Here Be Dragons, by Sharon Kay Penman

Here Be Dragons
By Sharon Kay Penman

When Sharon Kay Penman writes dramatic historical novels, she surpasses all possible expectations. This book was her second one, the first being the triumphant The Sunne in Splindour, and she rivaled her own work. You simply cannot go wrong with a Penman.

Here Be Dragons is the story of Joanna, bastard daughter of King John of England. It is divided into two "Books". Book One focuses primarily on Joanna's relationship with her affectionate father. When her mother, bitter and self-destructive, dies when Joanna is five years old, only happenstance finds her being taken to her father, still just the younger brother of the king, King Richard I, that is. He sup rises her by welcoming her with open arms as he did with all his bastards. All she knows, therefore, of the man is that he is a kind, loving and generous father. Her idyllic life with him ends when he marries her off to Prince Llewellyn ap Yorweth, the future "Llewellyn the Great" of Wales,. At first she is too young to be his wife in any but name only, but once the two connect sexually their relationship develops into a passionate lusty one. The two flies in the ointment are her unwillingness to hear bad spoken about her father and the Welsh suspicion of her as a Norman.

Book Two starts after King John dies and Joanna has long since had to accept that her father was really two men, the kind father and the vindictivve and cruel monarch. She now has children with Llewellyn, including their son Dafydd. Llewellyn has a son by his first mistress, a revbellious young man called Gryffydd who detests Joanna and Dafydd. When she sets him up to show his violent jealousy in his father's presence, he is sent to confinement in a stronghold. Llewellyn makes Dafydd his heir and when he learns of Joanna's part in the incident, he goes off to war angry. It is during the month he is gone that joanna turns to William de Braoise, a cad of the first order, for reassurance. She cuts it off, but William, not realizing she means it, shows up in her chamber just as Llewllyn arrives home. I have to say that Llewellyn's reaction was very painful.. not his hanging of William or imprison ment of Joanna, but the evident agony he himself is in. The remainder of the book is about his and Joanna's reconciliation. I was relieved that the book ends long before any death scenes for the two.

If I have any criticism of this book it is that in order to give both Joanna and John an equal number of scenes in Book One, I felt that Penman had to stretch to fill Joanna's scenes. I know she had to show the fraying trust between Joanna and her husband, but I think this could have been done in fewer richer scenes. But compared to the mastery throughout the novel, this criticism is insignificant.

I have read Edith Pargeter's The Heaven Tree Trilogy whose second volume, The Green Branch, includes the story of Joanna and William de Braoise. The two authors had radically opposite takes on the affair. The only element in common was that Llewllyn and Joanna were themselves in love. In both I found I did not care much for Joanna, generally as well as in her role in the affair. Penman has her motivation for the affair a complex mix of loneliness, desire, and pity for William, who for his part is a notorious philanderer with other men's wives. Pargeter portrayed Joanna as reaching menopause and feeling old and undesirable, but Willilam in The Green Vranch is truly in love. Like the historical man, both Williams are hanged, but in Pargeter's story she accomplished two full weeks of deep mourning in me. The scene where he waits to be hoisted to die and gazes where he knows Joanna is, tears in his eyes, almost killed me. So you can imagine that reading a different version of the story filled me with trepidation. What saved it for me is that the ensuing reconciliation between Llewellyn and Joanna was so moving.

This is a sure bet --- if you haven't read it, put it high up on your list.

This book is available in hardback, paperback, and on Kindle.