PRISCILLA ROYAL:
Hate History? Have I Got a Surprise for You...
It’s no secret that I love history. Were I the US Grand Poobah of Educational Curricula, I’d insist it share primacy with math, science, and the requirement that all American children be functionally bilingual.
I am not talking about the war-treaty-dates-principle names-more war kind of history most of us endured. I mean three-dimensional, flesh and blood, in-the-moment kind of history. Adults aren’t the only ones who like good stories. Children unabashedly adore them.
Family tales were how I learned to love history. Not talking about famous people here. I’m talking about the tale of a family traveling from Maine to Illinois in the 19th century in a cart pulled by two horses named Bouncing Betsey and Queen Victoria. Or the story behind why a young doctor, dying of TB in pre-Civil War Pittsburgh PA, added a codicil to his will, in a barely legible hand a week before he died, that no child of his could be “raised south of the Mason-Dixon Line where they would be contaminated by the evil of slavery”. All families have similar stories. They teach us that history really is, as Thomas Carlyle said, “the essence of innumerable biographies”.
Carlyle’s statement was the principle I applied when I switched from being a faceless bureaucrat to committing murder medieval style in the 13th century. It also explains why I chose a cast of characters from various backgrounds. I wanted to show how the culture of the time and historical events impacted people like us or others we know.
Although we are told that the failure to know history dooms us to repeat it, our inability to recognize current danger from past lessons is not just due to ignorance of the historical facts. We are also blinded by our erroneous assumption that we are superior to our benighted ancestors.Although we may know how disease is spread, human psychology hasn’t changed, and, once again, history surprises by demonstrating that our ancestors weren’t all that benighted. They may have phrased their views differently, but many of their ideas sound contemporary. This is another principle I applied to the characters in my books. For those who think I’m being too modern, I point to Ecclesiastes who said that there is nothing new under the sun.
Attempting to gain clarity in a modern dilemma by applying the facts of a past era is like looking in a pond and not seeing a perfect image of ourselves. That is why I chose the period 1280-1300 (+) for my mysteries to demonstrate the problem. There are similarities between then and now, yet the match is not perfect. History is not an exact science, but its study generates questions and provides the tools for thoughtful analysis.
In the end, the value of history may be my passion, but the chief purpose of storytelling is to entertain, and I adhere to that in my mysteries. That said, as Homer, Shakespeare, and Ellis Peters might agree, it doesn’t hurt if you pick up something a little extra from the tale as well…
For any so inclined, there are fourteen books in my Prioress Eleanor/Brother Thomas medieval series, beginning with Wine of Violence and ending (at the moment) with Wild Justice. My website is www.priscillaroyal.com.
