Author Interview | Robin Maxwell

It is with great delight that I present to you an interview with bestselling historical fiction author Robin Maxwell! Robin is the author of The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn, The Queen’s Bastard, Virgin: Prelude to the Throne, The Wild Irish, To the Tower Born, Mademoiselle Boleyn, and her latest, Signora da Vinci (read my review here). Her next novel, O, Juliet, releases in February 2010. A big thank you to Robin for stopping by Hist-Fic Chick and taking the time to answer my questions!

One of the things I think you do so beautifully as a writer is come up with unconventional yet very plausible angles on a particular character or historical event. In the Q&A included at the end of Signora da Vinci, you mentioned that as an historical fiction author, you delight in discovering “gaping chasms” throughout history, which you then can research and reinterpret as fiction. Of your seven novels, which of history’s mysteries has been the most interesting for you to “fill-in-the-blanks?”

Actually, if you count O, JULIET, coming in February, it’s eight novels. This is a hard question to answer, as each book’s mystery completely captivated me during the research and writing process. SECRET DIARY OF ANNE BOLEYN, my first novel which became the prototype for my “mysteries of history” approach, explored the real reason Elizabeth I never married, and why — after almost two decades of disrespecting her mother’s memory (she hadn’t even spoken Anne Boleyn’s name in twenty years) the young queen started wearing a locket with Anne’s miniature inside it, and began heaping honors, titles and grants on her remaining Boleyn relatives (who’d been slinking around since Anne’s downfall, grateful they hadn’t been executed).

I suppose I loved the mystery in THE QUEEN’S BASTARD because it was so seemingly absurd — that Elizabeth and her lover Robin Dudley had had an illegitimate child. Yet the massive research I did convinced me that it was distinctly possible that Arthur Dudley was who he claimed to be — their son.

I had always admired Henry VIII’s sixth and final wife (the one who outlived him) Catherine Parr. She was highly educated, open-minded and religiously progressive, and brought the young Elizabeth back from “bastardy” into the Tudor fold (and more importantly, the succession). So I wondered, in VIRGIN, how and why Catherine seemingly went crazy, becoming obsessed, and engaging in bizarre behavior while her new husband, the sexy, charismatic sociopath, Thomas Seymour, made openly sexual advances on the pubescent Princess Elizabeth, right under Catherine’s roof. I also wanted answers about the questionable circumstances surrounding the Queen Dowager’s death.

I just had to know why an ageing Elizabeth gave in to all the demands of the most persistent thorn in her side during the English conquest of Ireland — Grace O’Malley, infamous pirate and “Mother of the Irish Rebellion.” That was answered in THE WILD IRISH.

And I couldn’t help myself coming up with an original solution to England’s greatest historical mystery — what actually happened to the York princes, in TO THE TOWER BORN.

I could go on and on with MADEMOISELLE BOLEYN, SIGNORA DA VINCI and O, JULIET, but this is already a very long answer to a short question.

Your take on Renaissance Florence and its many characters was stunning to read. I loved your inclusion of some of history’s greatest minds of the Renaissance: Lorenzo de Medici, Sandro Botticelli, Marsilio Ficino, Leon Battista Alberti, Luigi Pulci, Angelo Poliziano, Pico della Mirandola, and more. You call this mix of humanist philosophers and their dabbling in alchemy and fascination with Platonic and Hermetic philosophy part of the “Shadow Renaissance.” What else can you tell us about your findings on the “Shadow Renaissance” and this often ignored underpinning of the “rebirth” period in European history?

What fascinated me most was that every head of state of the period in question — with the exception of the relatively backward English king, Edward IV — was either dabbling in or completely immersed in what the church considered heretical activities. Under the guise of giving their children the finest education, they employed Greek scholars and tutors. What would be the purpose of learning the Greek language if not to study the Greek classics? And the Greeks were blatantly pagan. So many of these movers and shakers — everyone from the Duke of Milan, to Lorenzo “the Magnificent” de’ Medici, to the Holy Roman Emperor, had a profound interest in Egyptian magic, astrology, and alchemy. But perhaps the most interesting bigwig heretic was the Holy Father himself — Roderigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI. The frescoes and mosaics he had painted for his personal apartments at the Vatican (which can still be seen today) feature Egyptian pyramids and the pagan Apis bull, images of the “Godfather of hermeticism”, Hermes Trismegistus, and the goddess Isis. I’m still not sure how these guys got away with it.

