The Sunne in Splendour: A Novel of Richard III (146 page)

the mother. Margaret refused to submit tamely, saying she was not guilty of treason and would not lay her head meekly on a traitor's block. She had to be dragged to the block by force, was beheaded in May
1541; she was not quite sixty-eight. She was later beatified as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.
Richard's daughter Kathryn seems to have died before November 1487. His son Johnny was later arrested by Tudor and put to death within the Tower. "There was a base son of King Richard the Third made away, having beene kept long before in prison. The occasion, as it seemeth, was the attempt of certain Irishmen of the west and south parts, who would have got him into their power and made him their cheife, being strongly affected to any of the House of York were they legitimate or naturall."
Edward, Earl of Warwick, George's tragic son, was held in the Tower from 1485 until 1499, at which time Tudor had him beheaded He was twenty-four.

Author's Note
WHILE imagination is the heart of any novel, historical fiction needs a strong factual foundation, especially a novel revolving around a man as controversial as Richard III. Therefore, I tried to be as accurate as possible, not placing a scene at Windsor unless my characters were known to be at Windsor on that day, making sure that a Wednesday actually was a Wednesday, that details of medieval life were corroborated by more than one source. I sought first to draw upon those facts not in dispute, to rely upon contemporary chroniclers wherever I could, and when dealing with conflicting accounts, to choose the one most in accord with what we know of the people involved.
It's never easy to piece together the past. That's even more true when history was rewritten by the victor.
In attempting to distinguish between Tudor "tradition" and the truth, I gave greatest weight to those chronicles written during Richard's lifetime or immediately thereafter, relying as little as possible upon purely Tudor sources, for obvious reasons.
I don't mean to imply, however, that all Tudor historians were paid "hacks," deliberately falsifying the facts to please their Tudor patrons. It is true that those chroniclers writing in the early years of Henry
Tudor's reign must have known when they crossed over into the realm of creative fiction, as when
Tudor's official historian, Polydore Vergil, flatly denied that Richard ever alleged his nephews to be illegitimate, contending that Richard based his claim to the crown upon his brother Edward's illegitimacy.
This was, of course, an out-and-out lie. So, too, was Sir Thomas More's contention that Richard claimed the plight-troth was with Eliza-

beth Lucy, one of Edward's more publicized mistresses. More then proceeded to prove Elizabeth Lucy was never plight-trothed to Edward; of course no one except More had ever said she was. But as time faded memories of Richard's reign, subsequent historians had only these biased accounts to draw upon, and such chroniclers as Hall and Holinshed, the major sources for Shakespeare's play, knew no more than what they culled from the Vergils and the Mores.
Complicating matters, historians of the Middle Ages shared one singular trait, a tendency to embellish and to exaggerate. Nowhere is their penchant for embroidering the truth better illustrated than in the development of the myth of Richard's deformity, which, to be fully understood, must be considered in light of medieval ignorance and superstition, their belief in deformity as the outward manifestation of inner evil, as physical proof of moral depravity. None of the chroniclers contemporary with Richard-the
Croyland Chronicle, the "Arrivall," Warkworth, Mancini-make mention of a deformity. Nor does
Philippe de Commynes, who knew Richard personally. And a physical description of Richard, given by a
German nobleman who met him in 1484, does not speak of any deformity. The first seeds were not sown until after Richard's death; it was John Rous who contended that Richard's right shoulder was higher than the left. (But then, he also claimed that Richard was two years in his mother's womb.) The next major contribution to the myth came from Thomas More. He mentioned the unequal shoulders, but he reversed
Rous and made the left shoulder the higher; he also gave Richard a withered arm, which would have been a remarkable handicap for Richard to overcome, given his proven prowess on the battlefield. Hall picked up the refrain in 1548, declaring that Richard was "of body greatly deformed." And Shakespeare rounded out the myth by providing his Richard with a hunchback, a withered arm, and a limp.
I once came upon a definition of history as "the process by which complex truths are transformed into simplified falsehoods." That is particularly true in the case of Richard III, where the normal medieval proclivity for moralizing and partisanship was further complicated by deliberate distortion to serve Tudor political needs. In researching this book, I had to bear in mind the individual bias of each writer, bias that could strengthen as well as diminish a chronicler's credibility; for example, the fact that a Lancastrian historian reported that Edouard of Lancaster died on the field at Tewkesbury is more persuasive than the fact that a Yorkist chronicler commissioned by Edward said likewise.
In writing of people five hundred years dead, I had to exercise a certain amount of imagination. But I did not knowingly tamper with basic truths, though I occasionally had to stray from the facts. For example, my confrontation scene between Edward and Warwick in Chapter 10 of Book I is set at Middleham, whereas Edward had actually been moved from

