Adapting Medieval Legend and History
AWW: In writing The Traitor of Sherwood Forest, you've weaved bits of Robin Hood and the Potter, the Gest, Robin Hood and the Monk, the Gisborne and Death ballads together. What was your process in selecting which bits of the original ballads to retell, and how to fit them together in a narrative whole?
ASK: This was a really intricate process, especially since the ballads have so many contradictory versions of events. I focused on using the pre-1500 literature and only used later ballads if they had medieval roots, such as the Gisbourne ballad and the story of Robin's death, which expands on the last lines of the medieval Gest of Robyn Hode. My intent was to stay as close as possible to the legends of Robin Hood before he was transformed into a nobleman, because his motivations completely change with that shift.
A disinherited Robin Hood fighting to get his land back has a simple psychology. He's not necessarily opposed to monarchy or religion; he just wants to replace bad rulers with good ones (and get his stuff back). But the medieval Robin Hood is a true outlaw, and his psychology is much more interesting to me. He is against the church and the nobility as political institutions, and all of his actions are meant to disrupt. Once I decided on Robin's motivations within my novel and imagined his reasons for doing what he does in the ballads, the events I needed to use clicked into place.
However, I also had to plan around my heroine, Jane, who works as a servant in one of the king's estates. I would have had a hard time putting in her huge battle scenes or sending her to Nottingham, so in the end, I chose events that Jane could be a part of, or at least adjacent to, without straining credulity. This lent itself to a close narrative tied to the local setting, focused on Robin's influence on a certain set of people. And that really served my purpose, which was, ultimately, to try to imagine how medieval people would have felt about Robin Hood.
AWW: I was intrigued by the time period you chose. In the medieval ballad the king's name is Edward. The early writers mentioned a time period for Robin Hood. A lot of times when writers want to break from the Hollywood version of the legend set in the 1190s, they go to a later King Edward — Edward II or Edward III (in the 1310s, 1320s and 1330s). But you harked back to medieval chronicler Andrew of Wynton's dating of Robin Hood and Little John to the reign of Edward I in the 1280s, and specifically the background given by chronicler Walter Bower in that they had fought in Simon de Montfort's rebellion in the 1260s. What was most compelling about this setting for the novel?
ASK: This was a fun puzzle to solve. Andrew of Wyntoun and Walter Bower are writing around the first half of the fifteenth century, near the time of the Geste, which names King Edward but doesn't tell us which one. So, I worked from the supposition that these texts were all conversant with the same version of the legend (especially since Bower angrily denounces popular Robin Hood ballads of the time). Since my project was to understand what kind of hero medieval people thought Robin Hood was, it made sense to take the medieval sources at their word.
When I dug into historical events, the timeline made sense, at least in terms of the story I wanted to tell. Edward I was instrumental in the Second Barons' War. Although he first supported the barons' reforms, he eventually fought against the rebels and defended his father, Henry III. If Robin Hood fought for the rebellion against Henry, as Bower claims, then he might well be living as an outlaw when Edward I took his father's throne, five years after the capture and surrender of most of the rebels.
Edward himself was also an excellent villain. He consolidated power and instituted new taxes on exports, then waged war on his neighbours, driving taxes higher still. (I swear I'm not drawing modern parallels on purpose!) Edward also had a woman kidnapped to stop a political alliance, he expelled the Jews from England, and, famously, he ordered the brutal execution of William Wallace.
Betrayal is an important theme in my book, and it's easy to see the seeds of that betrayal in Edward's early years, as people who had just survived a brutal civil war were further pressed for taxes, disempowered in government, and increasingly restricted in their own lives. You could see where an outlaw who wanted to overthrow the whole system, and who could disrupt the king and the church when most people couldn't, would be really appealing.
AWW:I see with Walter de Stircheley you used the name of the real Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in 1274. Did you take any historical aspects from the real sheriffs (or shire reeves)?
ASK: You're the first person to notice this! Other than the general date range, the only criteria I had for selecting a real-life sheriff was, alas, that he only held the office for a few years. Spoiler alert.
I did try to ensure that Walter had the duties and responsibilities of a medieval sheriff rather than a modern one. A medieval sheriff was a servant of the king and was, in part, responsible for collecting taxes and making sure that nobles did their part in foreign wars. In fact, I had to cut a small subplot with the sheriff, Sir Richard, and an edict called the "distraint of knighthood"—Henry III's law that landowners either had to become knights and serve the king's military ambitions, or pay a fine. Edward I was really into enforcing this, for obvious reasons, given all his wars. And the Geste actually makes a mention of it: when Robin suspects that Sir Richard was "made a knyght of force," this is what he means.
Unfortunately, most readers aren't all that interested in the political intricacies of land taxation. I hope everyone reading this is still awake!
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