Author: Freda Warrington
Cover Artist: Larry Rostant
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: 2003
History is usually written by the victors, which often means that certain facts are left out or certain figures are deliberately misrepresented. Richard III, who has the dubious reputation as one of the most reviled kings in English history, is perhaps the paradigmatic example of a history written by the winning side. He was reviled by the Tudor apologist Thomas More and immortalized as an evil and crippled hunchback in the play of William Shakespeare. It is, ironically enough, his notoriety that has attracted his most ardent apologists, most notably the Richard III Society – formed in 1924 by a group of amateur historians who believed that Richard III had been unjustly vilified throughout history and thus took upon them the task of defending his reputation (read more at www.richardiii.net). The revisionist attempts of Richard III’s supporters generally fail to elicit academic approval, yet this type of historical revisionism has been extremely successful within the genre of historical fiction where novels such as Sharon K. Penman’s meticulously researched Sunne in Splendour offers a portrait of Richard that is vastly different from Shakespeare’s infamous villain.
Freda Warrington’s novel The Court of the Midnight King is part of this particular tradition of Ricardian historical fiction, but she takes the revisionism a step further by intertwining the story of Richard with another secret history. Warrington’s representation of 15th century England differs from the conventional historical knowledge on several points. She paints a world where paganism hasn’t been entirely suppressed by Christianity. Alongside the world of men and priests thus exists a hidden world of goddess worship, here represented as a uniquely female brand of spirituality. Warrington’s novel thus also draws upon the “feminist” tradition of historical fantasy in the vein of Marion Zimmer Bradley.
The basic plot of The Court of the Midnight King spans the period of civil war in England, known as the Wars of the Roses, experienced through the eyes of Katherine Lytton and Raphael Hart. They are both children of Yorkist sympathizers and their families suffer because of the allegiance of their fathers. More importantly, both Kate and Raphael are children of women who travel the hidden path of the Earth Goddess, the Serpent Mother Auset – and both of them cross paths with Richard III. Raphael is orphaned by Lancastrian forces at a very young age, a trauma that leaves his without memory and open to visions when he is found by the victorious Yorkists. He forms an immediate connection to Richard, the young Duke of Gloucester and brother of Edward IV. He later enters the household of Richard of Gloucester as one of his most loyal and trusted knights.
Whereas Raphael is an orphan who makes Richard his family, Kate grows up in a household shaped by an ailing father and a strong mother. Like her mother, Kate is inducted into the mysteries of the Sisterhood of Auset and must therefore straddle two very different worlds, something she finds extremely hard to do. In order to avoid a distasteful marriage, Kate leaves her family home and enters into the service of the Neville family, one of the great powers behind the Yorkist regime. First as a lady-in-waiting to Isabelle Neville who is wed to George, the Duke of Clarence and brother to Edward. After Isabelle’s death in childbirth, Kate enters the service of Anne Neville who is married to Richard of Gloucester with whom Kate has an ambivalent and tension-ridden relationship.
It is through the eyes of Kate and Raphael that Warrington tells Richard’s story – a story that the astute reader will find significantly different from the “official” one yet still based on a thorough knowledge of the period and events in question. When it comes to the figure of Richard and the Wars of the Roses, Warrington’s narrative doesn’t deviate very much from historical fact – one event is decisively altered but she has otherwise simply presented her interpretations of some the unsolved riddles of Richard’s reign, fx the fate of the Edward IV’s two sons.
Warrington’s novel offers an alternate history in the sense that she creates a world suffused with magic, where women’s spirituality has not altogether been assimilated by the Christian Church and where women can wield spiritual and magical power, albeit in a hidden way, across the otherwise dividing lines of social class and political faction. Warrington presents the reader with a world animated by spirit, a world where nature is quite literally alive in the form of elemental spirits as well as the hidden world of Faerie. Warrington’s intensely descriptive prose borders on the “flowery” or “purple”, but it is quite suited to the strange and enchanted world that she has created – and it is precisely this atmosphere of “enchantment” that is one of the novel’s strongest points.
When it comes to character, Warrington’s work is somewhat uneven. Kate is by far the novel’s strongest and most engaging character. She is feisty, head-strong and passionate, which I found very appealing and if she sometimes sounded too much like a modern woman, then her status as a priestess of Auset makes her opinions and attitudes quite plausible in relation to the narrative’s inner logic. Richard remains a ubiquitous yet elusive character as the reader only experiences him through the eyes of others. To Raphael, Richard is the embodiment of knightly virtue and the epitome of royal authority. Kate, however, has changing opinions of Richard, which helps the reader to discern the nuances and flaws that Raphael’s fervent idolatry cannot detect. Kate is at once attracted and repulsed by Richard, attracted by his obvious charisma yet repulsed by his fearful, priggish and judgemental attitude towards the Sisterhood of Auset and the hidden world.
Raphael is by far the weakest among Warrington’s characters. He doesn’t really seem to be distinguished by anything else than his honourable behaviour and devout loyalty. He is a rather bland and uninteresting character, which leads me to question his function in the story. As it turns out, Raphael and his visions has quite an important function in The Court of the Midnight King because Warrington does not only wish to write an alternate history about Richard III, she also wants to interrogate his infamous reputation. In order to do so, Warrington resorts to two different strategies. Firstly, she introduces a separate narrative, set in a contemporary college environment where a young female student becomes fascinated with the enigma of Richard III and quietly attempts to unravel fact from fiction when it comes to his reputation. Secondly, Warrington lets Raphael be haunted with a series of sinister and prophetic visions about Richard that essentially corresponds to some of the most infamous aspects of his posthumous reputation. The problem is just that Warrington handles these aspects of the narrative very clumsily. The sinister nature of Raphael’s visions are not really consonant with the story’s internal logic and they appear jarring, and in one instance, downright ridiculous. The contemporary narrative doesn’t work any better. For the most part it appears utterly unconnected to the central story and when the two narratives begins to intersect, Warrington’s writing disintegrates into a heavy purple prose and a florid and romantic form of mysticism that doesn’t suit the novel at all. She would have done better to stick to the central narrative of an alternate 15th century England and leave the interrogation of Richard III’s reputation well alone. As it is, her clumsy handling of Richard’s historical infamy remains the novel’s deepest flaw as it mars an otherwise fascinating narrative. Fortunately, the reader has the option of simply bypassing the contemporary narrative as it is largely unconnected to central storyline and enjoy the rest of the story.
Trine D. Paulsen
