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THE KING’S

CONCUBINE


A NOVEL OF ALICE PERRERS




Anne O’Brien


A CONVERSATION WITH ANNE O’BRIEN


Q. It’s amazing to me that a woman of such obscure origins as Alice could rise so high as to become the King’s powerful mistress. Was she just a smart woman who got lucky?

A. Alice was without doubt a smart woman. Her origins are difficult to penetrate. Despite recent research, her ancestry is uncertain and there is no record of her birth. If she knew her family, she never made claims on them or promoted them when she came to power. We know nothing of her education except that she was clearly able to read and write and deal with numbers, quite an achievement for a girl of no social standing. It seems she was married briefly to Janyn Perrers, a Lombardy moneylender living in London.

So how did she achieve her preeminence? Part good fortune: There is no record of why or how she came to the attention of the Queen—thus the role of the novelist to fill in the gaps. As for the rest, Alice took advantage of her situation to line her pockets and ensure a comfortable life for herself and her children in preparation for royal patronage coming to an end. Definitely a smart and intelligent woman who used her talents to the full.

Q. Alice strikes me as being highly adaptable and intuitive, able to suss out a situation and identify where her best interest lies. She’s the consummate survivor. Do you agree? What do you see as Alice’s greatest strengths and weaknesses?

A. Alice was a survivor. Her greatest strength was her astonishing tenacity in pursuing her ambitions in a man’s world. She proved herself to be a remarkable businesswoman in using every method open to her to cushion her future. At the same time, I think she cared deeply for Edward and did all she could to alleviate the loneliness and confusion of his last days. She stayed with him to the end.

Her weakness, if it was a weakness, was her ability to make too many powerful enemies— but given her position at Court and her influence over the King, this was inevitable. Even so, compromise did not exist in Alice’s planning. Once she had achieved wealth, she wanted more. The pursuit of power and land, which she did with remarkable success, proved to be her undoing.

Q. Despite the wealth and power Alice gains as Edward’s mistress, she strikes me as singularly alone during her time at Court—with no one female friend to confide in, and subject to Edward’s waxing and waning interest. Do you think she was deeply lonely?

A. I think that Alice was an isolated figure and probably felt the lack of intimacy of female friendship. In all the voices raised against her, not one was raised in her support. Perhaps this was one of the factors that drove her into her liaison with Windsor, seeing in him a kindred spirit and a reflection of her own ambitions. In the novel I suggest that at one point she regretted her lack of a confidante, but I don’t think it troubled her overmuch. I think Alice was a man’s woman. Female companionship was of little importance to her.

Q. Plague comes through early in the novel. It’s hard for us now to imagine the despair and devastation it wrought as it swept periodically through Europe. Can you tell us a little more about its impact?

A. Plague first struck England in the summer of 1348, with dire results. Arriving in Dorset in the west, it spread rapidly, killing perhaps half the population of England within twelve months. It struck indiscriminately at rich and poor alike—Philippa’s daughters were victims of the plague—but mostly it was to be found in town communities, where the disease could spread rapidly in the unhealthy conditions. Clerics who ministered to the sick were particularly badly hit. Recovery was rare, and the suffering great from the buboes that grew in armpit and groin, the plague victims usually succumbing within three days and being buried without record in plague pits. There was no understanding of its cause—the bite of the flea that lived on the black rat. I think we do not fully appreciate the full extent of the death rate. What we do know is that the shortage of laborers helped to bring the end of the servitude of the feudal system. The workers who remained demanded higher wages and more freedom from service. The lords had no choice but to accept.

After this first epidemic, plague returned at regular intervals, never so widespread or for so long, but still enough to fill the medieval mind with fear of death and punishment for wrongdoing. The final appearance was in the reign of Charles II in 1665.

Q. Except for his last years, Edward III seems to have been an effective ruler. What do you see as his lasting legacy? How does he fit into the grand sweep of English history?

