Roses Have Thorns: A Novel of Elizabeth I

A CONVERSATION WITH SANDRA BYRD

Q: Was it difficult to write about someone so well known, and both fiercely loved and scorned, as Queen Elizabeth I?

A: It was certainly intimidating, challenging, and exciting. I have a large print of Queen Elizabeth I in my office and every morning she’d be there, waiting for me. Because she is so well known, people have strongly formed opinions of her and her reign, and I do, too. She lived a long, rich, complicated life, so in the span of this book I was only able to show one perspective, Helena’s point of view as I’d imagined it and drawn it from history. It was a thrill to write, and I hope I have done her justice.

Q: When you came across a mention of Helena von Snakenborg while doing research for The Secret Keeper, did you know immediately that she would be the protagonist for a novel? Why do you think the myth that Elizabeth I had no female friends has been so widely perpetuated?

A: I did have an epiphany of sorts when I came across Helena. I’d been hoping all along to tell the story of a real lady in waiting, but one whose story had not been often told. I was grateful to uncover Helena. The fact that she served Elizabeth I for so long, and so closely, made her an excellent point-of-view character. Her May-December marriage to Parr, the mysterious gap in her child-bearing, and the fact that the queen had actually “exiled” her and thrown her second husband into the Tower made for a rich canvas upon which to imagine. Plus, the fact that Thomas Gorges actually led the party to arrest Mary, Queen of Scots, was too juicy to pass up!

Elizabeth was known to keep tight purse strings, so when good sources indicated that she very well may have given Helena the silver from the wrecked galleon, I knew I had a lady that Elizabeth had loved.

Elizabeth was not a woman’s woman—she couldn’t have been, or she’d not have been able to govern her kingdom in a time when women were not expected to be strong and effective rulers and John Knox was publishing his “First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.” There are accounts that on the rare occasion when she did burst into tears her male councilors tended to look uncomfortably at their knuckles until it passed. The myth that she didn’t promote marriages for her maids of honor was effectively put to rest for me by one of her biographers who concluded that, had that been the case, families would have stopped advocating their daughters for that position shortly into Elizabeth’s long reign. I think she knew she could trust very few people, and so she did.

She was jealous, I suspect, on some level, of those who had husbands and children, but she was also a lifelong flirt, something a married woman could not be. I think she had deeply loved friends, among them Katherine Carey Knollys, Anne Russell Dudley, Catherine Carey Howard, and of course Helena.

Q: “In a very real way, I controlled access to the sovereign,” muses Helena in Roses Have Thorns. How unusual was it that a foreign-born woman like Helena would become the highest-ranking of Queen Elizabeth I’s ladies in waiting?

A: In the days of Queen Katherine of Aragon, there were many high-ranking Spanish women who had traveled to England with her, held significant positions, and also married into English nobility. One of note is Maria de Salinas, a lady in waiting to Queen Katherine of Aragon. She eventually married William Willoughby, eleventh Baron Willoughby de Eresby, and they had a child, Katherine, named for the queen. This Katherine grew up to marry Charles Brandon and became a well-known reformer who played a memorable role as the friend of Queen Kateryn Parr, and guardian of Parr’s baby Mary Seymour, in the last Ladies in Waiting book, The Secret Keeper: A Novel of Kateryn Parr.

However, most ladies in waiting were drawn from established English families. Rank, of course, comes from birth and marriage, so what catapulted Helena to the top of the heap, as it were, was her marriage to William Parr, Marquess of Northampton. Helena retained his title and rank throughout her life, even after her second marriage.

Sovereigns do raise their favorites to make them more fitting for close friendship. Henry VIII raised Anne Boleyn to Marquess of Pembroke before marrying her to make her of a more suitable rank. Elizabeth I raised Robert Dudley to the peerage as Earl of Leicester, in 1564; some suspected that was so he would be of a more marriageable rank. Helena gained her rank through marriage, of course. But although she was nobly born, her position as Marchioness of Northampton made her even more fitting to be close to the queen.

Q: A vivid scene takes place early in the novel when Helena grabs a bee flying around Princess Cecelia. Why did you decide to include this in the story? What does it reveal about Helena’s character?

