Author’s
Inspiration
The
Order of the White Boar
By Alex Marchant
If every book catches fire from a single inspirational
spark, there can be no doubt what set alight the first flames of The Order of the White Boar. Perhaps you
remember it too. It was a moment that gripped many people all around the world.
A moment I never thought I’d witness – when ‘King Richard III’ trended on
Twitter.
The time: the morning of Tuesday 4 February 2013. The
location: the ancient Guild Hall in Leicester, a small city in the English Midlands.
The scene: a press conference called by the local university jointly with a
team of individuals who had a few years before embarked on what seemed to many
an impossible quest: the Looking for Richard Project (LFRP).
The previous summer an archaeological dig had begun in a
council car park in Leicester, which was believed to overlie the medieval
priory of the Grey Friars. This was the place where it was recorded that King
Richard III, the last of the Plantagenet dynasty, had been buried following his
death in battle in 1485: the date usually taken as the end of the medieval
period and the beginning of the early modern period in Britain.
On the very first day, following the instructions of the
client for the dig, Philippa Langley of the LFRP, a grave was discovered. But
it was covered over again as the archaeologists didn’t believe it could be the
one they were searching for. It was only a couple of weeks later that it was
finally excavated – and found to be that of a young man who appeared to have
died from battle wounds. The bones, in a very good state of preservation, were
sent for analysis, including of their DNA, to see whether it matched with DNA
donated by the only known surviving female-line descendants of King Richard’s
sister.
And five months later that famous press conference was
called, and beamed around the world, to announce finally that, ‘beyond
reasonable doubt’, the grave was indeed that of Richard III.
I was watching, entranced, holding my breath until those
final words, at which point the journalists who were present erupted into
applause. I, along with very many others, found myself with tears welling.
Since my teenage years, I have been a Ricardian – one who believes a great
injustice has been done to Richard Plantagenet in the centuries since his
death, during which he has been branded a child-murdering, usurping tyrant.
The records of the time, both official and unofficial, don’t
depict him as that. A bishop observing him during his coronation progress round
the country wrote in a private letter, ‘He contents the people where he goes
best that ever did prince . . . On my troth I liked never the condition of any
prince so well as his’, and in the weeks after his death the city of York spoke
of him as ‘the most famous prince of blessed memory’. But in the decades after
he was defeated and slain at the Battle of Bosworth, and his throne usurped by
the victor of that battle, Henry Tudor, an ‘official history’ evolved – based on
rumour, hearsay, manipulation of records, and outright lies and propaganda –
which culminated in the marvellous fiction that is Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Richard III. ‘Tragedy’,
note, not ‘History’, though it is usually lumped in with what have been dubbed
the playwright’s ‘history plays’. These cover the end of the Hundred Years War
and the length of the so-called Wars of the Roses . . . and were written in the
reign of, and to flatter, the then incumbent of the English throne – Henry
Tudor’s granddaughter, Elizabeth I. It would not perhaps have been very polite
– or politic – for Shakespeare to point out that her grandfather himself had in
fact been the usurper.
 |
| King Richard III and his son, Edward, Prince of Wales, at Middleham Church |
Part of the myth surrounding King Richard was that his grave
had been broken open during the Reformation and the Dissolution of the
monasteries, and the remains of his body dumped unceremoniously in the local
river. But, as with so much else to do with Richard, the history didn’t support
that, and meticulous research by the Looking for Richard Project had pinpointed
exactly where the grave still lay.
As a Ricardian I knew this announcement, which had so caught
the public’s imagination, was a unique chance to counter the ‘traditional’
history and communicate to people the story of the real Richard III. But how to
do it? I’m not a campaigner, one who writes persuasive letters to influential
people, or can stand up and proclaim the truth to a crowd. But I was already
author of two (unpublished) novels for children. Were there any books out there
already telling the real tale for children – before they were exposed to the
dark Tudor-created legend?
To my surprise, there weren’t – and so my first published
novel was born.
The
Order of the White Boar relates the story of Richard Plantagenet,
then Duke of Gloucester, through the eyes of a young page, Matthew Wansford,
who enters his service at Middleham Castle in Yorkshire in the summer of 1482.
The sequel, The King’s Man (due to be
published in May this year), takes Richard’s and Matthew’s story on through the
Year of the Three Kings of 1483 to the Battle of Bosworth – and beyond.
Together the two books cover the final three years in this most controversial
young king’s life.
 |
| Middleham Castle, Wensleydale |
And they were born out of rage at the lies that have been told about him over the years. As I hesitated over whether and how to write such a book, a very angry old man came hammering at my door, insisting I tell his story, and through it King Richard’s. That old man was Matthew, fifty years on, having grown up watching the evolution of the ‘official’ Tudor history. The first words I wrote of the book were straight from his mouth. ‘Lies! All lies!’ was how the original prologue began.
That prologue didn’t make the final cut of either The Order of the White Boar or The King’s Man, as it didn’t seem
appropriate for the children’s book that it spawned, but its raw anger remained
with me throughout the writing of the whole story. And as I start preparatory
work on the third book of the sequence, continuing Matthew and his friends’
stories after Richard’s death – in the ‘twilight between the golden sun of
Yorkist rule and the dark unknown of the Tudor future’ – that anger still
simmers. Or maybe, to return to the imagery with which I began, the first
tongues of flame that flickered into life at that February press conference
haven’t died away, but are rather being fanned into a conflagration – or
perhaps into a rain of fire aimed at the last bastions of Tudor propaganda.
Alex Marchant
Born and raised in the rolling Surrey downs, and following stints as an
archaeologist and in publishing in London and Gloucester, Alex now lives
surrounded by moors in King Richard III’s northern heartland, working as a
freelance copyeditor, proofreader and, more recently, independent author of
books for children aged 10+.
The
Order of the White Boar
How well
do you know the story of King Richard III? Not as well as Matthew Wansford.
Twelve-year-old Matthew Wansford has always longed to be a
knight. And his chance comes in the golden summer of 1482 when he arrives at
Middleham Castle, to serve the King’s brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester.
Soon he encounters a dangerous enemy. Hugh,
a fellow page, is a better swordsman, horseman, more skilled in all the
knightly arts – and the son of an executed traitor. Now he aims to make Matt's
life hell.
Yet Matt also finds the most steadfast of friends – Alys,
Roger and Edward, the Duke’s only son. Together they forge a secret knightly fellowship,
the Order of the White Boar, and swear an oath of lifelong loyalty – to each
other and to their good lord, Duke Richard.
But these are not times to play at war. Soon Matt and his
friends will be plunged into the deadly games of the Wars of the Roses. Will
their loyalty be tested as the storm looms on the horizon?
The King’s Man
How well do you know the story of the real King Richard III?
It's April 1483, and the death of his brother King Edward IV has turned the life of Richard, Duke of Gloucester upside down, and with it that of his 13-year-old page Matthew Wansford.
Banished from Middleham Castle and his friends, Matt must make a new life for himself alone in London. But danger and intrigue lie in wait on the road as he rides south with Duke Richard to meet the new boy king, Edward V – and new challenges and old enemies confront them in the city.
As the Year of the Three Kings unfolds – and plots, rebellions, rumours, death and battles come fast one upon the other – Matt must decide where his loyalties lie.
What will the future bring for him, his friends and his much-loved master? And can Matt and the Order of the White Boar heed their King’s call on the day of his greatest need?
The King’s Man, the eagerly awaited sequel to The Order of the White Boar, continues the story of Richard Plantagenet for readers aged 10 to 110.
Many thanks for the opportunity to recall all this, Mary Anne!
ReplyDelete