THE KING’S JEWEL:  Gathering the threads.

THE KING’S JEWEL is set at the close of the 11th century and into the early twelfth and is the story of Welsh princess Nesta ferch Rhys who is seized by the Normans who murder her father, and becomes  a concubine to the king of England’s brother, and then the wife of Gerald of Windsor, a Norman soldier in the pay of the Montgomery lords of the Welsh March who killed her father.
It’s a story of resilience to tyranny, of endurance and compromise, hatred, vengeance and survival – and ultimately of love.

I had been considering writing Nesta’s story for some time, the idea probably first sparking while I was writing THE IRISH PRINCESS.  Nesta and Aoife from THE IRISH PRINCESS had certain things in common – they were both very young women who were used as bargaining chips by men in power. Both had to deal with worlds turned upside down by war and greed, and cope with new relationships, language and culture before they were barely women.

I started out by digging into various histories and biographies in book form that gave me the gist of Nesta’s story and its context in the history of the period. Some were primary sources, others were academic secondary sources.   I read numerous online articles too, and my interest grew.  I started to ask questions.   Sometimes they were answered but on many occasions they just led to more questions and took me further down the rabbit hole, or should that be an entire warren!   As above mentioned, Nesta was, for a time, a concubine of King Henry I of England.  But was she a sexy seductress as some  historians have implied, or was she one of Henry’s victims with no say in the matter?  There’s often a notion that because Henry had at least 20 illegitimate children with a variety of women, he was some kind of super-lover and that the women themselves were all very willing and glad of the perks.  Perhaps he was and they were.  Then again, perhaps he wasn’t and perhaps they weren’t.

Henry did provide for the offspring born of his numerous liaisons – but such offspring were marvelous bargaining chips in the marriage market to tie barons into his family and buy loyalty.  The mothers too could be married off, again as rewards and to purchase affinity. Henry wasn’t sentimental about these women and children.  They existed to service his need.  He was not above putting out the eyes of his own granddaughter when her mother displeased him.  I wanted to explore this area that involved both women’s perceived power and also their powerlessness.  I wanted to look at how they coped – or didn’t.  I wanted to explore the rewards and the costs.

Another reason for writing Nesta’s story was my own interest in certain aspects of Welsh history.  I was familiar with Pembroke Castle through Richard de Clare and William Marshal. Carew Castle had been the birth home of Raymond le Gros (The Irish Princess).  Cilgerran had been a Marshal stronghold.  Looking at the earlier history of these places, I became interested in the part they had played in Norman, Welsh and Irish interactions. As I dug, I became aware of the threads of a story beginning to assemble in my author’s sewing basket.  I was fascinated that both Cilgerran and Carew claim to be the place where a particularly interesting and controversial incident had taken place involving Nesta, her husband Gerald, and a Welsh prince – Owain of Powys who had designs on Nesta.  I made up my own mind about the location, but I found it interesting that the castles and sites involved both feel that they can lay claim to the legend today.

Nesta and Gerald’s daughter, Angharad, would marry a local Norman nobleman, William de Barri, and the son Angharad named Gerald after her father, would go on to become a scribe and cleric.  Search for him today on the internet as Gerald of Wales or Giraldus Cambrensis, and you will find that he was a chronicler, historian and tale-teller whose works in translation are still in print a thousand years later.  He was something of a gossip-columnist who today might have made a career in top-rank tabloid journalism.  The beach and the castle of Manorbier where he played as a child is a lovely place to go if you are ever in Pembrokeshire.   Nesta and Gerald are also the ancestors of the FitzGerald Kennedys, presidents and senators of the United States.  Much of their history is obscure and at times confused by conflicting evidence, and some stereotypical perceptions.  I didn’t know what I was going to find in full when I asked them to tell their story, but now it is done, I owe them my gratitude that they did, and allowed me to pull back the veil  – at least a little way.