Gytha Godwinson: Finding History’s Hidden Heroines

‘So, whom, or what are you writing about, next?’

It’s the most dreaded and exhilarating question for any author, let alone those who write Historical Fiction. Like any art, a writer must stick to his guns and hone a voice. Stick to your guns, once you’ve shot your first powder: One recognises Ed Sheeran when hearing him. One can tell a Van Gogh from a Gaugin. Likewise, a writer needs an instantly recognisable brand. Dabbling across genres is tantamount to a slow and torturous death, losing appeal and being forgotten.

Every Author of Historical Fiction has their darlings: You have to find your narrative. There’s the ‘Defamiliar’ historical fiction novel, which masters such as Bernard Cornwell and Robert Harris choose – they implant their character into a known scenario, such as Alfred the Great settling with the Vikings or a Conclave. Then, there’s Historical Romance – I grew up reading Victoria Holt – endless English gouvernantes arriving at huge Manor houses and winning the master’s darkly mysterious heart. Finally, there is what I love most: the Cultural Retrieval, allowing for a fresh point of view and a new spin on a known subject. Think Hilary Mantel’s ‘Wolf Hall’ trilogy and Philippa Gregory’s ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’, and my own ‘Tsarina’ series.

I love discovering history’s hidden heroines – but for Gytha to become my new heroine, was a long and laborious way. Now, however, I’m in love – the harder the conquest, the deeper the passion. Ever since my father-in-law, who is a keen genealogist, told me about Gytha – who is an ancestress of my husband – her compelling story captivated me. But she didn’t seem to yet ‘fit in’ with my work. Why not? Let me go way back. Once upon a time, in 2017 – after years of writing about 35 drafts – my agent wrote with the best news: my debut ‘Tsarina’ had sold in a two-book deal. Offers came in from all over the world to license the novel about Russia’s first-ever Empress, who started life as an illegitimate and illiterate serf and fulfilled my wildest dreams. Surely, this was it; I was all set and safe. I planned to continue my series about these early, unknown, and wild Romanov women, who set the stage for the over-exposed Catherine the Great, ad infinitum. For reasons that would be a massive spoiler, one of these books had Gytha Godwinson as its protagonist: its jesting working title was ‘The Viking Tsarina’.

But a writer is rarely set, or safe. I, and nobody else, could know which sharks were approaching beneath the surface. ‘Tsarina’ was published in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic to closed bookstores, and worse still, to a closed world. Things were only slightly better in 2021 when its sequel ‘The Tsarina’s Daughter’ saw the light of the day. When I wrote book Nr. Three of the ‘Tsarina’ series, news broke about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Almost overnight, Russia – this gracious, generous nation that is taken hostage by a post-soviet megalomaniac – was out of fashion. My agent wrote with crushing news: the ‘Tsarina’ series was not to be continued.

Might I come up with something new, and different, but similar, of course? It was then that I remembered Gytha Godwinson. But how to tackle her? I had spent years in the mad, bad world of the early Romanovs! Yet when I picked up the first of many books to begin my research with – the inevitable, rigid frame for the lively, colourful picture that any novel will be – exploring the late Anglo-Saxons and the demise of a cursed kingdom was just as fun. Now for telling the story – cue the late Dame Hilary Mantel again. If the end of a story is known, a writer must surprise their reader, who gives us the most valuable. Not their money, but their time and attention. It’s all about how we tell the tale and create new turning points in a story. This introduces the most captivating of things: inevitable tragedy, which has us hooked.

Easy, right? No. It never is. That is why Dame Hilary was such a master of our trade. It took me a long time to find the right starting point for ‘The Last Princess’: the novel’s narrative is set between December 1065 and Spring 1067. Now, it begins with a classic, introductory prologue. In autumn 1066, Halley’s Comet appeared in the English night sky. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, the celestial body heralded ‘great change for the kingdom’. The new star’s hellfire ploughs the heavens with untold fury; it scares Gytha and the women of her family witless as they watch it glare the moon into submission. No wonder: ‘The Last Princess’, and 1066 as told by Gytha, is a family affair – a bit like a Greek tragedy of Anglo-Saxon making. Not William the Conqueror set the scene for ‘The defining catastrophe of the English Isles’, as Marc Morris defines 1066 in his book ‘The Norman Conquest’, but a feral pack of a family. Don’t we all have one of those? Magnificent. The prologue pulls the reader right into Gytha’s stunning, shocking, surprising and seductive story. Her world is a bewitching blend of myth and modernity: stringent historical fiction that teems with trolls, fairies, giants, wyverns, malevolent stars, nasty Norse sorceresses, handsome hunks and a beautiful princess trying to evade an evil spell.

And it’s all true.

Between King and Conqueror, Gytha takes the ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom forward into the future. How? Let me surprise you!