Helen Hollick on Why I Love Arthur and Gwenhwyfar

We are very pleased to welcome Helen Hollick today as part of the blog tour to promote her book, Pendragon's Banner, the second book in the Pendragon's Banner trilogy.

Four reasons why I love the two main characters of my Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy –
Arthur and Gwenhwyfar by Helen Hollick

1. Arthur, my King Arthur, hero of my Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy, is not a Medieval knight in armour. He is not a chivalric king who puts his religious whims before duty to his Kingdom and people. Nor is he the sort of man who would say and do nothing if he caught his wife in bed with another man. I’m sorry to say, the familiar tales of that King Arthur do not interest me. Those stories may be romantic, conjuring idylls of courtly life and love and a duty to God above duty to duty… But that sort of tale, and that sort of man is not for me!

My Arthur is rough, tough and capable of being an utter b*****d! To be a warlord in the Dark Ages of British history, to fight hard to gain a kingdom and fight even harder to keep it, he would have to be. He puts the men of his elite cavalry above all else – why? Because without their loyalty he would be nothing. A good general always puts his men first.
Next in line is the love of his life, Gwenhwyfar.


2. I started writing what eventually became The Kingmaking after getting cross with Marion Zimmer Bradley’s portrayal of Gwenhwyfar (Guinevere). She was such a useless, whining bore! At one stage I threw the book across the room, shouting; “Oh pull yourself together woman!” The real Gwenhwyfar would never have been like that – at least I could not picture her as a timid, useless little mouse, squeaking because a boat was rocking about a bit. I saw her as brave, courageous and capable. She would carry a sword – and would know how to use it!
I saw her as feisty, as having a mind of her own – of knowing what she wanted and stopping at nothing until she got it.

Ms Bradley’s novel did me a favour though. I was so irritated I finally made up my mind to stop scribbling the reams of rubbish that were getting me nowhere as a writer, and started writing my novel.

And this time, I was going to finish it!

3. I deliberately set out to write something entirely different from the usual Arthurian tales. The Medieval stories are entirely made up, indeed it is not even certain that Arthur himself actually existed. Lancelot, Galahad, Gawain, the round table, Holy Grail – Camelot, and yes, even Merlin, are all made up characters invented to fit snugly in with the chivalric life of the 12th-13th Century Norman/Plantagenet Medieval Court. The quest for the Grail reflects the call to arms for the Crusades – early media manipulation.

The early stories of Arthur are nothing like this. There are a few familiar characters – Cei (Sir Kay) Bedwyr (Sir Bedevere) Morgause/Morgaine, Ectha (Sir Ector) and Uthr – Uther Pendragon, and Gwenhwyfar of course. There is also Ambrosius Aurelianus, Vortigern, Hengest, Horsa and an epic cast of other such characters from the distant pages of Post Roman British history.

The early Welsh stories of the 6th/7th century consist of battle lists, of battles fought and won against encroaching enemies - the Saxons. This Arthur is not chivalrous, in fact he was probably not even Christian. We hear of the Arthur who kicked a woman in the belly, who stole cattle from a monastery. Of his children, the sons of “Arthur the Soldier”; Llacheu, Gwydre and Amr. And Medraut who fell with Arthur at the last Battle of Camlann. Medraut is Mordred, but there is nothing in the early legends to suggest he was a traitor. All we know is that he died in the same battle as Arthur, so he could easily have been fighting on the same side.

My novels were to reflect the early legends. The tales that were told around hearth-fires on a long winters’ night, when old soldiers sat and remembered when they had fought alongside a man they had respected and loved.

It is the tales they told that I wanted to tell.

4. The relationship I portrayed between Arthur and Gwenhwyfar had to be very different from the Medieval stories. I could not – and would not - portray my Gwen as an adulteress who preferred the vain and arrogant man that is Lancelot (sorry, that is how I have always seen him.) over the man who was her hero, Lord and King - over Arthur.

I needed their relationship to be solid, one that would never, ever, be broken – yet one that lurched between the storms and hurricanes of arguments and fights. I had no intention of writing a romance, although their relationship was to be filled with romantic episodes; of a deep, unyielding love between the two of them. Their relationship was to be passionate. And deeply passionate people have huge swings of emotion. They love fiercely and fight as fierce.
Arthur is not physically loyal to Gwenhwyfar, he is a man who faces death nearly every day, who rides to battle knowing he may never come back. Sex is a need, a cathartic way of releasing the tension of bitter survival. To Arthur, sexual encounters mean nothing. It is Gwenhwyfar, and only Gwenhwyfar, he will ever love.

I have created my characters, Arthur and Gwenhwyfar, as real people. Things go wrong for them, there is soaring happiness and desperate tragedy in their lives. They misunderstand each other, sometimes intentionally, sometimes without realising it. But they would fight to the death for each other if necessary.