A. Edward III has been celebrated as the most brilliant of all English monarchs, and there is much justification for it. He was a magnificent figurehead and a chivalrous leader, and he took on the demanding role with great enthusiasm until his decline in his final decades. His achievements were outstanding. Throughout his long reign he preserved peace within England, the stability bringing an increase in trade and prosperity. In international affairs, England became supreme and the center of European politics. As patron of the arts and architecture, Edward supervised the extension and improvements of the great palaces, such as Windsor. Much of the English love of historical pageantry came from Edward: He loved outward show, and it was he who adopted the Flag of Saint George.

Unfortunately, terrible seeds of disaster for the future were sown in Edward’s reign. The European empire became untenable, dragging England into expensive war without hope of success. Perhaps of greater misfortune, Edward’s creation of titles and wealth for his sons, given the strain of the minority and the character of Richard II, was eventually to lead to the power struggle and civil war of the Wars of the Roses.

Q. How rare was Edward’s devotion to Queen Philippa? Do all your sources suggest he sincerely loved her, or is that your romantic imagination at work?

A. Edward and Philippa were soul mates. Theirs was an arranged marriage, but Edward found in Philippa a stability that had been lacking in his early life, when he had been manipulated by his ambitious mother, Queen Isabella, and her lover, Mortimer. Edward was a superlative knight and a courageous fighter, but he needed support at home.

Philippa stood by him, gave him the benefit of her strong common sense, and encouraged him to seize power for himself. This unity developed into a very deep and abiding love, cemented by their large family. Stories of Edward’s adultery early in the marriage are regarded by historians as a product of French propaganda against him. It is generally thought that he had no mistress and was entirely faithful to Philippa until Alice Perrers came to court. Even then he had a care for Philippa, hypocritical as it might appear. Her death broke him, pushing him into the slow deterioration of his final years.

I think I have not exaggerated the strength of feeling between them. They were devoted to each other over a marriage of forty years; it was a very satisfying relationship to explore.

Q. Do we know what ailment Philippa suffered from? Was it something her children inherited?

A. Philippa’s final years were full of suffering. A fall from her horse when hunting resulted in severe damage to her shoulder, probably a dislocation, which was never reset adequately. This gave her intense pain. It also seems that she suffered from dropsy, the painful swelling of soft tissue due to the accumulation of fluid in the body, a complaint that could be alleviated today but not then. Her children did not inherit it.

The deaths of her daughters Mary and Margaret from the plague in 1361, and later Lionel, her son, sank her into a depression that made her suffering so much worse.

Q. John of Gaunt comes across as wily and ambitious, and one of Edward’s more capable sons after the death of his heir. What happened to John after the end of The King’s Concubine—and will you be writing about him in a future book?

A. John of Gaunt was considered to be perhaps the most able of Edward’s sons: A charismatic man but without significant military talent, he was overshadowed by his father and older brother, the Black Prince. He was accused of having an eye to the Crown for himself, but, in fact, he remained loyal to his young nephew Richard II throughout that troubled reign, being greatly saddened when Richard exiled his son Henry (later to be Henry IV) for ten years and later for life. It was Henry who returned to England and overthrew Richard, but that was after Gaunt’s death. He died in 1399.

Gaunt will appear in a later novel as the powerful lover of Katherine Swynford, whose children were to carry royal Plantagenet blood into the Beaufort family and thus to the Tudors. The story of Gaunt and Katherine is the quintessential love story.

Q. Can you tell us more about what happened to Alice’s four children? Did she have any others?

A. We are fairly certain that John was Edward’s son. There is some debate over Jane, Joanne, and Nicholas, but no certainty. Even their birth dates are unknown. I considered it more likely that they were all Edward’s children rather than Windsor’s, given their ages, and since Windsor never claimed them as his and left no property to them. We know a little of their history:

John de Southeray was born in 1364. He was knighted in April 1377 and died sometime after 1383. He married Matilda Percy, a daughter of the powerful Percy family in the north.