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About this guide... |
How I Came To
Write The Canterbury Papers The politics and arts of the era of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II Plantagenet have long captured me. These were the times in which the Grail stories were written, stories which many believe fictional. Yet the times, the 12th Century, were more dramatic than the Arthurian legends of the Holy Grail. I had known since I was a child about the troubadours, about Robin Hood and his Merry Men and about the courts of love which Eleanor held in Poitiers. But it was later that I found out that Henry left a vivid legacy as well, since he gave us the system of local governance that is the basis for our common law today. When I was a child I was equally fascinated by the Crusades and heard stories of the noble Saladin and Richard, King of England. It was only later that I understood the geo-political context of these tales. Initially, I just saw them as fascinating stories about leaders. In recent years I became ‘hooked’ on reading history in this period, and one day, while traveling in France, I stumbled on the story of Alais and Henry. The chronicles of the time indicated that Alais, a ward of Henry and Eleanor and daughter of their sometime enemy and Eleanor’s first husband Louis, King of France, may have had a child by Henry when he was older and Alais was only in her teens. But the chronicles are mysteriously silent about the fate of that child, who could have been heir to either or both kingdoms of France and Italy. Fascinated by the possibilities, I asked myself: What if? What if Alais thought the child dead? What if it had survived? What if she discovered he was alive and sought to find him, when he was grown? Thus was born this novel. Because I had read so much history, I didn’t do research as such, except on food and clothes. I had to check facts, of course, and modify some things as I was going along. But the story came easily because I became so interested to see how it would turn out! Questions For Discussion
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