Arthur is driven by his need to rule a kingdom, Gwenhwyfar is driven by the need to be at her husband’s – her lover’s – side. The force that drives them, however – Life - is not always a kind mistress.

This is what a new reader recently sent me:

“Helen, you have written a book that has life in every page and so much texture that it takes you on a journey with each chapter. It is as if you are right there in the same room, tent, forest or dirt road as the characters. If you close your eyes for a second you can even smell the same smoke-filled air that they breath as they pass from one courtyard to another. The only way I can describe this to anyone who needs to know what to expect when they open this book is this:
‘the book is simply breathing in your hands.’”

To me, Arthur and Gwenhwyfar are not merely fictitious characters in a historical novel. They are real. They laugh and cry, they sing and shout. They bleed, they hurt, they are alive – they breathe life into my humble interpretation of the Arthurian legend.

And that is why I love them so much.



Main Website: http://www.helenhollick.com/
Blog profiles: http://acorne.blogspot.com/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/helen.hollick
Monthly Journal: www.helenhollick.net/journal.html
Follow Publicist Paul Samuelson @psamuelson01

http://www.helenhollick.net/culpa41.html
my own hints and tips for aspiring writers.

You may like to check out other stops on the Pendragon's Banner tour:

The Tome Travellers Weblog  (10/12)

A Reader’s Respite (10/12)

Carla Nayland’s Historical Fiction (10/13)

Enchanted by Josephine (10/14)

Fumbling with Fiction (10/14)

Found Not Lost (10/15)

Nan Hawthorne’s Booking the Middle Ages (10/15)

Jenny Loves to Read (10/16)

The Review From Here (10/17)

The Courtier’s Book (10/18)

Chick Loves Lit (10/19)

Love Romance Passion (10/20)

He Followed Me Home… Can I Keep Him? (10/20)

The Impasse Strikes Back (10/21)

S. Krishna’s Books (10/22)

Books Like Breathing (10/23)

Passages to the Past (10/24)

Virginie Says (10/25)

Readaholic (10/25)

Reading with Monie (10/26)

Rundpinne (10/26)

Books & Needlepoint (10/27)

Capricious Reader (10/27)

Books are my Only Friends (10/27)

A Sea of Books (10/28)

Bloody Bad (10/28)

Revenge of the Book Nerds! (10/28)

Booksie’s Blog (10/28)

Devourer of Books (10/29)

Peeking Between the Pages (10/29)

Starting Fresh (10/29)

Historical Tapestry (10/30)

Medieval Bookworm (10/30)

Book Soulmates (10/30)

Susan’s Art & Words (10/30)

Steven Till (10/31)

Café of Dreams (10/31)

Why I Love Arthurian Fiction

We are very pleased this week to bring you a new post in our Why I Love series, this time from debut author Anna Elliott. Anna's book, Twilight of Avalon: A Novel of Trystan and Isolde is released on 5 May.


In the Spring of 2007, I woke up from a very vivid dream of telling my mother that I was going to write a book about the daughter of Modred, son of Arthur and the great villain of the Arthurian cycle of tales. I'd been writing historical fiction and sending books around to agents and editors, always coming close to being published but never actually getting a book sold. I was four months pregnant with my first baby at the time, and had been starting to think that as much as I loved writing, maybe a professional career wasn't going to happen for me--or at least not for some time.

Something about this dream, though, just wouldn't let me go. I had been an English major in college with a focus on Medieval literature and history, and had fallen in love with the Arthurian world and the Arthur legends then. I started to do some preliminary research, reading books that explored the possibility of a real, historical Arthur--who if he existed at all would, scholars agreed, have been a 5th century British warlord, possibly one who made a victorious stand against the Saxon tribes invading Britain at the time--a far cry from the king of Camelot who's come down to us in the tales.

At the same time, though, I was reminded of why I'd fallen in love with the Arthur stories in the first place. The world of the legends is a recognizably historical one, part of our own past--and yet it's also a world that has the wonderful potential for magic and enchantment. So as I was reading, I started to build my own version of that world in my head--one that was a blending of legend and late 5th century British history, truth and tale.

In my dream, I'd known only that the main character of my book was going to be Modred's daughter. It was only when I was looking over name lists trying to decide on one for my heroine that the name "Isolde" leaped off the page at me and made me turn back to the story of Trystan and Isolde. The Trystan and Isolde legend is a later addition to the Arthurian cycle, very much grounded in a courtly, chivalric, 13th century world. And yet it, too, has its roots in earlier legends and traditions that still echo faintly in the story as it has come down to us today. I started to wonder what those earliest traditions might have been, what the story might have looked like at its first inception during the chaos and violence of Dark Age Britain, the "real" Arthurian age.

