve begun a new (secret, for now) Pinterest board filled with photos of lochs and castles and stark, staggeringly-beautiful mountains. I’ve looked up tartans and crofts and old steam railways. I’ve watched YouTube videos of hikes and train rides, of kayaks paddling from one loch to another. I’ve stumbled across tales of the greens kept at lairds’ houses and castles for rousing games of football (soccer), of the woes accompanying the great Clearances that displaced so many Highland families in the 18th and 19th centuries, and of how the herring industry went from booming to non-existent.
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Eilean Donan Castle – where three lochs meet
My prototype for the fictional Castle Kynn, on a similar (fictional) island
in Loch Morar. Can you imagine growing up there? |
I’ve had books shipped in from other libraries, I’ve read novels, I’ve listened to audiobooks. And slowly, ever so slowly (okay, it feels slow, though I guess a week isn’t, really, LOL), I’ve figured out where to set it–Loch Morar, I think. I’ve figured out who this Gusty girl is. She isn’t, as Wind Aflame made her out to be, weak. She’s got that stubborn Scots blood, after all (let it be noted, I have some of it too! My McDonald side left Scotland during one of those clearances and settled in Ireland, it seems, before making their way across the pond.). She’ll have the burr in her speech, but be able to tone it down thanks to those years away from the Highlands at school. She has, now, a rather complicated family history that involves a mother from a Highland family who had emigrated to America and done well for themselves. A father who inherited a title from his mother’s English side but a chiefdom from his father’s, and puts all his heart in the then-outdated clan side rather than the far-more-popular peerage title.
Yesterday, as I was reading the oh-so-rich Edwardian Scotland that smells of old paper and disuse, shipped in from a Library down-state for me, I paused and realized that I’m putting all this research into this, when I still won’t have more than a handful of chapters set in the Highlands before my characters head south to Yorkshire, to London, to Sussex. That’s probably why I took only half a page of notes before–because really, Scotland is a small part of the book.
But Scotland is a big part of the characters. And so I’ll deem the weeks spent researching it worthwhile. Because we’re all shaped, not just by where we wend up, but by where we come from. When I was living near the Chesapeake Bay in Annapolis, Maryland, it was growing up in the mountains of West Virginia that set me apart. Back in West Virginia, it’s those years in Maryland’s quaint, cultured capital that do the same. Each stop along our life’s journey help fashion us into who we ultimately will be.
And that, I think, is what makes a character as rich as a person. That twist-and-turn, up-and-down, in-and-out of life.
And oh–what fun it is to discover it.
Loch Morar – Photo credit: photojenni via photopin cc
Eilean Donan Castle – photo credit: byb64 (en voyage jusqu’en août :-)) via photopin cc
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by Roseanna White | May 14, 2014 | 20th Century, Remember When Wednesdays
A week ago and a half ago, I typed the final words In The Lost Heiress. I still have some major edits to do, but the first draft is done. Again. 😉 Always a great feeling.
And this is the first time in a long…long…long time that I’ve finished a book that has some things that are decidedly modern. I got excited when, in Circle of Spies, I could include things like telegraphs and trains.
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| Poster for the Tube, 1905 |
In The Lost Heiress, advances have kept on hurdling their way into the world. In 1911, the wealthy had things like electric lights. Automobiles. Telephones.
Telephones!! LOL
This changes so, so much for a historical writer. One of the challenges has always been pacing myself to their rate of life, where it took days or weeks or sometimes months for communication to go from one person to another. Even with telegrams, you have to get to town and a telegraph office to send one. But suddenly I have characters who can call the police from their phone. Who can hop in the car to chase someone through the streets rather than saddling a horse. Who can steam their way across the Channel. Life is moving more swiftly again!
But there are checks, too. Things I have to remember as I’m indulging in this modern history. I have to remember that roads weren’t yet made for cars. They were still mostly dirt, which means mud when it’s rained. Which makes them impassable for automobiles–horses were still very much necessary much of the time.
I have to remember that though there were phones, there were also operators necessary for making the connections, who were rather notorious for listening in, as could anyone else on the same line–far from private!
I have to remember that though the wealthy had these advancements, the general public did not, not yet. Rural areas were largely still without electricity. Phones still hadn’t reached the masses even into the 20s. Cars were far too expensive for anyone but the rich.
But then, I can mention a few other fun things, like the Tube in London. I had a character riding this underground train and was pretty excited to get to include it, especially since it was new to her and quite amazing.
And that, really, is where the real Joy comes in. These advances were all new. They were exciting and uncertain and sometimes more than a bit dangerous. They were racing toward modernity at a pace that was often quite literally break-neck. They were discovering and failing and trying different approaches, by sea and land and even in the air.
Given that my characters are the type to embrace these new things and ride them rather recklessly into tomorrow (okay, one of my characters is…the other is a bit more cautious, LOL), it made for a fun story. =)
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Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.