Ellen Alpsten: From Myth to Modernity
An invisible contract links an author and a reader, as both devote time to a novel. Time, which is our most valuable resource today. But how to fulfil this duty to deliver in my novels of Historical Fiction? I write about history’s hidden heroines: to be relevant, my leading ladies follow a modern idea, even when their story leads us a thousand years back. This is the Leitmotif of my new novel The Last Princess. The last princess is Gytha Godwinson, the daughter of England’s last Anglo-Saxon King, Harold II and also the true House of Dragons – and from the ashes of her father’s cursed kingdom she makes a new empire emerge. An Empire, which holds the worlds in its grips until today: Gytha’s bloodline survives – King Charles is her descendant – and her story is so much more than a ‘feminist retelling’ of the tumultuous events of 1066. It leads us from the candle-lit great Anglo-Saxon Hall of Modranecht, to a muddy field on Senlac Hill near Hastings, and on towards the vast, and perilous unknown. The planned trilogy spans a huge arch across Europe of the High Middle Ages. In a time when women were perceived as cupbearer, peace-weaver, and memory-keeper, she writes world history. Sounds irresistible, right?
Even for the most ambitious author, travelling a Millennium in time is an enormous challenge. But then, who does not like a challenge? The harder the conquest, the deeper the passion. It also gives you great liberty, even if rule number one of writing is stringent research before you pick up the pen; research about an era that I qualify as medieval mindfulness. The Anglo-Saxons treaded lightly on this earth and lived in harmony with its seasons. Also, men, and their battles are well-documented, the women crowd the shadows, faceless, nameless. Yet I want to breathe and feel my gorgeous new girl! Gytha’s times were an era of intense change all over Europe: prepare yourself for a wild ride as she is swept up in another, entirely different but just as lethal conflict. When the ancient faith battles Christianity, The Last Princess is stringent historical fiction that teems with Welsh, green-faced fairy folk, trolls and tomte, giants, Norse sorceresses, handsome hunks and an evil spell, which keeps our beautiful, flame-haired Princess captive – and it’s all true.
Wait, what?
By autumn 1066, Christianity had reached most corners of the European world. Historically, more evidence of women, and how they interacted with the world around them beginning in the High Middle Ages, both religious and secular, emerges. Yet it also triggered a type of repression in which celibacy distinguishes clerics from laypeople, and where women’s bodies are in turn viewed as polluting. At the same time, however, Christianity enabled female spiritual growth, and while the Fourth Lateran Council solidified the need for consent within marriage, Thomas Aquinas still dictates women ‘a conjugal debt’ which they owe to their husbands.
Gytha moves in this field of tension, where ancient rites clash with strict Christian morals. Up to the moment when her father becomes King Harold II of England – and even for the short months of his reign – her life seems predictable and ‘normal’ for an Anglo-Saxon aristocratic young woman. I try to show this on the novel’s first pages, when an ungodly apparition haunts the skies of the realm: a gleaming star, whose evil curse threatens to bring great change. Gytha marvels at it in fascinated horror and admits: ‘I do not know what it is. I wish I had paid more attention to Grandmother’s lessons; lessons aimed at preparing me for either marriage or the monastery, whichever serves my family, and thus England, better.’ Marriage or a monastery: but a war, or a huge battle that decides the fate of an entire nation, are always the harbinger of change in a country, and for women, too. After autumn 1066, Gytha’s life has different plans for her – or does she have different plans for her life? She dares the unthinkable and hurtles forward into her fabulous fate. If her choice changes to ‘fight or flight’, she picks both: Gytha lives trial, terror and finally triumph – a subject which I explore in the series’ second book, The Sunrise Queen.
Prepare to be surprised! Why, is that part of our invisible contract, too? Deal.
The Last Princess is published in hardback on 7 November 2024
Ellen Alpsten was born and raised in the Kenyan Highlands and holds a MSc from the IEP de Paris. She worked as a News-Anchor for Bloomberg TV London before writing fulltime. Her debut novel Tsarina and its sequel The Tsarina’s Daughter (both Bloomsbury Publishing) are widely translated and were shortlisted for numerous awards.
