While her library is well-packed with non-fiction texts, this is only the beginning of her extensive fact-finding mission for each book. An English friend of mine said, ‘This is so interesting, to hear about history from the losers.’”īilyeau’s fascination with these historical characters stems from a deep-rooted love of English history. As a daughter of a Catholic mother and a Protestant father, I know what it’s like to be divided-I am drawn to stories of religious strife. I have given a great deal of thought to how it felt to survive the Dissolution of the Monasteries when you were a committed Catholic. “Almost everyone writes fiction in the Tudor era from the Protestant side of the Reformation,” she says. Between denouncing his religion to marry Anne Boleyn and then beheading her, to his most well-known legacy of being somewhat of a (ruthless) womanizer, it’s no wonder the Tudors have front lined hundreds of books, TV shows and movies, and even today continue to feed the pop culture machine.Īs an author entering the well-documented Tudor era, it might be easy to get lost in the milieu-but Nancy Bilyeau, author of the award-winning Joanna Stafford series, has carved out her own niche by writing thrilling plots set within the “real” time, while focusing not only on the more recognizable characters of the past, but also on some of the lesser knowns-like Sir Walter Hungerford, for instance, who was executed alongside Thomas Cromwell and, according to Bilyeau, may-or may not-have been a debauched madman. Few eras inspire more passion-and controversy-than the Tudor Dynasty, a period of tumultuous change in England, and of course remembered for many of King Henry VIII’s exploits.
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