NaNo brainstorm!
Oct. 30th, 2008 07:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
msmcknittingtonGiven the goodness and glory of Wikipedia, I have just discovered the Welsh marcher lords. And a little light in my head went ping! Could my hero's family be marcher lords?
The only thing is, I feel kind of weird creating a marcher lord that never existed (though I'm apparently all right with creating a family of knights that never existed, and not all right with inserting historical figures outright into my story as principal characters; my brain isn't just a gray area because it's my brain). Would I be more OK with it if the marcher lord family weren't earls?
I dunno. But at least I can start reading up on motte and bailey castles!
Random interjection: Have just remembered that I own a Welsh/English pocket dictionary! On the off chance I should ever find somebody wandering through southwestern Wisconsin who speaks only Welsh, I guess.
Am still searching for a source that will tell me about convents in and around Wales, or really about convents anywhere in England. I have lots of sources for monks and monasteries, but apparently nuns are boring or something. Of course, I have all these books about the sex lives of nuns (and monks), but that doesn't tell me anything about the rest of the lives of these half-nuns I just read about. Half-nuns? Yeah, apparently if your family wanted you to become a religious, but you didn't want to, you could become a half-a-nun, meaning you didn't take the full vows of poverty and chastity and whatever else was required of an all-the-way nun (or monk). And the convent still got all the land and money your parents would have given them if you'd become an all-the-way nun! And you still got to eat cakes and drink wine and maybe sleep with somebody without feeling so guilty about it.
Unfortunately, my heroine wants to be an all-the-way nun, and the only reason she hasn't is because her father is too negligent to give the go-ahead and sign away her dowry. He's all, "Oh, I'm too busy doing stuff . . . with my awesome second wife. Like, we hunt and go for long walks on the beach and I kind of forgot I had a daughter until she became useful as a bargaining chip with this English guy who is seiging her uncle's castle and needs to marry off his son. So, my bad!" Margarethe (er, Welsh-girl -- Cymraeg bachgennes?) is basically in the convent, waiting for her father to send permission and moneys, without which she cannot transition into . . . nunnity. The other option is for her father to send someone to fetch her home, but he hasn't done that either. Because her mother died when she was born, and she wasn't male, to provide a failsafe in case her older brother kicks it. So he's got the second wife, who is basically a doormat. Good firm baby bucket, but still a doormat.
Re-reading the way I have written the father's bit of character, I think I might be re-writing Clueless here.
AGH. I have to do so much research. Is it possible to write a riveting story about textiles? With only the knowledge I already have in my head?
"And then the fuller collected the jars of stale urine from the villagers, to the eternal disappointment of his daughters, who would be forced to dance across the wool until the fibers had drawn together. But they were not so unlucky as the dyer's daughters, whose hands were always blue and who smelled faintly of rotting leaves."
It will be like "The Song of the Shirt" but without the social commentary and with more bad smells.
The only thing is, I feel kind of weird creating a marcher lord that never existed (though I'm apparently all right with creating a family of knights that never existed, and not all right with inserting historical figures outright into my story as principal characters; my brain isn't just a gray area because it's my brain). Would I be more OK with it if the marcher lord family weren't earls?
I dunno. But at least I can start reading up on motte and bailey castles!
Random interjection: Have just remembered that I own a Welsh/English pocket dictionary! On the off chance I should ever find somebody wandering through southwestern Wisconsin who speaks only Welsh, I guess.
Am still searching for a source that will tell me about convents in and around Wales, or really about convents anywhere in England. I have lots of sources for monks and monasteries, but apparently nuns are boring or something. Of course, I have all these books about the sex lives of nuns (and monks), but that doesn't tell me anything about the rest of the lives of these half-nuns I just read about. Half-nuns? Yeah, apparently if your family wanted you to become a religious, but you didn't want to, you could become a half-a-nun, meaning you didn't take the full vows of poverty and chastity and whatever else was required of an all-the-way nun (or monk). And the convent still got all the land and money your parents would have given them if you'd become an all-the-way nun! And you still got to eat cakes and drink wine and maybe sleep with somebody without feeling so guilty about it.
Unfortunately, my heroine wants to be an all-the-way nun, and the only reason she hasn't is because her father is too negligent to give the go-ahead and sign away her dowry. He's all, "Oh, I'm too busy doing stuff . . . with my awesome second wife. Like, we hunt and go for long walks on the beach and I kind of forgot I had a daughter until she became useful as a bargaining chip with this English guy who is seiging her uncle's castle and needs to marry off his son. So, my bad!" Margarethe (er, Welsh-girl -- Cymraeg bachgennes?) is basically in the convent, waiting for her father to send permission and moneys, without which she cannot transition into . . . nunnity. The other option is for her father to send someone to fetch her home, but he hasn't done that either. Because her mother died when she was born, and she wasn't male, to provide a failsafe in case her older brother kicks it. So he's got the second wife, who is basically a doormat. Good firm baby bucket, but still a doormat.
Re-reading the way I have written the father's bit of character, I think I might be re-writing Clueless here.
AGH. I have to do so much research. Is it possible to write a riveting story about textiles? With only the knowledge I already have in my head?
"And then the fuller collected the jars of stale urine from the villagers, to the eternal disappointment of his daughters, who would be forced to dance across the wool until the fibers had drawn together. But they were not so unlucky as the dyer's daughters, whose hands were always blue and who smelled faintly of rotting leaves."
It will be like "The Song of the Shirt" but without the social commentary and with more bad smells.
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 07:25 pm (UTC)Mary Jo Putney came up with a plausible but fictitious Earl of Shropshire for "Uncommon Vows," an excellent medieval, by the way. The premise for the two earls is that one is Stephen's, the other is Matilda's. There's a thoughtful review here:
http://rosario.blogspot.com/2006/10/uncommon-vows-by-mary-jo-putney.html
Which, having read this book, I would call as spot-on. Note the contrast between the review and the cover copy, designed to sell the book...
Incidentally, Roger de Mortimer, who got into a bit of messy trouble with Edward III's minority (yes, I find understatement funny), was a Welsh marcher lord and but a baron until created Earl of March by Edward II (and there is apparently some evidence that Edward II was secretly kept alive on Mortimer's orders for several years after his deposition until Mortimer's own fall and execution a few days prior to Edward III's eighteenth birthday).
The three main centers of medieval power in the marches were Chester, Shrewsbury and Hereford-- coincidentally the titles of the three greatest marcher lords.