Why the Middle Ages fascinate me

I'm Lindsay Townsend and I write historical romances set in the ancient world and the Middle Ages, especially the Middle Ages. Why then?

The Middle Ages covers a huge period of time in the western world, from AD 300 - the rise of the Roman emperor Constantine and the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire - until the 14th century. This gives lots of scope.

It was a time when religion played a crucial part in people’s lives. The clash of the spiritual and practical was very real. That clash is shown most clearly in the history of the Crusades, when men, women and even children left their homes to travel to the Near East to ‘win’ the holy city of Jerusalem. The motives of such people were mixed and varied, so that mix of emotions - the profound, the greedy, the opportunistic, the generous - fascinate me as a writer. I touch upon the impact that the Crusades and contact with the Arab world had on men and women in ‘A Knight’s Vow’.

The Middle Ages was a time very different to our own, with different beliefs: a pig could be put on trial for witchcraft, a man would be made to prove his innocence by clasping a red-hot iron bar, a woman would be told by the church that she was inferior to her husband and yet still be expected to defend his castle. Alchemy and chemistry were one and the same. The contrast in ideas between then and now fascinate me and I like to show them at work in my romances. In ‘A Knight’s Enchantment’ I have a woman alchemist and she uses her skills to help the hero save his brother.

This was the age of Eleanor of Aquitaine's court of love, of Geoffroi de Charny’s ‘A Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry’ - a how-to book for knights - and Christine de Pizan’s ‘City of Ladies’ - a defense by a woman writer of her own sex. It was a time of the Viking sagas, of troubadours and the chronicles, of many rich and varied sources of information. It was a time of jousts and tournaments, where ladies gave favours and knights vied for honour - jousts I describe in my ‘A Knight’s Enchantment’ and ‘To Touch The Knight’.

But the Black Death came, too, a plague - or series of plagues - that killed almost a third of Europe. The  survivors were traumatized but also had new chances to prosper, something I explore in ‘To Touch The Knight’.

The Middle Ages had many decisive battles that changed the course of history - Hastings, Agincourt, Poitiers, Crécy amongst them. I explore the changes the Battle of Hastings made in my ‘A Knight’s Captive’.

I write romances in which the history serves the hero and heroine and the impact of that history is shown through their lives. The Middle Ages gives me a wonderful backdrop for adventure, high stakes, courtly knights and beastly ones, generous ladies and cruel damsels, peril, good and horrible manners and amazing costumes.

I love the Middle Ages.

'A Knight's Enchantment' published today!

My historical romance, A Knight's Enchantment, is released today by Kensington Zebra. This is my third knight novel, the other two being A Knight's Vow and A Knight's Captive. They take place in different time periods and different places, but all have knights as their heroes.

For me the appeal of a knight isn't his shining armour or his wealth. It isn't even the knightly code which he would be supposed to follow: too often in the middle ages, such ideas of courtesy and honour applied only to the nobility and no one else. But a knight as a protector - now that appeals.

My heroines, too, are great rescuers. In A Knight's Enchantment, Joanna is striving to free her father from captivity and throughout the novel she 'rescues' the hero Hugh, prompting him to reconsider many part of his life and his relations with his family.

Their early encounters are fraught, as neither is sure they can trust the other and Hugh especially makes wrong-headed assumptions about Joanna. He has his own powerful reasons for seizing her, but his self-justifications are flawed. Later he realises and admits this and they join forces.

You can find more details, the 4-star Romantic Times review and an excerpt here.

Lindsay

Prisoners in the castle: dungeons and oubliettes

Medieval castles and dungeons tend to go together in people's imaginations and I have set important scenes in A Knight's Enchantment in a dungeon, where the heroine Joanna's father is being held. What we imagine as a typical dungeon, however - dark, underground, no windows, lots of chains - was less common in the Middle Ages than is assumed.

Take the word 'dungeon'. Its earliest form, donjon, meant a keep or tower, a strong defensive position. Over time that tower has been taken to mean a prison, often
underground in a castle. This form of prison was in fact an oubliette (meaning 'forgotten place') and was far darker and more grim than a dungeon, as can be seen in the photo of the oubliette in the castle at Warwick.

Famous dungeons include the Tower of London and those at Pontefract Castle and Alnwick Castle, though true dungeons in castles were not usual until later in the Middle Ages.

Often noble prisoners, captured and held for ransom in the dungeon, would be kept in a secure, comfortable place within the host's castle: certainly the room would be well-guarded, but we should not picture a Richard the Lionheart or Charles of Orleans languishing in the rat-infested, damp stone cell of imagination. Life expectancy in an oubliette would be short, and bad for the ransom business. 'Common' prisoners might be kept in gate houses, while those considered undesirable and disposable but not to be actually murdered could end up down with the rats in the oubliette.