Princess Michael of Kent - Writing 'The Anjou Trilogy'

From Midnight Walks to Medieval Murders: Writing 'The Anjou Trilogy' | The Huffington Post

Princess Michael of Kent blogs about writing, research & her upcoming trilogy:

Research is rather like becoming a detective. Every clue, no matter how small, is exciting and can lead one on to the next, another piece in the jigsaw found and I continue trying to form a picture of a personality. This is the part of my journey as a writer which I enjoy the most — discovering the essence of a character through tiny little asides and titbits of no apparent significance but which can, on occasion, add something significant to their persona.

And then there are the locations. I never write about a place I have not visited, and therefore I do travel a great deal. 

I am a night-writer. It is the only time I am undisturbed and often at my laptop until three or four in the morning. 

Strangely enough, each one of my chosen subjects about whom I have written has led me to the next. 

Read complete article here @ Huffington Post
Read more about Princess Michael of Kent

Ermengarde of Narbonne - The Viscount's Daughter

Williamsburg author's "The Viscount's Daughter" rich in medieval history - tribunedigital-dailypress

In 12th century France, women were generally regarded as useful only in the home – meant to run the household and raise children. It was men's work to handle politics and warfare. There have been exceptions to this unwritten rule throughout history, and one such exception was Ermengarde, viscountess of Narbonne. Her exceptional role in France's history was what drew author Phyllis Hall Haislip to write her first novel for adults.

"The Viscount's Daughter," published in 2013, is the first volume in a planned trilogy following Ermengarde's life.

Few facts are known about Ermengarde. She inherited her title at approximately the age of five, after the death of her father. Because she was too young to lead, another nobleman, Alphonse I of Toulouse, assumed regency of Narbonne. When Ermengarde reached adolescence, he married her to add her lands to his own. Other local landowners objected to Toulouse's greed, and the conflict soon escalated to violence. Through all this, Ermengarde fought both against the dismantling of her father's legacy and the undesirable advances of her husband.

Haislip conducted extensive research for her novel, even traveling to visit the places Ermengarde and her contemporaries once lived to ensure accuracy in her descriptions.

Much of the work is based on the author's own imagination, because many details of Ermengarde's life have been lost over the centuries, but the book remains true to the culture and region of France in the mid-1100s.

Read More here @ Daily Press

From Amazon: The Viscount's Daughter, The Viscountess, The Viscountess & the Templars

Further Reading: Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours by Frederic Cheyette

Les Parisiennes: The Women in WWII Paris

The women in WWII Paris who 'did what they had to' for survival | The Times of Israel

The testimony of Arlette Reiman, now Arlette Testyler, is just one of scores of agonizing stories, many of them Jewish, in a remarkable new book, “Les Parisiennes,” by the journalist and historian Anne Sebba. It seeks to recast wartime France — and, specifically, Paris — as a time when women were in the ascendant as never before.

“Paris was a feminine city,” says Sebba. Its men had either been called up and imprisoned or killed as France fell in 1940, or — if they were Jews — they had been deported to camps from which few returned. The only men in Paris were those too young or too old to serve, or they were the German occupiers.

So the women, as Sebba shows in a meticulously researched series of sweeping vignettes, were faced with the most difficult of choices.

The choices ranged from full-on collaboration — resulting, said Sebba, in the birth of between 100,000 and 200,000 Franco-German babies from illicit love affairs — to tiny compromises, such as buying black market food for children. And there was also out-and-out heroism, displayed by the women of Paris and the women of the SOE, or Special Operations Executive, parachuted into France from Britain, for extraordinarily dangerous missions that nearly always ended in capture, torture and death.

Read rest of article here at The Times of Israel