Queenbreaker: Perseverance (The Queenbreaker Trilogy Book 1) (51 page)

Acknowledgements

I
would like to thank the following for their kindness, help, and inspiration:

Charlotte
Gullick in whose classroom this novel began six years ago. Rebecca Johns
Trissler for the one-hour master class on plot she delivered over lunch at the
pub. Liz Garton Scanlon for believing in the work. Sarah Gristwood for her
generous encouragement and feedback.
The Abroad Writer’s
Conference for a grand experience at Hever Castle.
Paul Harding for a
fantastic workshop.
The Writer’s League of Texas.
The
YA genre group at Pine Manor College, especially Alice, Cathy, Joyce, and David
Yoo. The Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London who took the time to answer my
long-winded questions on a very cold day. Catherine Knepper for her fantastic
manuscript evaluation.
My temporary writing group in Austin,
Texas for your feedback and the food.
Lori Ella Miller and Erica
Eickhoff for all of your love and support.

And,
to Mary Shelton, thank you for guiding me to write this story.

AUTHOR’S
NOTE

I didn’t want to
write another novel with Anne Boleyn as the protagonist. I have much more fun
reading them. So I am beyond grateful that Mary Shelton showed up on my first
day of creative writing class.

Though this is a
work of fiction, I wanted to maintain and honor historical fact as much as
possible. I have, however, taken some liberties when and where it seemed to
best serve the dramatic purposes of the story.

The most notable
choice I made—and what some may find controversial—was giving Anne
Boleyn a birthdate of 1507. The majority academic opinion is that Anne was
probably born in or around 1501. I used the later date as it serves my
characterization of Anne. I see her as youthful, flirtatious
;
very much the physical and behavioural opposite to her predecessor, Katherine
of Aragon. I think those dramatic differences hooked the middle-aged King Henry
(and he repeated the pattern when he pursued the teenaged Katherine Howard).

Since Anne and
George Boleyn’s birthdates are unknown, I have chosen to make them twins to
emphasize and explain their especial closeness. They spent many years being
raised apart—Anne on the continent, first at the court of the Regent
Margaret of the Netherlands then the French court—George in England.

It is not known
when Mary Shelton joined Anne’s royal household. I have set her arrival at the
beginning of Anne’s reign in order to show her coming of age in the same
hothouse atmosphere Anne experienced.

How the
friendship between Mary Shelton, Mary Howard and Margaret Douglas came about is
unknown. Everything I’ve described is purely fictional. But the fact of their
friendship is true.

There is some
historical confusion regarding the name Madge Shelton. I have attached it to
Mary’s sister-in-law Margaret Shelton (ne
é
Parker) for reasons that will be revealed in the next book.

The Duchess of
Norfolk, Mary Howard’s mother, was rusticated by her husband in 1534 and not
before the story begins.

Shelton House in
London is entirely fictional.

The composer of
Greensleeves is unknown. It was most likely composed during the Elizabethan
period, not the Henrician. It was long assumed that King Henry VIII was its
author, so I have maintained the tradition.

I have made Lord
John de Vere the author of some very famous lines. There is a theory (largely
dismissed by academics) that the true identity of William Shakespeare was the 17
^th
Earl of Oxford, John’s son. The theory is depicted in the movie
Anonymous
.

The quarrel
between Queen Anne and the Duke of Norfolk where he called her a whore (though
probably not to her face) actually occurred in 1534.

I owe an
enormous debt to the historians, authors, and filmmakers who provided the
endless fodder for my imagination.

My favorite
fictional depiction of Anne Boleyn—written or filmed—is
Anne of the Thousand Days
. Genevi
éve Bujold’s
performance is the benchmark against which all others are judged and rightly
so.

Of the many
non-fiction works I consumed, Alison Weir’s Six Wives of Henry VIII and The
Lady in the Tower were special favorites. Both The Life and Death of Anne
Boleyn by Eric Ives and The Royal Palaces of Tudor England by Simon Thurley
were indispensable to my understanding of the workings of the Tudor court.

All historical
and grammatical errors are mine, and I hope they will be forgiven if the story
has in some small way entertained you, the reader.