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Originally Posted by HarryG
To start on such a mammoth task, you will need to read everything you can find on the period, which seems pretty obvious. However, perhaps you could make it easier by comparing the thought process of someone from a much later period, perhaps a tame example would be a writer writing as little as 80 years ago.
The one that comes to mind is John Steinbeck, perhaps Grapes of Wrath, or East of Eden, or any of his books. The great characters that he created, and their views on politics and religion, without any knowledge of the atom bomb, holocaust, space travel, and the internet, would be as revealing as your characters from two-thousand years earlier.
Would the thought process of an ancient be all that different to ours, anyway? Doesn't it all go back to food and shelter, anyway? Isn't everything else simply an add-on? (Especially religion?)
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I have read several historical accounts of the time period, but they focus on the Crusades and the battles among the Turks, Egypt, Jerusalem, and Antioch rather than daily life in the era. I know that the royal lifestyle bore more similarity to European life than Muslim life, but I am positive that the differences in climate and geopolitics had to influence royal life to some extent--I am just unsure as to how much.
I have read many books belonging to the late Victorian and early Modern time periods, but perhaps I should re-read some Thomas Hardy. It can't hurt, right? Plus, Thomas Hardy rocks my socks.
And religion influenced the lives of the pilgrims and Crusaders to a massive extent, I would say. The question for me is how much of their struggles for food and shelter and procreation related to religion inside their own minds.
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She would also have worried about the advancing army from the East, does that sound like a familiar nightmare from more recent times?
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I have thought about this--the nightmare of the advent of the Eastern forces. The fact is, Saladin was incredibly honorable for a man in his position, and he never executed royal prisoners, but that doesn't mean that she would have known that in her heart, does it?
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Originally Posted by astralis
This tells me that your lack of respect for the time period is going to make your historical drama seem false. Remember the world-view: get to heaven. Spending time in a convent was a sure way to get to heaven.
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I have respect for the time period. But I don't think spending time in a convent or monastery was a sure way to get into heaven in the minds of people at the time. That was merely what royal girls did; they did not accompany their parents to court because it was too dangerous--to their chastity, for one thing, and also for their health, both physical and spiritual.
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It wasn't about "crappy food". How do you know that the food was bad? Nothing to do? Reading the bible and other scholarly texts would be the ultimate of having something to do for someone during that time period.
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That is a good point. There wasn't a whole lot to do, and I don't know that the food was bad--I'm making assumptions about godliness=poverty that probably didn't exist until hundreds of years later. But regardless, the courtly life was full of drama and betrayals that one would probably not encounter in a convent or monastery. Intellectual life in a religious house may have been much more stimulating than anywhere else; but social life was not, I believe.
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Originally Posted by Zensati
You must know about his enemies and rivals. What skills he possesses and how he learnt them. What material posessions he has and his connection to them. His hopes and dreams. His romantic attatchments, his secret fears. The list is endless.
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And that's part of the problem. HER enemies and rivals were... well, let's just say that there was very, very little written about this woman, but very much written about the men around her--Baldwin IV, Prince Reynald, Baldwin of Ibelin, Raymond of Tripoli, and King Guy. So I have to sort of guess as to who HER enemies and rivals and friends were, as well as her skills and weaknesses and
why she made the decisions that she did.
It's fascinating, and I enjoy it. She did amazing things for a woman in her time period, but her status as a woman led to her actions being considered less worthy of recollection. But that allows for more creativity, so I'm grateful. I just have to come up with an internal system of logic for her.
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Originally Posted by lilacstarflower
read Phillipa Gregory - her tudor works. It's a little later than the period you are after but I think she pulls it off very well.
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I've read them--they're pretty great, aren't they?
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If you do your research properly and read lots of history books which will contain extracts from primary sources, you will find the 'voice' of the time. Being a queen, your character may have a certain amount of cognitive dissonance i.e believing one thing and doing another.
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That's what I've been thinking about--the bizarre decisions she made during her regency must have had a lot of internal conflict behind them. She knew that King Guy was a terrible regent, a terrible ruler. When the high court of Jerusalem crowned her, they insisted that she annul her marriage to Guy first. And she did, but she only did so on the condition that they allow her to marry who she wished. They agreed, and she... turned around and re-married Guy. It was a horrible decision if she wanted to keep power in Jerusalem, and it also showed tremendous courage, as did her leadership of the army defending the city against Saladin's forces. So I can only come up with a few answers as to why she re-married Guy: (1) She didn't want to keep Jerusalem under Christian rule; (2) she believed that her marriage to Guy was solvent and unable to be dissolved by the courts of man; and (3) she loved Guy and refused to abandon him. I think that (1) is the most interesting, though (2) or (3) is most likely.
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I think you will have a great time writing this - I find they are always more interesting because the world and society was so different back then.
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I am having a GREAT time researching it and thinking about it. There's never a dull moment.
