Free Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors by English Historical Fiction Authors

save his illegitimate sister. The only survivor was a butcher.
    William’s sister Matilda was, at the time, living as Empress Consort of the Holy Roman Empire in Germany.
    King Henry is said to have never smiled again, and he was now faced with the need to choose a new heir to the throne. His nephew Stephen had no Saxon blood, something that had been important to Henry for his heir, and so he chose instead his daughter Matilda, a descendant of Alfred. We’ll see how well that went in the next post of the series!
    Sources
    Buskin, Richard. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to British Royalty . Alpha Books, 1997.
    Monarchy with David Starkey . Directed by David Hutt and Mary Cranitch. 2006. Acorn Media. DVD.
    Ross, Josephine. The Monarchy of Britain . William Morrow & Co., 1982.
    The Mysterious Death of KingWilliam the Second
    by Judith Arnopp
    T he New Forest is a timeless place, with many areas remaining unchanged since medieval times. If you venture away from the tourist spots you will find ancient woodlands, rusty-coloured streams, and vast areas of heath that seem to belong to another era.
    As a child, I spent so much time in the New Forest that it became like a second home. Even now, forty-odd years later, the aroma of heather, the tang of the pine, the vague hint of the salty Solent evoke those wonderful days.
    The tales of William Rufus and the “Rufus Stone” were familiar, repeated over and over until they became part of my psyche. I could easily imagine him riding out to hunt with the hounds baying and the pennants casting an unnatural splash of colour on the woodland.
    A few years ago when I was looking around for ideas for my next novel, the name William Rufus seemed to jump from nowhere into my head, and I quickly determined that the New Forest would provide an ideal setting for my story, a story that was already embedded in the British consciousness—the mystery surrounding the death of William Rufus.
    The early Norman period is very much neglected in fiction. Perhaps the events were too long ago for to us to properly engage with, or maybe publishers are just not prepared to take the risk of straying too far from their beloved Tudors.
    As a lover of early British history, I think there is a place for fiction set earlier in the calendar and so I went ahead regardless. The Forest Dwellers is not just the story of Rufus, but the early Norman regime and the mysterious deaths of the Conqueror’s sons form the backdrop to the fiction of Ælf and Alys.
    The Domesday Book tells us that in 1065, before the invasion, the villages cleared for the main part of the forest consisted of an estimated five hundred families, possibly two thousand men, women, and children. This estimate does not allow for slaves, personal retainers, or men working under villains; it only represents the landowners or occupiers. It is not a huge number when compared with devastation caused elsewhere by the conquering Normans but enough, I think, to generate a considerable amount of resentment.
    The defeated Saxon population of England did not welcome the Normans; all over Britain there are accounts of uprisings and dissent. There were Saxons who fought and lost, those who retired into obscurity to die in poverty and want, and there were those that collaborated, pretended to accept Norman authority.
    In the forest, new rules meant that making a living was impossible—punishment was harsh and frequent, but life went on. People lived and died in oppression while memories of the old way of life slowly faded. The thing that remained unchanged was hatred and resentment for the Norman interloper.
    Like the Saxon kings before them, the Normans were lovers of the hunt, but whereas Harold and his predecessors were content to share the forest with the commoners, the Normans were less tolerant.
    King William I had four sons: Robert (known as Curthose, later to become Duke of Normandy); Richard, who died young; William (known as Rufus, his father’s successor