That was how the story started to frame itself in my mind as a trilogy: Twilight of Avalon, Dark Moon of Avalon, and Sunrise of Avalon. Three books that would weave together the scraps we knew of 5th century British history with the earliest versions of both the Arthurian and the Trystan and Isolde tales.

From the first, I'd known that my story was going to be a kind of sequel to the Arthur tales, a chance to explore what might have happened after the battle of Camlann, after Arthur was wounded and carried away to be healed on the mist shrouded Isle of Avalon. And that idea, too, held tremendous appeal for me, in that it gave me a chance to see a different side of the Arthurian story.

I think one of the most captivating, the most moving aspects of the Arthur stories is their ability to show us the highest potentials for human nobility, human honor and courage. And yet the story always ends in tragedy, with the battle of Camlann where Arthur falls, betrayed by all those he loved best.

His legend though, still lives, still gives us an ideal to strive for. That was the feeling that stayed with me in reading the original Arthur stories--and the feeling I wanted the characters in my trilogy to have, as well. The title of my book is Twilight of Avalon, because in many ways it's set at a turning point, the end of the age defined by Arthur the king. But I wanted my Trystan and Isolde to be able to hold onto the ideals of the Arthurian world, even if that world was forever gone. Because even in the wake of tragedy, life goes on--and there's always the possibility that someday those ideals will end in victory instead of defeat. For me, that was one of the joys of writing Twilight of Avalon: to know that this time, in my small corner of the great Arthurian tapestry, the story didn't have to end at Camlann.

Thank you so much for guest posting for us today Anna. You can find out more about Anna and her book on her website at www.annaelliottbooks.com

The Kingmaking by Helen Hollick

Ancient Legend Comes to Life

In 450 AD. the British are under the rule of Vortigern. He is a mean and cruel king. Uthr Pendragon was king before that but Vortigern took his kingdom from him and Urthr dies. It is believed that Urthr didn't have an legitimate male heir, but he did. When Arthur was born he was switched to protect t his real identity, the rightful heir the Pendragon thrown.

As a child, Arthur meets Gwenhwyfar and know that she is the one he will marry but as adults, there are obstacles in the way of their union.

When Arthur is old enough to become a warrior he gets his training in Vortigern's army. By then Vortigern knows his true identity be wants to keep his enemy close. Arthur brought some loyal friends with him who also served in the evil army. They learn the art or war together and vow to overthrow Vortigern eventually and make Arthur the rightful king.

Helen Hollick leaves out all the usual mystery and magic. There is no mention of Merlin and Lancelot, which in my opinion, makes her version more plausible than other versions of the story.

This book is over 550 pages but reads very fast. I had some late nights because I had trouble putting this book down and when I did, I couldn't stop thinking of it! Hollick's writing is smooth and beautiful. She seamlessly transports her readers back to the Dark Ages.

This is book one of a trilogy. I don't usually finish trilogies due to the time commitment. There are so many books out there that I want to read and not enough time. However, I plan to read this complete trilogy. I can hardly wait to read what happens next!

4.5/5

The Crystal Cave – Mary Stewart

The Dramatic First novel in the classic Merlin Trilogy
A thrilling Adventure through the mystical age of King Arthur

Fifth Century Britain is a country of chaos and division after Roman withdrawal. This is the world of young Merlin, the illegitimate child of a South Wales Princess who will not reveal to her son his father’s true Identity.

Yet Merlin is an extraordinary child, aware at the earliest age that he possesses a great natural gift – the Sight. Against a background of invasion and imprisonment, wars and conquest, Merlin emerges into manhood and accepts his dramatic role in the new Beginning – the coming of King Arthur.

This story follows a young Merlin who at the age of six meets his uncle for the first time. Little did know that his uncle would change his life forever in the most unexpected way. Merlin is a solitude child he doesn’t play with the other kid not only is he weaker but he is also a bastard child so of course the other children pick on him. When Merlin is out one day he discovers a cave, which will one day become his home. There he meets a very good friend and advisor in Galapas. He is an old man who has been waiting for Merlin to arrive so he can teach him all he knows. Once Merlin grandfather dies and his mother enters a convent he realise he is now danger and he runs away. This is where the story really takes off but I can’t say to much as it will give away the many twist and turns. Merlin is a very gifted and smart child but never comes across as cocky if anything Merlin is a very modest character and if I was to plan a fantasy dinner he would be on top of my list of people to invite.

Needless to say I really enjoyed this book and I really hope that anyone that reads it enjoys it as much as I did.

This book is part of a 4 book series with The Hollow Hills next in the series. I will be reading and reviewing that book shortly.