Robin Maxwell talks about Writing About Love in History

Before Juliet Capelletti lie two futures:  a traditionally loveless marriage to her father’s business partner, or the fulfillment of her poetic dreams, inpired by the great Dante.  Unlike her beloved friend Lucrezia, who looks forward to her arranged marriage into the Medici dynasty, Juliet has a wild, romantic imagination that takes flight in the privacy of her bedchamber and on her garden balcony.

Her life and destiny are forever changed when Juliet meets Romeo Monticecco, a soulful young man seeking peace between their warring families.  A dreamer himself, Romeo is unstoppable, once he determines to capture the heart of the remarkable woman foretold in his stars.

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It recently occurred to me that my eighth and latest novel, O, JULIET, is the first in which love is the exclusive theme.  But in thinking back to my other titles, I realize that I’ve never written a book in which romantic love was not either a vital element or at least an important minor theme.

My first novel, the one that kicked off my career as an author, was all about a love affair (albeit the most dysfunctional one in history — that of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII).  In SECRET DIARY OF ANNE BOLEYN, with the character of Anne, I established the dominant characteristic of my heroines — a well-educated woman, ahead of her time, who defies convention and strict mores in wishing to (and attempting to) marry for love.  In Anne’s life — before the older man, King Henry — began relentlessly pursuing her affections, she was passionately in love with a noble boy her own age, Henry Percy.  Knowing it was a huge no-no, they nevertheless pledged their love to each other.  Some accounts say they consummated that love (I tell the beginnings of that fateful story in my sixth book, MADEMOISELLE BOLEYN).  King Henry decided he was going to have Anne, come hell or highwater, and the chase was on.  Henry Percy was sent away and forced to marry someone else (whom he hated) and Anne was sucked into a romance that was to be as historically significant as it was bloody.  It’s my personal opinion that if Anne was ever truly in love with Henry VIII, it was for a very brief moment in time.  But that relationship produced both the Protestant Reformation in England and a daughter who was to become the greatest ruler of the millennium — Elizabeth I.   In SECRET DIARY, while Elizabeth is reading her mother’s diary, the newly crowned Queen of England is grappling with her counsellors’ demands that she marry a foreign prince for dynastic reasons.  Meanwhile, the not-so-virginal 25-year-old is carrying on a torrid affair with her childhood friend and already-married horsemaster.

The next books of what I call my “Elizabethan Quartet” (VIRGIN, THE QUEEN’S BASTARD, THE WILD IRISH), Elizabeth continues to battle with the “duty vs. desire” issue.  In VIRGIN, the nubile thirteen year-old is obsessively in love with her sociopathic step-father, Thomas Seymour, who is taking sexual advantage of the situation, in one of the most scandalous episodes in Tudor history. In THE QUEEN’S BASTARD, after giving birth to Robin Dudley’s illegitimate child, Elizabeth continues trying to find a way (against all odds and to the terrific frustration of her council) to marry the man she loves the most in the world.

There are two love stories in THE WILD IRISH.  The first is Elizabeth’s May/December relationship with the MUCH younger and gorgeous Earl of Essex.  The main heroine in this book, however, is the fabulous Irish pirate and rebel, Grace O’ Malley.  Though love is not the guiding force of Grace’s life, and she married twice for political reasons, she did have a grand passion — a Nordic seaman who was literally washed up half-dead on her shores after a shipwreck, and whom she nursed back to health.  Though after only a year it came to a tragic end, it became an important part of the legend of Grace O’Malley.

TO THE TOWER BORN, of all my novels, had the least to do with love, and what there was of it played second fiddle to the great historical mystery of the young York Princes who disappeared from the Tower of London in the reign of Richard III.  Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but of all my books, TO THE TOWER BORN was the least successful.

SIGNORA DA VINCI’s romantic story is one of my favorites.  It has Leonardo da Vinci’s brilliant and adventurous mother Caterina cross-dressing as a man so that she can move to Florence and keep an eye on her genius son, falling in love with the most magnificent man of the time — Lorenzo “the Magnificent” de’ Medici.  The lovers move together through the vibrant, though deadly dangerous years of the Italian Renaissance, and become conspirators in one of the greatest hoaxes of all times.

So when it came to writing a pure love story (O, JULIET) I was more than ready for the experience.  I kept the history, politics and religion in the background (only relying on a few real historical figures — Cosimo and Lucrezia de’ Medici) and pursued the most romantic, poetic and sensual aspects of my writer’s mind.  I hope that the result is something that will please lovers of romance, and historical romance readers alike. It was certainly a pleasure writing it.

If you’d like to learn more about my other books, please visit www.robinmaxwell.com and my blog http://robinmaxwell.blogspot.com.

Here’s a video that tells my own personal Romeo and Juliet story:

This is a second, shorter video of me telling the story of my husband and I escaping from a catastrophic and deadly firestorm (complete with dramatic fire footage) on our property.

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Many thanks to Robin for being our guest today. Leave a comment for the chance to win a copy of O, JULIET. Good luck!

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