Signora da Vinci also provides your response to many conspiracy theories of the Italian Renaissance. From the Pazzi Conspiracy, to that smile behind The Mona Lisa, to the rise and fall of Savonarola, and the Turin Shroud, you covered many unanswered questions and offered your own version of what may have happened. Do you have any rules of thumb that you follow when coming up with these “history fillers,” so as to avoid over-fictionalizing a known historic character or event?

I do have a rule of thumb. That is to use as many facts as are available on a given subject and never change a hard fact to suit my dramatic needs. If I have to, I change the story to fit the facts, and sometimes that can be a bit of a dance. Interestingly, my editor always encourages me in this direction, herself a history lover. I might use a tiny fact or footnote (one sentence in one biography of Anne Boleyn mentioned that she had a woman fool. I made an important character out of that one sentence). I use detective work, psychology and my understanding of human nature. I read between the lines and sometimes disagree or reinterpret theories that are less than certain. Sometimes I have to “telescope” time, and other times I have to combine several characters into a single person so I don’t have “a cast of thousands,” but I find that more often than not, there is plenty to work with and that many times fact is stranger than fiction.

A perfect scenario for my “holes in history” method of writing was SIGNORA DA VINCI. Here I had a woman — Leonardo’s mother — who clearly existed, and who had had her child taken from her the day after his birth to live with the cold, unloving family of his father. Virtually the next time we hear about her in the historical record, she’s an older woman who comes to live in the household of her now famous son. Two years later he pays for her funeral. While Caterina da Vinci was a virtual blank slate for me, I was blessed with a plethora of information about her son — many biographies, the writings and philosophies of his notebooks (1080 pages of just his words), biographies of Lorenzo de’ Medici, as well as his autobiography (including his poetry), countless histories of the Renaissance and of Florence, book
s on art, philosophy, politics, the Turin shroud. I was therefore able to extrapolate Caterina’s character and story from all this material. Particularly by understanding the mind of Leonardo, I believed I understood the personality of the parent who most influenced him — as his father was a jerk. I was certain that Leonardo had to have gotten his “genius genes” from his mother’s side of the family.

And then there are those magical moments when you come across a fact that confirms or further elucidates an idea or story point that you wanted to use. In MADEMOISELLE BOLEYN I knew that Francois I and Leonardo (in the last three years of the Maestro’s life) were dear friends and that the French king had given Leonardo a chateau just downriver from his palace at Amboise. On a website about Amboise I stumbled upon a fact that there was a secret tunnel that connected the two establishments and that Francois frequently used it to visit his friend. From that tidbit I fashioned one of my favorite chapters in the book, in which the king takes his inner circle of friends on an unexpected “magical mystery tour.”

Leonardo da Vinci is my most favorite historical character. Your portrayal of him as a quirky, sensitive and curious visionary of much depth of feeling was absolutely captivating, as we hear so much of Leonardo’s work but so little of him as a person. What was the most challenging part of bringing to life so illustrious a man as Leonardo?

I think it was to portray him as almost insanely sensitive and close to his mother, yet not as a wimpy “mama’s boy.” To portray his extraordinary genius and his obsessiveness while keeping him sympathetic and likable. He possessed, unlike Michelangelo, a warm, caring personality. He was someone who was extremely loyal to those he loved. And I wanted to address Leonardo’s sexuality in an even-handed way. While he almost certainly engaged in homosexual relationships at times in his life, he may well have had had heterosexual ones as well — though these days it is “conventional wisdom” that Leonardo was gay. From my reading, there were even periods in which he appeared asexual — far too preoccupied by his art, inventions, science and philosophies to care care about men or women.

There are many aspects of Leonardo da Vinci’s life, from his status as a bastard son, to his questionable sexuality, to his self-proclaimed atheism and interest in the occult, to his obsession with learning the inner workings of the human body through illegal cadaver dissections, that reveal a darker, more sinister side of Leonardo (at least in the eyes of the Church). What is your take on this often hidden side to this paradoxical man filled with such beauty, but also underlying pain as an outcast and introvert?

