Exclusive interview with author Sarah Fraser, discussing her novel about a forgotten prince of Great Britain
By Gabrielle Pantera
“He’s not a character most of us know anything about,” says The Prince Who Would be King author Sarah Fraser. “Grandson of Mary Queen of Scots, (Henry, Prince of Wales) has the Stuart allure. His huge funeral is the first recorded state funeral for a prince. Only monarchs and consorts had them before him. Then, he disappears. I wanted to bring Henry and his era to life, describing his achievements and his ambitions. And end by asking who and what was behind the suppression of his memory.”
Adapted into the BBC2 documentary The Best King We Never Had, Henry Stuart’s life is the last great forgotten Jacobean tale. Against the backdrop of religious turmoil in Europe, he stood ready to unite and lead all Protestants. In 1607 Henry was passionately engaged in the push to plant the British on American soil for the first time. He was passionate about science and funded telescopes and automata.
“By 1612, Henry, Prince of Wales, was a celebrity across Europe,” says Fraser. “His short life spanned an extraordinary period in history. The first prince born to inherit the four countries of Britain, in 1603 Henry represented the kingdoms united. Following Henry’s untimely death, the succession fell in 1625 to his younger brother, Charles I. Henry’s court was dissolved. His followers retired from court or were dismissed. They returned to fight in the civil wars that led to the Cromwellian republic. But not on the side you would expect, with perhaps dramatic consequences for history.”
For research, Fraser referred to the letters and objects from Henry’s lifetime. She covers the Thirty Years’ War, the writing of the King James Bible and the Gunpowder Plot. Fraser visited the major archives: the British Library, the British Museum, the National Library of Scotland, the Tower of London, the National Gallery.
“There’s something slightly mysterious about handling the things they handled,” says Fraser. “Books and official documents, bills for fabulous possessions still in the great collections of the world today, and private little notes between the key players, medical records and the first copies of poems and plays, the paintings of him, and the ones he bought, his armour, and his beautiful bronzes.”
Fraser also wrote The Last Highlander: Scotland’s Most Notorious Clan Chief, Rebel and Double Agent (HarperCollins), focusing on Simon Fraser, grandfather of the hero Jamie Fraser in the hit series Outlander. The Last Highlander won the Scottish Saltire First Book Prize, a New York Times ebook bestseller, the Telegraph History Book of the Year.
Both of Fraser’s books have been made into documentaries for the BBC. Historian and presenter Dan Snow made a podcast with Fraser about The Last Highlander. Highlander was adapted into a documentary shown on Snow’s new TV channel HistoryHitTV.com in January.
Fraser is currently writing a true crime story set in Edinburgh in the run up to Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Jacobite rebellion. She is also writing about the Union of Crowns that created Great Britain in 1603.
Fraser lives on a farm by the sea in the Highlands of Scotland, but spends much of her time in London doing research. She was born in Bath, England. She’s active on Twitter @sarah_fraseruk and Facebook. She’s visiting America in April 2018, speaking at the Tartan Week celebrations of the Scots contribution to American life, the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and in Virginia.
The Prince Who Would Be King by Sarah Fraser. Hardcover: 352 pages, Publisher: William Collins. March 13, 2018. Language: English, ISBN-13: 978-0007548088 $27.99
