We know now that long after the last Plantagenet king of England, Richard III, fatally came second at the Battle of Bosworth Field his body found itself unceremoniously lying beneath a car-park in Leicester.
But what would England look like if Shakespeare's favourite bad guy had won instead?
In June, Abaddon is launching a brand new historical fantasy series from an up and coming author: Heirs of the Demon King: Uprising is a thrilling alternative history by Sarah Cawkwell set in a world filled with magic and where, instead of the famous Tudor monarchs, there is an unconquered line of kings stemming from a victorious Richard III.
Sarah, who has previously written Warhammer novels, now brings her sense of history and visceral action to this fantastical re-imagining of the 16th Century. And we asked her to put together a few words to explain the series and what it's like resurrecting one of the most controversial Royal dynasties in English history...
What Happens When
Kings Don’t
Die
When I
was asked to consider an ‘alternative history-coupled with fantasy’ story, it
took me about eleven seconds to decide whereabouts in history I would start.
A
million years ago, when I was infinitely younger and certainly more
impressionable, I went on a week’s holiday with my then-boyfriend to a remote
little cottage somewhere in Scotland
Amongst
these books was the novelisation of a television series called The Devil’s Crown. I picked it up with
vague disinterest and started reading it. By the end, I was in love with the
Plantagenet family and this depiction of them. I can honestly say that
returning that wonderful book to the shelf was the most heartbreaking
separation from a book I can remember. I then started reading more and more
about the Plantagenet family and find their legacy to be fascinating reading.
King
Henry the Second was a true warrior king, a man who, whenever he saw something
he wanted, would smack his hand down on a table, shout, ‘I WANT THIS THING!’,
then go out and take it. I would put money down that he never once said ‘could
you please pass the salt’.
This
sense of self-entitlement also guaranteed him his wife, the remarkable Eleanor
of Aquitaine, possibly amongst the most interesting and powerful women ever to
feature in England’s history - and the mother of some of the most remarkable
monarchs this country has ever seen.
Henry
certainly did not suffer fools gladly and he was allegedly massively unpopular
as a king. Yet in that novel, he became a sympathetic anti-hero. I’m a sucker
for those.
Historical
fiction is a delightful area of genre: accounts can be written that paint
images of people who often exist only in dry, dusty history books, or as
caricatures of their time. For example, the Bard immortalised Richard the Third
as a tyrannical, hunch-backed monstrosity: others have argued that this is a
great disservice to the long-dead king. History, so they say, is written by the
winners and the losers are confined to pages where they are lampooned and
ridiculed.
The Battle
of Bosworth Field has been prominent in the news over the last couple of years due
to the remains of King Richard the Third having been formally identified. Of
all places for the last descendant of a great warrior king to be found, beneath
layers of car park Tarmac in Leicestershire is probably one of the least
dignified.
Richard
the Third has perpetually been labelled as a nominal ‘bad guy’. That seemed
like an interesting place to start.
What if, I hypothesised, Richard the Third beat Henry Tudor into a pulp on that August day in Leicestershire? What would have happened to
But
even that was not the true point of divergence for this story. It would have
been easy enough to re-write human history based on a Plantagenet victory that
day and indeed, this is where Heirs of
the Demon King: Uprising opens. But the story goes back further than that.
What is it that gave Richard the strength to overcome on the battlefield?
For
the answer to that, we look further back in history. We visit King Richard, the
Lionheart, a man who is variously portrayed as either Sean Connery, or a
shining beacon of English leadership (although many historians claim he didn't speak a word of English and preferred to live in Aquitaine
I went
with the middle ground. King Richard the First returns from the Holy Land and the Crusades with a gift for the people of
his country. He brings with him the gift of true magic: a mastery of the
elements and weaving of spells and incantations that bring power and prosperity
to his small island. The people of England
You
know it can’t possibly last. Let any power fall into the wrong hands and it
will inevitably become a warped and twisted terrible thing. So once the ‘wrong’
people start using the gift, magic slowly pollutes the country and becomes
something to be feared and banished, no longer to be embraced.
By the
time King Richard the Third, the last of the Plantagenets takes to the
battlefield at Bosworth, the monarchy is broken and England
For
every bargain made, there is a price to be paid. Richard’s greed and lust for
victory condemns his ancestors to a nightmare.
But
eventually the time comes when someone has to make a stand and Heirs of the Demon King: Uprising brings
together a number of unlikely individuals whose stories and journeys race
towards a final, fateful showdown at dawn on the day of the Winter Solstice…
Heirs of the Demon King is out in June and can be pre-ordered through Amazon in the UK and North America.
About the author
Sarah Cawkwell is an English author based in the North East. Old enough to know better, she’s still young enough not to care. Married, with a son and two intellectually challenged cats, she’s been a writer for many years, contributing to the Warhammer universe. When not slaving away over a hot keyboard, Sarah’s hobbies include reading everything and anything, and running around in fields with swords screaming incomprehensibly. Her minimum bribe level is one chocolate orange.
