The Betrothed Sister

by Carol McGrath

  Thea (Gytha or Gita) went into exile after the Siege of Exeter in 1068, when her grandmother, the formidable mother of King Harold, held out in that city for three weeks, refusing to pay King William’s tax. It is probable that her daughter, Dowager Queen Edith, who held a pragmatic attitude towards the Normans, arranged her exile. She may have spent time at the Danish Court where, amazingly, King Sweyn, her nephew, had married a third wife. There exist two theories about Sweyn’s third marriage. Some historians suggest his third marriage was to Tora, the concubine or handfasted wife of Harold Harthrada of Norway, who was killed by Harold of England at Stamford Bridge. Others say it was Elizaveta, the Russian legal wife of Harold Harthrada. I suspect it was the latter. Her daughter positively married one of Sweyn’s sons.

  The fact that Sweyn probably organised Thea’s marriage to Elizaveta’s nephew in Kiev suggests to me that this third wife was indeed Elizaveta. She was recorded as having had a stormy relationship with Harthrada who had elevated his concubine’s status. Tora was the mother of Harthrada’s sons. The policies of Novgorodian/Kiev princes was to develop and protect trade routes north from the Black Sea to the Baltic. They had strong links with Scandinavian neighbours and this was confirmed through inter-dynastic marriages.

  Janet Martin, expert on Medieval Russia, writes in Medieval Russia 980-1584 ‘Prince Iaroslav Vladimirovich married the daughter of the Swedish king, Olaf. He strengthened his bonds with the Scandinavian world by arranging the marriage of his daughter Elizaveta to the King of Norway, then to a king of Denmark.’ Vladimir Monomakh’s marriage to Gyda (Thea), the daughter of Harold II of England, reflected the prince’s ties with the King of Denmark more than England. Also it was the Danish king who gave refuge to Harold’s family after he was defeated and killed at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. It is likely that Sweyn arranged the betrothal and marriage.’

  The political events in Russia during the seventh decade of the eleventh century were dominated by internecine conflict. Those elements of these conflicts between uncles and nephews and between cousins that enter the pages of this novel absolutely belong to the realms of fact. I have simply integrated the history into the story’s narrative. Wars continued between the Sviatoslavichi and the Monomakhichi long after the pages of this novel close. The Steppe tribes collectively known as Cumans were courted by both sides. Chernigov was a great prize, as was Kiev. Kiev in the eleventh century surpassed London and Paris. It was extremely sophisticated and wealthy. Pereiaslavl was located on the Trubezh river close to the Dnieper. Its territories bordered the Steppe and the fortress city bore the brunt of raids from Steppe nomads. The region was one of the main principalities within Kievan Rus and was assigned to Vladimir’s father, Vsevolod, and later to Vladimir.

  It is true that in 1078, after the death of their father, the Sviatoslavichi made deals with the Cumans of the Steppe to weaken Vsevolod and Iziaslav. What is invented here is the particular attack on Pereiaslavl that claims the final chapters of The Betrothed Sister. The battle for Pereiaslavl is representative of such attacks, though, of course, I invented the use of Greek fire. Even so, Greek fire was a researched invention and not implausible. The attacks around Chernigov in 1078 did happen and Grand Prince Iziaslav did lose his life at Nezhata Meadows.

  So you might ask, what happened to Vladimir? My story ends in 1078. Vladimir had caused Oleg Sviatoslavich to flee to Timutarakan, now in Crimea. By the end of the seventh decade political order was restored. However, peace did not last. By the 1090s Prince Oleg and the Cuman tribes had resumed their attacks on the southern Rus frontier. They carried terror to the heart of Kievan territories. They reached Kiev in 1096 where they pillaged the Cave Monastery. Vladimir made a treaty with Prince Oleg and the attacks were called off for a time. The Grand Prince Vsevolod died in 1093 and Prince Iziaslav’s elder son then ruled Kiev until he died.

  The feud between the Sviatoslavichi and Vladimir and Vladimir and Thea’s sons who were, by the ninth decade, grown up, continued until Vladimir made his own tribal alliances and engineered peace in 1097 with a conference at Liubech. Vladimir ruled Pereiaslavl throughout these two decades. It was complex because the Rus princes often intermarried with Cuman princesses to preserve peace and protect trade routes. Vladimir’s son Iuri (the third son) married the daughter of a Polovsky (Cuman) khan. It may be of interest here too that after Thea’s death, circa 1107, Vladimir remarried, unsurprisingly to a Cuman princess. He was elected Grand Prince of Kiev in 1113. He died in 1125 and was succeeded by Mstislav, whom the family had named Harold. Prince Vladimir left a beautiful and wise testimony, a letter to his sons, which can be read in the Russian Primary Chronicle. He was a warrior prince but he was also sincerely religious, philosophical and thoughtful.