Middleham to Pontefract Castle sometime in September; here I can only plead dramatic license. And from time to time, I needed to "fill in the blanks." Medieval historians could be thoroughly indifferent to the needs of twentieth-century novelists, not bothering to note where Elizabeth Woodville lived after departing sanctuary, or not thinking to jot down the precise date of birth for Richard and Anne's son.
When confronted with these "sins of omission," I had to come up with the answers they'd neglected to provide.
I took the liberty of creating only one fictional character of importance, Veronique de Crecy. Richard did find Anne disguised as a serving maid and conveyed her to sanctuary at St Martin le Grand. But we know nothing of the details of her disappearance, and I conjured up the Brownells to fill this void. With these exceptions, all other major characters in the book actually lived. So, too, did the various abbots, sheriffs, mayors, servants, et cetera, named in the novel.
Wherever possible, I tried to portray my characters in accordance with their historical counterparts. This was relatively easy for Richard, Edward, and so forth. But other characters, especially women, were not
"captured" by any medieval pen; we know nothing about them beyond the stark outline of their lives, and
I had to rely upon my imagination to give them dimension. With the women who bore Richard's two illegitimate children, Kathryn and Johnny, I had to fill in virtually all the blanks; nothing whatsoever is known of these women, not even their names.
One disadvantage in writing of people who really existed is that the blueprints of their lives are already laid out. As a result, I occasionally found it necessary to "interpret" behavior that only a man or woman long since dead could properly explain; e.g., why Edward tolerated George's tantrums and treacheries and allowed George to block Richard and Anne's marriage plans. And, now and then, I had to deal with an occurrence so unlikely as to transcend fiction. What novelist would dare invent an eclipse of the sun on the day of Anne's death? And yet it happened, and was, to Londoners, divine proof that Richard had sinned in taking the crown.
As to the central mystery of Richard's life, the fate of his brother's sons, we do not know what became of the boys. Tudor historians contended that they were murdered at Richard's command. A prominent
Victorian historian made a deceptively persuasive case for Henry Tudor's guilt. And there have always been those who saw that the Duke of Buckingham was the most logical and likely suspect, that if Richard had opportunity but no motive and Tudor had motive but no opportunity, Buckingham had both. My case against Buckingham is founded upon fact, but there is no evidence that would stand up .today in a court of law; we cannot even conclusively prove that the boys were murdered. Lacking hard "legal"
evidence, we can only fall back upon circumstance and com

mon sense. To me, the most convincing evidence that the boys died in Richard's reign is that no one seems to have seen them alive after 1483. And while Buckingham's guilt can never be proven, so many of the puzzle pieces fall into place if we assume the crime to be his. Lastly, no one has ever been able to explain why, if Richard were guilty, that he would have chosen to commit the murders so as to do himself the greatest possible harm. Nor has it ever been explained why Elizabeth would then have been willing to give her daughters over to the man responsible for her sons' deaths, why Thomas Grey would gamble his life on Richard's word, or why Henry Tudor, who did all he could to discredit Richard's memory, refrained from making the most damning accusation, never formally charged Richard with the murder of his nephews. These are questions historians have rarely bothered to address. And yet they go to the heart of the matter . . . and the mystery.

He was the last-born son of the Duke of York. He would become the last Plantagenet King of England.
He is perhaps the most controversial monarch ever to rule that island nation. Certainly the most vilified.
He was Richard III.
The Sunne in Splendour reverberates with the sound of truth as it re-creates the life of this most complex and compelling man. Born into an England awash with intrigue and war, Richard was eight when his father was ambushed and slain, eighteen when he first blooded himself in combat. His times were torn by shifting alliances that made treachery and danger a part of daily life. Yet through it all, Richard remained firm in his abiding devotion to those he loved. It was his strength. And his undoing.
Caught in that vicious power struggle history has called The Wars of the Roses, Richard was raised in the shadow of his resplendent brother Edward. At nineteen and against all odds, Edward defeated the
Lancastrian forces and claimed the throne for York. Headstrong, charming, and regally handsome, Edward was as famous for his sensual appetites as for his unfailing preference for the expedient over the correct. Despairing of his brother's follies, Richard nonetheless served him faithfully: through battle and exile, in war and in peace, despite the scandal of Edward's Court and of his Queen. And he was rewarded with lands, and titles.