Jean Gill on Dorothy Dunnett
Jean Gill, author of the Troubadors series
I fell in love with Lymond over forty years ago. Luckily, the man in my life discovered Dorothy Dunnett’s epic novels with the same enthusiasm. Only a Dunnett fan could insist that one of the three kings had a racing camel to complete the miniature nativity scene at Christmas.
Like her heroes, Dunnett lets her imagination run riot and leaves us breathless as she bounds ahead on a metaphorical rooftop race, yelling, ‘Keep up!’ One minute she’s indulging us with life in a harem or a love scene by a waterfall and the next she’s showering us with quotations in one of six? seven? languages, including her beloved Scots.
When I look back on my 12th-century Troubadours series, I realise how much I owe to her. She showed me how to weave the high drama lived by fictional characters into real history. Her plots are twisty, inventive and if they’re chaotic we don’t care because we’re caught up in the emotional ride and we’re rooting for our favourite characters.
Like Lymond, my character Dragonetz has a tortured past, is charismatic and a natural leader, and yet dreads winning because he knows the price. Also like Lymond, he is made vulnerable by music, overwhelmed by his love for one woman. Who can forget the sensual scene where Lymond woos Catherine, his betrothed, with song while the love of his life, Philippa, puts on a brave face and endures each line?
In my Troubadours, the marriage of true minds between Dragonetz and his young protegée Estela is revealed in lines from real troubadours’ verse, with my translations, and their physical passion simmers in every duet. When he arranges her marriage to someone else, it is for the most honourable of reasons, as when Lymond holds back from Philippa. He is not worthy.
Despite writing in a time that was neither woke nor even waking, Dunnett wrote an amazing diversity of people into her medieval worlds: characters who are gay, wheelchair users, of different religions and races, aristocrats and peasants. In The Troubadours I portray people and friendships that might surprise readers but are based on primary sources. Medieval people were indeed our long-ago likenesses, in their failings and feelings – and in the ways their private lives did not conform to the official messages of Church and State.
Dunnett’s meticulous and wide-ranging research underpins the rich detail that draws you into medieval life and I spent a year on research before each book of the Troubadours. Instead of a dye-yard, there is a paper mill and whereas 15th-century banking pitted Florence against Venice, banking in 1150 consisted of the promissory note, a recent innovation by the Knights Templar. I loved such details in Dunnett’s work, where trade is also a battlefield, and I include them in my own novels.
Most of all, Dunnett can deliver a knife in the guts. The villain turns out to be damaged himself – or herself. So near escape or so near redemption, doomed by a twist of fate. A happy ending for one character comes with a price for another. In my novels too, betrayal twists that knife, and you can never be sure anyone is safe. If my readers visit the Palace of Joy in Zaragoza and say, ‘This is where Malik and his ancestors lived and this is the garden where Queen Petronilla told Estela that her conduct was unsuitable for one of the queen’s ladies,’ then my work is done. I want readers to feel as I do in Dunnett’s world: to live my books, not just read them.
Jean Gill is the award-winning author of twenty-five books, best known for her 12th-century historical fiction: the Troubadours series set in Europe and the Holy Land, and The Midwinter Dragon series, set in Viking Orkney. Find out more about Jean, her books and her photography at jeangill.com.
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