Exclusive interview with author Christie Dickason and a review of her new novel about the Gunpowder Plot to kidnap ‘the first Elizabeth II’ to force her to be queen
Rating: Three Stars
“I was fascinated by the true historical plan to kidnap the young princess and make her Elizabeth II after blowing up her father and brother,” says The King’s Daughter author Christie Dickason.
“But I was headed somewhere else with that book and had to wait.” That was three books ago, when Dickason was working on The Fire Master’s Mistress, another story about the Gunpowder Plot.
The King’s Daughter is the story of King James’s daughter Elizabeth. King James is the son of Mary Queen of Scots. Henry, his eldest son, is heir to the throne, next is Elizabeth and last is Charles. Henry and Elizabeth are popular with the people and the nobles. Elizabeth is a pawn to be used in marriage to form an alliance, but she’s as willful as her namesake, the former Queen of England Elizabeth I. Elizabeth must know what’s going on at court. Her biggest ally is Thalia, a slave she freed. Thalia gathers information about Elizabeth’s possible grooms.
Little is known about Elizabeth during the time when James was king. Dickason drops the reader right into the time of James reign, giving us a feeling of life during that time. Elizabeth is in turns vulnerable and willful. The twists and turns of Elizabeth’s life up to her marriage are intriguing, however the story needs to speed up in places to make it a page-turner.
Dickason says she’s practically a lodger at the National Archives, which are near her home in Kew. “I always do rigorous research for all my books. Apart from being naturally nosy, I want my readers to be able to trust my history. Which means getting a firm grip on the facts, so far as they can be known, and then imagining my story into the cracks.”
Dickason will go to extremes to experience the life of a character. “For two days, I lived as an Elizabethan court lady, suffering claustrophobia in the tight corsets, dancing, trying to keep my silk dress clean…as they would have had to do in the days before dry cleaning.”Dickason had the opportunity to wear the Royal Shakespeare Company costumes while filming on location in Stratford as part of a German TV movie.
Dickason is currently working on a new historical romantic thriller about a minor character in The King’s Daughter. “I find that every book sprouts seedlings of further books. The hard part is choose which ones to nurture for the time it takes to write a book.”
Dickason is based in London. She was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. Her website is www.christiedickason.com
The Kings Daughter: A novel by Christie Dickason. Trade Paperback: 480 pages, Publisher: Harper Paperbacks; Reprint edition (November 23, 2010), Language: English, ISBN: 9780061976278
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