Legend says Guinevere spent her final days in penance in a convent, but that is far from the truth.
Having escaped death at the stake, Guinevere longs to live a peaceful life in Brittany with Lancelot, but the threat of Arthur’s wrath quickly separates the lovers. Guinevere finds herself back in Camelot, but it is not the peaceful capital she once knew; the loyalty of the people is divided over Arthur’s role in her death sentence. When war draws Arthur away from Britain, Mordred is named acting king. With Morgan at his side and a Saxon in his bed, Mordred’s thirst for power becomes his undoing and the cause of Guinevere’s greatest heartache.
In the wake of the deadly battle that leaves the country in civil war, Guinevere’s power as the former queen is sought by everyone who seeks to ascend the throne. Heartbroken and refusing to take sides in the conflict, she flees north to her mother’s Votadini homeland, where she is at long last reunited with Lancelot. The quiet life she desires is just beginning when warring tribal factions once again thrust her into an unexpected position of power. Now charged with ending an invasion that could bring an end to the Votadini tribe and put the whole island in the hands of the Saxons, Guinevere must draw upon decades of experience to try to save the people she loves and is sworn to protect.
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Researching a Strong Woman in Dark Ages Britain
by Nicole Evelina
Researching women in any historical time can be a complex venture because history is mainly written by the dominant, which have been almost exclusively male. This means we are missing the female perspective as well as seeing events and people through eyes that were often prejudiced.
But when you’re talking about a time period like the Dark Ages, about which so little is known to begin with, researching women becomes even more difficult. Given the dearth of facts, one must rely upon literature, myth, accounts written by the leaders of other cultures (which are usually biased because they are seeing it in comparison with their own), and archaeology. And as the 2017 discovery that a famous Viking warrior was female, not male as had been assumed since the 1880s, shows even archaeology can have an anti-female bias.
Despite this, I was very lucky when I decided to place my Guinevere in the period when most scholars believe a historical King Arthur (if such a man existed) would have lived – Dark Ages Britain, specifically between 450-550 CE. The Celts were known for their strong women, a tradition that could have continued into the post-Roman period, as it is thought that after the Romans abandoned Britain around 400 CE, their former tribal system re-asserted itself. This may have meant that women’s high status either remained or was returned to them, depending on how deep the Roman influence had been felt in a given location. (Roman women were not generally highly regarded.)
No written record of the laws of Britain exists for this period. But many experts assume their laws were similar to the Brehon Laws of Ireland and those of early medieval Wales, which means these women would have had many rights compared to their Roman and Greek counterparts. For example:
- Women had the right to choose their husbands and could not be forced to marry.
- Both men and women could file for divorce. In fact, a woman could get a divorce for fourteen different reasons, including her husband's failure to provide for her or her family due to unemployment, mental, or physical illness or entry into a monastery; emotional or physical abuse; impotency, sterility, bisexuality, or homosexuality – whereas a man only had five legal grounds for divorce.
- In areas where polygamy was practiced a chief wife had rights to her husband's estate and did not have to provide for other wives at all. If her husband took another wife, she could legally murder the second wife within the first three days of marriage. She would still have to pay a fine, but other than that she was within her rights.
- A daughter was entitled to a share of personal property, but she could not bequeath it to her heirs because it reverted to her paternal family at her death.
- Women could become warriors, which was the noble ruling class of the Celts, second only to the Druids in power.
- In areas where a chief was not elected by the tribe, power often passed matrilineally, that is, through the female line. That means a leader’s nephew (the son of his sister) was often in a better place to inherit than his own son. (Hence Mordred being identified as either Arthur’s son or nephew, depending if Morgan is his sister.)
Because of this, I was able to plausibly create a historically accurate Guinevere who was Arthur’s equal rather than someone who lived in his shadow. All of the points above (plus a few others we don’t have space here to delve into) helped shape the story of Guinevere, including her schooling in law in Avalon, her relationships with Morgan and Arthur, her family, her talents, and her personality. She is the daughter of a Celt (her mother was a member of the Votadini tribe in what is today southern Scotland) and raised as such, frequently comes into conflict with Arthur’s Roman way of thinking.
If you are interested in Celtic law (which is much more complex than I have portrayed here), I recommend Women in Celtic Law and Culture by Jack George Thompson and The Brehon Laws: A Legal Handbook by Laurence Ginnell.
Her writing has appeared in The Huffington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Independent Journal, Curve Magazine, and numerous historical publications. She is one of only six authors who completed a week-long writing intensive taught by #1 New York Times bestselling author Deborah Harkness.
Nicole is currently researching two future nonfiction books. She also teaches online writing and business classes for authors at Professional Author Academy.
Her website/blog is http://nicoleevelina.com and she can be found on Twitter as well as on Pinterest, Facebook, Goodreads, Instagram and Tumblr.
Mistress of Legend is on a blog tour!
A box set containing Daughter of Destiny, Camelot’s Queen, and Mistress of Legend
Guinevere is remembered for her role as King Arthur’s wife and for her adulterous affair with Lancelot. But there is so much more to her story…
Priestess. Queen. Warrior. Experience the world of King Arthur through Guinevere’s eyes as she matures from a young priestess who never dreamed of becoming queen to the stalwart defender of a nation and a mistress whose sin would go down in history. Throughout it all, Guinevere she faces threats from both foreign powers and within her own court that lead her to place her very life on the line to protect the dream of Camelot and save her people.
This compendium of Nicole Evelina’s two-time Book of the Year award-winning trilogy – Daughter of Destiny, Camelot’s Queen, and Mistress of Legend – gives fresh life to an age-old tale by adding historical context and emotional depth. Spanning more than three decades, it presents Guinevere as an equal to the famous men she is remembered for loving, while providing context for her controversial decisions and visiting little-known aspects of her life before and after her marriage to King Arthur.
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GIVEAWAY!
During the Blog Tour we will be giving away a boxed set of The Guinevere’s Tale Trilogy in paperback (US only) and one set in eBook (international)! To enter, please see the Gleam form below.
Giveaway Rules:
During the Blog Tour we will be giving away a boxed set of The Guinevere’s Tale Trilogy in paperback (US only) and one set in eBook (international)! To enter, please see the Gleam form below.
Giveaway Rules:
– Giveaway ends at 11:59pm EST on January 3rd. You must be 18 or older to enter.
– PB Giveaway is open to US residents only & eBook Giveaway is open internationally.
– Only one entry per household.
– All giveaway entrants agree to be honest and not cheat the systems; any suspect of fraud is decided upon by blog/site owner and the sponsor, and entrants may be disqualified at our discretion.
– Winner has 48 hours to claim prize or new winner is chosen.
Mistress of Legend
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