As always, it is one of my great joys in writing historical romance to combine a fictional romantic storyline with real historical details. Plus, it’s such a treat to share not only a thrilling, passionate, and emotional love story with you, lovely readers, but to give you a glimpse at my research into the history surrounding this book as well.

If you’ve read the previous book in the Highland Bodyguards series, (Book 7), then you’ll already be familiar with the history behind my portrayal of King Philip V of France and his royal court in Paris. But the Queen, Joan II of Burgundy, only received a passing mention in that book. It was a delight to get to showcase her a bit more in this story.

Philip was considered an intelligent, sensitive, and politically adept King. For her part, Joan was thought to be loyal and steadfast, and the two appeared to be very much in love. Philip wrote Joan love letters, and gave her generous gifts of land, money, and jewels. What was more, he protected these gifts—and by extension Joan—by specifically structuring them in such a way that they could not be revoked even in the case of his death and the crowning of a new monarch.

There is a long history of ladies-in-waiting serving in royal courts around the world, including in the medieval French court. Joan would have had her pick of ladies, women she deemed proper models for behavior at court, but also whom she enjoyed spending time with in the privacy of her own chambers. Because of their close relationship with the Queen, ladies-in-waiting were elevated above servants, and were tasked with things like helping the Queen dress, arranging her hair, and keeping her company with activities like embroidery and reading. While Vivienne is a fictional creation, her role at court was a real and important one.

Speaking of reading, all the medieval stories I mention in the book, including The Song of Roland, Tristan and Iseult, and Roman de la Rose, were popular tales during this time. Though books would have been rare and expensive, these tales of courtly love, battles, and chivalric knights spread like wildfire throughout Europe and the British Isles.

The Song of Roland was written in the eleventh century, and was very popular from twelfth through the fifteenth centuries. It was based on a battle in 778 during Charlemagne’s reign, and featured the heroic sacrifice of Roland to save his compatriots if not himself. Tristan and Iseult (or Isolde, depending on the version), is the Welsh tale of ill-fated lovers forced apart by their circumstances. The story of Tristan using the hazelnut tree and the honeysuckle to signal Iseult comes from the Chevrefoil, the French name for this portion of the epic poem. And Roman de la Rose, written in the 1200s, is another sweeping poem that ruminates on love as a courtier woos his lady in a walled garden. As a lady-in-waiting at the French court, Vivienne and her real-life counterparts likely would have had access to and been familiar with these tales of chivalric love.

In Surrender to the Scot, I fictionalized the idea that William de Soules, a real historical figure who was behind the “de Soules Conspiracy” against Robert the Bruce, visited the French court as part of the Bruce’s envoy to deliver his Declaration of Arbroath to the Pope, which asserted Scotland’s independence from England. Therefore the idea that he was drugged and detained at court until the conspiracy was uncovered is also fictitious, but the actual history behind de Soules’s fate is so fascinating that it almost seems like fiction!

As I mentioned in my author’s note in Surrender, de Soules was a Lowland noble who believed he’d been overlooked when the Bruce began redistributing lands and titles he’d reclaimed from the English. De Soules gathered several other nobles (including Countess Agnes of Strathearn, and Sirs David de Brechin, John Logie, Gilbert Malherbe, and Richard Broun, among others) and began plotting a coup to remove the Bruce from the Scottish throne, replacing him with Edward Balliol, the son of Scotland’s one-time King John Balliol, who was considered a puppet of the English.

Luckily for the Scots, de Soules’s plot was uncovered. Upon being found out, Countess Agnes immediately confessed to her part and turned over the names of several of the other conspirators. This earned her a stay of execution from the King at the so-called “Black Parliament,” where the Bruce passed down judgment on those who’d conspired against him.

Though all the other conspirators were given a traitor’s death, the Bruce spared de Soules’s life as well. This may have been because de Soules, like the countess, confessed and flipped on his allies. Or it may have been, as I portray in this story, that the Bruce feared making a martyr of de Soules, thus risking adding fuel to the fire if any of de Soules’s allies remained at large.

In any case, de Soules was imprisoned at Scone, but was later moved to Dumbarton Castle’s dungeon to serve out the rest of his life. And here is where things get interesting. Some sources say he died within a year of arriving at Dumbarton under “mysterious circumstances.”

However, other accounts note that a “Lord William de Soules” was among the dead on the English side of the Battle of Boroughbridge between the English and the Scots in 1322. Some have speculated that perhaps de Soules somehow escaped Dumbarton’s dungeon and fled to England in search of those more sympathetic to his cause to oust the Bruce. Playing on that juicy tidbit, I fictionalized the idea that de Soules escaped on his way to Dumbarton. In any case, de Soules died somewhere between 1320 and 1322, though the exact circumstances remain murky.

Ailsa Craig, where I had de Soules take Vivienne, is a real island off the western coast of Scotland. Its unusual sheer sides, composed of granite columns, and its domed top are a result of the fact that it is an ancient plug on a now-extinct volcano. It has been used as a landmark for sailors traveling between Ireland and Scotland, alerting them that the Scottish (or Irish, depending on which direction you’re traveling) mainland wasn’t much farther. It came to be known colloquially as “Paddy’s Milestone” because of this.

The island has seen an exciting and rich history. It sheltered Highland pirates and smugglers (a story for another day!), was the site of a sixteenth-century castle, was invaded by Spain so that it could serve as a safe haven for Catholics fleeing the Scottish Reformation, and more. Now it is a protected bird sanctuary. Fun fact—it’s also the location where stones for the sport of curling are quarried. Every stone ever used in Olympic curling competitions has come from Ailsa Craig!

And my last historical note must come with a caveat. I’m no doctor, but I did greatly enjoy learning about medieval solutions to collapsed and punctured lungs. The idea of sealing or draining a lung that had been punctured or filled with blood dates back to antiquity. In ideal conditions, a puncture wound might be washed with wine or oil, then covered with a dressing of cloth (like a linen patch) and an herb plaster to fight infection.

If blood filled the lung, it would have to be removed with a tube or reed (like I had Jossalyn use on Kieran). The first overt mention of this technique in the medieval era appears in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, which was written in the early 1200s. Eschenbach describes the comments by a knight named Gawan who witnessed a fellow knight, Uriens, receive a lance blow to the chest during a joust:

 

There lay a man pierced through,
with his blood rushing inward…
“I could keep this knight from dying
and I feel sure I could save him
if I had a reed,
You would soon see him and hear
him in health, because
he is not mortally wounded.
The blood is only pressing on his heart.”
He grasped a branch of the linden tree,
slipped the bark off like a tube –
he was no fool in the matter of wounds –
and inserted it into the body through the wound.
Then he bade the woman suck on it
until blood flowed toward her.
The hero’s strength revived so that he could speak and talk again.

 

Uriens is said to have stood up under his own power and walked away from a wound that would have otherwise killed him in minutes.

Of course, it’s probably unlikely that Kieran would have survived for two days riding on horseback with only a wool bandage to seal the puncture wound and one lung filling with blood, but this is romantic fiction, after all. A larger-than-life hero like Kieran wouldn’t let something like a medical impossibility stand in the way of reaching his heroine.

Thank you for journeying back in time with me to medieval France and Scotland, and look for more riveting history and unforgettable romance in the ninth book in the Highland Bodyguards series, Niall and Mairin’s story, coming late 2018!