Launch: Tracey Warr’s Daughter of the Last King
INTERVIEW BY M.N. STROH
Tracey Warr is the award-winning author of five historical novels set in medieval Europe and centred on strong female leads. Born in London, having lived in southwest Wales, and now, southern France, she drew from the castles and landscapes there to inspire her historical fiction. Tracey is part of the team organising the UK HNS2024 conference at Dartington Hall. She spoke with M.N. Stroh about the revised edition of Daughter of the Last King, which is published today.
How would you describe your book’s premise in two sentences?
Daughter of the Last King is the first in a trilogy of novels set in the 12th century and focused on the turbulent life of the Welsh noblewoman, Nest ferch Rhys, and the reign of the Norman king, Henry I.
You developed a unique narration for your novel by alternating your main character’s POV between her past and present, while intermingling correspondences from secondary characters. What drew you to tell the story in this way?
The trilogy chronicles Nest’s life from the massacre of her Welsh royal family by invading Normans to her old age. She keeps a journal, interleaved with letters from others to compile a picture of her life. At the end of the third book, she hides her book in a hole in the castle masonry to be discovered centuries later (a few medieval manuscripts have been discovered in exactly this way). King Henry I was the youngest son of William the Conqueror. He ruled the complex Anglo-Norman kingdom of Normandy, England, Scotland and Wales for 35 years, fighting off rebellions, war with his older brother in Normandy, and assassination attempts. Although Nest, as one of the King’s mistresses, was often in the thick of the action, she couldn’t be there all the time. Her direct experience is focused on Wales and Henry’s courts in London, Oxford, and Winchester. The other points of view are supplied by Gerald FitzWalter, the Norman castellan of Pembroke Castle; the Fleming knight, Haith, who is the King’s good friend and later became Sheriff of Pembroke; and Haith’s sister, Benedicta, a nun at a convent in Normandy. With this mix of voices, I aimed to comprehend the geographical complexity of King Henry’s realm.
You are reissuing all five of your historical novels with new covers and slight revisions, starting with Daughter of the Last King and culminating with Almodis the Peaceweaver. Can you tell us a bit about these?
There is the trilogy focused on Nest and Henry: Daughter of the Last King, The Drowned Court, and The Anarchy. Then, The Viking Hostage and Almodis the Peaceweaver are stand-alone novels. The Viking Hostage is set in 10th-century France and Wales. Almodis the Peaceweaver is set in 11th-century France and Catalonia. The novels were written and published over the last ten years by Impress Books who unfortunately went into liquidation last year so that all the rights returned to me. After considering the major changes occurring in the publishing world in the last decade, I decided to reissue the novels under my own imprint, Meanda Books. I have many of the requisite skills and experience for self-publishing and am working with a very talented cover designer – Jessica Bell. I set myself the rather punishing schedule of reissuing all five books in hardback, paperback, and ebook over a five-month period starting with this launch of Daughter of the Last King on 1 March. It’s been a steep learning curve but I’m very pleased with this decision. I’m learning the art of creating beautiful books as objects. I’ve made rookie mistakes, but getting there, I hope! I’m writing an article about my self-publishing process and learning in the next issue of my newsletter, Meandering.
What inspired you to fixate on this place and period?
For most of my career, I taught contemporary art practice and art history at universities. Researching and writing the Middle Ages was like going on holiday in time. Medieval artefacts and manuscripts fascinate me. I’m also interested in what the Middle Ages might tell us about technologies for our future (floating water mills, river transport, for examples). I live in France so the castles, landscapes, and histories surrounding me fed my first two novels (The Viking Hostage and Almodis). Then I lived for a few years in southwest Wales, near Pembroke, and my best friend and muse is Welsh. I came across Nest’s extraordinary story and had to try and write it. All my novels focus on strong female leads based on and imagined around real figures from history.
Did you travel to specific sites to assist in the research of this novel?
Yes, very much so. Getting immersed in a site is a key part of my research and writing process. I spent a week staying in Llansteffan, where Nest mostly lives, and which is the heart of the trilogy. Walking along the headland that looks out over the triple river estuary and visiting the castle ruins were enormously important for the writing. I visited other castles too, such as Pembroke, Carew, Cardigan, and Cilgerran, where Nest also lived.
What would you say is the most interesting thing you learned during your research?
One thing is difficult! I can mention a few. Alongside managing his vast and turbulent kingdom, King Henry I had at least 15 mistresses and 25 illegitimate children. Three hundred young Norman nobles died in 1121 in the wreck of The White Ship in the English Channel, including the king’s only legitimate son and heir, and we don’t know to this day whether it was a horrible accident or an act of mass murder. After the death of his son, Henry aimed to put his daughter, Empress Maud, on the throne. Stephen de Blois was due to sail on The White Ship but disembarked just before it set off. When Henry died, Stephen rushed to England before a pregnant Maud could get there and usurped her throne, leading to 15 years of civil war between the cousins, known as The Anarchy.
And Gerald FitzWalter is a fascinating figure. He defended Pembroke Castle from a Welsh attack when most of his men had died or deserted by throwing the carcasses of his last few pigs over the castle walls to deceive the attackers into thinking he had plenty of supplies. Then, he left a fake letter in the road with a dead courier, where the Welsh attackers would find it, pretending he had plenty of men and food. He was a wily one!
Looking back from conception to publication, what was your favourite part of the writing journey?
I love getting to the end of the first draft of a novel, printing it out and looking at that wedge of paper and thinking, Wow, I created that from thin air, and now I need to rewrite it. I enjoy rewriting, when you can start to see and enhance the themes and motifs that have emerged in that first draft.
What is the last great book you read?
Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Blue Flower.
