The Fabulous Fate of Gytha Godwinson

A modern idea for a subject that leads us one thousand years back: that’s what good historical fiction is all about, isn’t it? It is also the Leitmotif for my new novel ‘The Last Princess’. Who is the last princess, or my heroine Gytha Godwinson, the daughter of England’s true House of Dragons and its last Anglo-Saxon King, Harold II? How come she, a woman, was able to write world history in a time when women filled fixed roles in society – cupbearer, peace-weaver, and memory-keeper.

I had to find out.

Even for an avid and ambitious author of historical fiction, going back in time to a Millennium is an enormous challenge. But then, who does not like a challenge? It also gives you great liberty, even if rule number one of writing is stringent research before you pick up the pen. I read and read and immersed myself in this long-bygone world. I also struggled with the fact that the Anglo-Saxons treaded famously lightly on the surface of this earth, building in earth, wattle, and daub, and living in harmony with nature and its seasons: call it medieval mindfulness. But while men and their battles are well-documented, the women populate the shadows, faceless, nameless. Yet I had to overcome this obstacle for Gytha: I wanted to breathe and feel my gorgeous new girl, as I call her. Research is the rigid, non-negotiable frame in which the story and the plot may teem and swarm as the most colourful of images – an image I am determined to paint in ‘The Last Princess’. A reader gives me their most valuable – and that is not their money, but their time and attention.

But back to the image the writer and her book paints: teem and swarm indeed! Gytha’s times – the High Middle Ages – were an era of intense change in Britain, and all over Europe. William the Conqueror set the clock to hour zero when he won the mother of all uphill battles at Hastings. The Historian Marc Morris calls it ‘The defining catastrophe of the British Isles’. 1066 was a brutal caesura, which put an end to England’s ancient house and began to create the Europe we know today, a continent of nation-states. It makes Gytha’s story irresistible: prepare yourself for a wild ride. Stringent historical fiction that teems with trolls, giants, Norse sorceresses, evil spells that keep our beautiful, flame-haired Princess captive, handsome hunks, warrior women, as well as the power of faith, belief and superstition – and it’s all true. Gytha’s fabulous fate bridges myth and modernity: it is about the end of an era and a new beginning for Britain. She witnesses the demise of a cursed kingdom and the emergence of a new, different empire, and she speaks up, in a strong, clear and modern voice.

Wait, what?

By the autumn of 1066, Christianity had reached most corners of the European world. Historically, there is much more evidence of women and how they interacted with the world around them beginning in the High Middle Ages, both religious and secular. Yet it also triggered a type of repression in which celibacy was a marker of ritual purity distinguishing clerics from laypeople. Women’s bodies are in turn viewed as inherently polluting. At the same time, however, there were aspects of Christianity that enabled female spiritual growth. The development of canon law also impacted Christian women’s status. The Fourth Lateran Council solidified the need for consent within marriage, assuring women of autonomy. However, Thomas Aquinas dictated that women owed their husbands a conjugal debt.

It is in this field of tension that Gytha grows up: ancient rites clash with strict Christian morals. Up to the moment when her father becomes King Harold II of England – and even for the short months of his reign – Gytha’s life must have been predictable and her aspirations within the framework of what was considered ‘normal’ for an Anglo-Saxon aristocratic young woman. I try to show this in the novel’s first pages, when an ungodly apparition haunts the skies of the realm: a gleaming star, whose evil curse threatens to bring great change. When marvelling at it in fascinated horror, Gytha admits to her little sister: ‘I do not know what it is. I wish I had paid more attention to Grandmother’s lessons; lessons aimed at preparing me for either marriage or the monastery, whichever serves my family, and thus England, better.’

Marriage or a monastery: but a war, or a huge battle that decides the fate of an entire nation, are always the harbinger of change in a country, and for women, too. After autumn 1066, Gytha’s life has different plans for her – or does she have different plans for her life? Gytha dares the unthinkable and hurtles forward into her fabulous fate. If her choice changes to ‘fight or flight’, she picks both: Gytha lives trial, terror and finally triumph. From her father’s cursed Kingdom, she goes on to found her own, utterly surprising empire – a subject which I explore in the series’ second book, ‘The Sunrise Queen.’

It is the extraordinary quality of her life that makes her rise above all rules and limitations for medieval women, and which I loved to explore.