  The domestic details of the novel, both in Denmark and in Russia, are researched in depth to lend authenticity to what is imagined within its pages. The Russian princesses did dwell in the terem that really equates to a bower or a solar. Most of the time women did not attend social gatherings in their own houses. Women were expected to be chaste, obedient, pious and to take care of servants and children. They were extremely protected and mixed less with men than their Western European counterparts. Women could own property. They ran their estates but they never interfered in politics. By the Rus law codes if a woman accused a man of rape her testimony was believed. There was severe punishment for rape. Rape was unreligious and it violated the honour of the woman’s clan.

  The rushnyk is an embroidery tradition that goes back long before the times I write about. It reaches back to Herodotus. Originally rushnyks were folk embroidery symbolic of beliefs and superstitions. Yet they evolved. The rushnyk held ancestral memories and followed a woman throughout her life. The act of spinning the thread for the rushnyk embodied spiritual power for, after all, three fingers, a trinity, were used to twist the thread. The path of life starts at the bottom and continues to the top. They represented a cycle of life. They were used at weddings as I describe in the novel. They were used to lower the coffin after death. Every colour had its own needle and the colours represent different qualities. A needle was never loaned but left hidden. The idea was that thousands of tiny stitches can create great energy. I wanted Thea to have a rushnyk to contain her memories and to follow the life that she had once she became a Russian princess. I felt that along with Thea’s love of storytelling it is an important trope for this fictitious historical story which is, as far as I can make it, a symbol rooted in many of the actual facts and in the atmosphere I felt belonged to this story.

  Thea’s story illustrates too how the Godwine line survived through her. She was the great-grandmother many times removed of the last Russian royal family, the Romanovs, and also connected to our own royal family through Philippa of Hainault who married Edward III.

  We do not know what happened to her brothers. We know that Magnus died as I have told it. Godwin sought help from Sweyn over and over. He did have connections to Ireland and may have lived his life out in Ireland or possibly in Denmark or possibly Russia. Many Anglo-Saxon dispossessed were scattered throughout Europe after 1066. The same applies to Edmund. Since there was a strong English presence in Novgorod and in Kiev after the Battle of Hastings, I allowed Edmund the luxury of being a merchant trader. Ulf was not released until after the death of King William in 1086. He was knighted by William’s eldest estranged son, Robert. He possibly accompanied Robert of Normandy on the First Crusade. Ulf is the stolen Godwin princeling, forever in the background of these novels. Gytha died at St Omer or in Denmark. Her daughter Hilda died in St Omer where she had taken the veil.

  This is where the series ends. I have loved writing all three stories. It is difficult to say goodbye to them but I am delighted that apparently they have found their readers. Thank you, my readers. They are, I emphasise, a retelling of events that happened so long ago that often these women’s stories as I tell them belong to the realms of fiction as well as fact. However, I wanted to bring them to life so they are no
t shadows forgotten in the footnotes of history. Please do be aware that in each book I blend fact with invention. There is just not enough fact available about them and remember that I am, after all, writing Historical Fiction, albeit thoroughly researched and thus informed fiction.

  Short Bibliography

  Medieval Russia 980-1584, Janet Martin, Cambridge University Press, 1995, 2011

  Borderland: A Journey through the History of Ukraine, Anna Reid, Basic Books, new edition, 2000

  Russia’s Women, edited by Barbara Evans Clements, Barbara Alpern Engel and Christina D. Worobec, Indiana University Press, 2012

  Reinterpreting Russian History Readings 860-1880s, compiled and edited by Daniel H. Kaiser and Gary Marker, Oxford University Press, 1994

  Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov, edited by Robert Chandler, Penguin Classics, 2012

  The Vikings, Else Roesdahl, Penguin, 1998

  The Elder Edda: Myths, Gods and Heroes from the Viking World, translated by Andy Orchard, Penguin Classics, 2013

  The Russian Primary Chronicle, Nestor the Chronicler, translated and edited by Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor, 1930

  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, translated and edited by Michael Swanton, Phoenix Press, 2000

  Russian Proverbs, Chris Skillen, Appletree Press, 1994

  These are only a few of the scores of texts I consulted when writing this novel. I must thank the Department of Slavonic Studies, Oxford where I read The Russian Primary Chronicle which I found utterly absorbing not only because of what it said but because of the poetry of those voices reaching down through the centuries to us from that very distant world. How can we ever forget them!

  Carol McGrath

  Carol’s passion has always been reading and writing historical fiction. She lives in Oxfordshire with her husband and family. She taught History in an Oxfordshire comprehensive until she took an MA in Creative Writing at The Seamus Heaney Centre, Queens University Belfast. This was quickly followed by an MPhil in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her debut novel, The Handfasted Wife, first in a trilogy about the royal women of 1066, was shortlisted for the RoNAS, 2014 in the historical category. The Swan-Daughter is the second in the trilogy. It is also a stand-alone novel. Carol can often be discovered in Oxford’s famous Bodleian Library where she undertakes meticulous research for her novels.

  Find Carol on her website: www.carolcmcgrath.co.uk.

  The Daughters of Hastings Trilogy

  Carol McGrath

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