It’s hard to emphasize enough Leonardo’s obsessive nature. He was living in a largely unexplored world. People didn’t understand or even care about how things worked, or how they were made — the human body, the nature of light and shadow, how the eye was capable of seeing, the ear of hearing, how machines functioned. Yet he had been gifted with the most intensely inquisitive mind. He had to know the answers to all those questions, yet in the late 15th and early 16th centuries such curiosity was considered evil, the work of the devil, a burnable offense. That’s why he had to do his anatomical dissections of the human body by candlelight in the dark, moldering basement of a hospital. I think it was out of his control. He couldn’t live with himself if he was not constantly learning. Too, he was quite confident in his philosophical and religious beliefs. He was an atheist, a believer in Nature as the only true god. He had to have had a very strong backbone and moral character to live his whole life in a way that was so contrary to the norm.

I recall from your fifth novel, Mademoiselle Boleyn, an elderly Leonardo who “mentored” Anne Boleyn during her childhood in France. Other than the change in age, what is the biggest difference between the Leonardo of Mademoiselle Boleyn and the Leonardo of Signora da Vinci?

I don’t think there is any perceptible difference, other than his age. He was quite close to death, and a stroke had paralyzed his left arm (but because he was ambidextrous, this was not a complete tragedy). In Francois’ court, Leonardo was an inquisitive seeker, a man who loved to exchange ideas and philosophies, and he still had with him an “apprentice”, Salai, whom he had brought as a ten-year-old, to live with him almost thirty years before. Some believe that Leonardo died in Francois’ arms.

Very little is known about Leonardo’s mother, Caterina. Your version of her is a strong, independent, forward-thinking lady who experienced much hardship due to her gender and her status as an unwed mother. How do you think Caterina would fare in modern times?

If Caterina lived in the western world today she’d do quite well, I think. Other than in parts of Africa, India and the middle east where women are still second-class citizens (or much worse) she would probably be a career woman, an artist, a scientist or an explorer. I always say that I’m grateful to have been born a woman where I was born and when I was born, because there is virtually nothing that I could not accomplish if I set my mind to it. I assume the same would be true for Caterina.

As a free-spirited woman of many mixed religious descents myself, I found your novel fascinating in a way that many hardcore Catholics would most likely find highly heretical, even today. As I read your book, I couldn’t help but wonder if you had received any negative backlash from conservative Catholics, similarly to what Dan Brown experienced with his Da Vinci Code. If so, what would you say as a response to those who may view Signora da Vinci as, much like Caterina herself was considered, a blight on the Church?

I would tell them to get a life. I’m afraid I don’t have much patience with religious intolerance. In fact, I don’t have much patience with religion itself. I am a proud non-believer, an atheist but, like Leonardo, a seeker after truth and beauty. My favorite quote on the subject comes from the current Dalai Lama who said “My religion is kindness.” That sort of says it all.

What can you tell us about your next novel, O, Juliet, releasing in February 2010?

All I can tell you is that O, JULIET promises to be the most genre-crossing book I’ve ever written. Historical fiction lovers will love it as it’s set in 1444 Florence with two of its main characters Lorenzo the Magnificent’s mother, Lucrezia, (at age 18) and her father-in-law-to be, Cosimo de’ Medici — the single man most responsible for the Renaissance (quite a credit to claim!). Literary fiction afficianados will appreciate the literary pedigree of both Shakespeare (from whom I borrowed the basic structure of the story and, of course, Romeo and Juliet) and Italy’s greatest writer, Dante Alighieri. His poetry, which I use quite liberally in the novel, is the common ground upon which my lovers (both Dante freaks) fall in love. Romance readers will surely be attracted to the “granddaddy” of all love stories. And young adult readers will identify with the ageless plight of young lovers kept apart by feuding families and circumstances beyond their control. And besides that, it’s got the most gorgeous cover art I’ve ever seen!

To learn more about Robin Maxwell or any of her novels, visit her website at robinmaxwell.com