A: I wanted to encapsulate Elin’s bravery and her fealty with one action, something that could be reflected upon, later, when her courage and loyalty toward Queen Elizabeth, and even Helena’s own husband, Thomas, would be questioned. Our impulse as humans is to flee danger—including stinging insects—so to show her acting against that instinct in service to another demonstrates exactly what kind of woman she was.

Later, of course, that action is echoed in a much more dangerous situation when Helena removes the potentially poisoned pins from Elizabeth’s gowns, sticking her hand, again, in the process.

Q: The rivalry between Queen Elizabeth and her cousin Lettice Knollys was quite contentious. What happened to Lettice after Robert Dudley’s death? Did Elizabeth ever soften toward the other woman?

A: No, Elizabeth never did soften toward the woman she called “the she-wolf.” Once she married Robert Dudley, Lettice Knollys was banished from court forever. It seems that their lack of affection for each other began long before Lettice became involved with Dudley. In some senses, Dudley and Lettice are sympathetic—each should certainly have been able to marry whom they chose, especially after the queen made it clear she would not be marrying Dudley. However, the more I read about Lettice and her older children, the less likable I found them to be.

I do have compassion toward her for the loss of her and Dudley’s child, affectionately known as The Noble Imp. I’m sure that was difficult all around. One of Lettice’s other sons, the Earl of Essex, became a favorite, and then a treasonous heartbreak, for Queen Elizabeth toward the end of her life. But that is another story!

Q: One of the most intriguing aspects of Roses Have Thorns is the view it gives of the inner workings of Elizabeth’s private chambers. How important was the role of the ladies in waiting in protecting the queen and keeping her from harm as well as in safeguarding her reputation?

A: Sleeping arrangements in that era were nothing as private as what we would expect now, and the queen, in particular, always had a maid of honor or one of her ladies sleeping on a small bed in her room. The maid of honor would be there to serve her if the queen needed something in the night, but also to protect her: physically, if someone tried to breach the bedchamber, and from gossip that might insinuate that the virgin queen was not sleeping alone.

I think the greater role that her ladies played was that of companionship and providing care and affection. As I mention in the Afterword, Elizabeth had no mother, no father, no siblings, no husband, no children, and all of her cousins were in some way rivals for her throne. That made for a lonely and guarded existence, and was one reason, I believe, why she could be somewhat needy and reluctant to let them go.

Q: Elizabeth allowed Catholics the freedom to worship in private. Can she be considered an early proponent of religious freedom? At one point in the story you reveal that the Papal Secretary of State sanctioned the queen’s murder, which is rather shocking. Was it routine or extreme for the Vatican to take this kind of overt action against a monarch?

A: Elizabeth has always said she had no desire to make windows into men’s souls. In other words, she was willing to let them worship according to their own consciences and inclinations as long as it did not veer into treason. She made it clear that she was born and bred in the Church of England, but as long as her Catholic subjects remained loyal to her politically, she allowed them the freedom of choosing their own religious path. Once an action became a threat to her kingdom, it was a matter of state and not of soul, and she took action.

The Papal Bull calling for her execution was shocking. It was a time when there were people on both “sides” with pure motivations to protect what they felt was true Christian faith, and people who used the faith issues of the time to gain political power; scratch the surface and they had no good intent. Sorting out which was which was, then as now, difficult.

Q: Tell us about your travels to England. What places associated with the Tudors made the greatest impression on you?

A: All of it felt like a pilgrimage of sorts, to be honest. I loved visiting The Tower, Hampton Court Palace, Allington Castle, and Hever Castle. I have not yet made it to Sudeley, but I will! Standing by the monument in Westminster Abbey where Queen Elizabeth I rests atop Queen Mary I, one can only hope that they are at peace with themselves, and each other, at last. Mary, Queen of Scots, by the way, is interred just down the aisle from them.

Q: “They were burning my bones to get out and onto paper,” you remarked in an interview about the Ladies in Waiting stories. Do you plan to keep writing about the Tudor era, or will you venture into another historical time period?

A: I read dozens of books while writing the Ladies in Waiting books, so for now, I feel satiated with the era. I will continue to read Tudor fiction, because I love it and there are so many skilled novelists writing good books. However, there are other eras and genres in British fiction I am itching to explore as a writer, and I am eager to begin!