The Tower of London, “a palace as well as a prison” (85), is a key setting of the novel. Research the Tower’s fascinating history. You can learn about the prisoners, treasures, and folklore of the Tower at www.camelotintl.com/tower_site/index.html.




Questions for the Author

1. Why do you think contemporary readers are still fascinated by Tudor England? What is it about that era that captures our imaginations?

The Tudors and their times have always made interesting reading, starting with the gossip-filled dispatches of sixteenth-century foreign ambassadors. Hundreds of books have been written about Henry VIII and Elizabeth I and Shakespeare, but there were many other people in Tudor England who led remarkable lives. It would be hard not to be fascinated by them.

2. Why did you choose to write a novel about Jane Popyncourt, an actual member of the Tudor court? Why not invent a character from scratch, or build a novel around a historical figure with a better-known past?

I’ve had an interest in the real women of the sixteenth century for a long time, particularly those who are not as well known as some of their contemporaries. What drew me to Jane as a character were the mysteries surrounding her. Why was she chosen to come to England and join the royal nursery? Why did King Louis forbid Jane—and only Jane—to accompany Mary Tudor to France? Why did he say she should be burned? The challenge I gave myself was to work out reasonable fictional answers to those questions while sticking to the facts that are known. Inventing a character from scratch would probably have been easier, but not as much fun. Initially, I did consider using Henry VIII’s sister, Mary, as my protagonist. I decided against it for two reasons. First, other novelists have already written her story. Second, there was less scope for invention in her life, since so much of it is well documented.

3. The Pleasure Palace is meticulously detailed, from costumes and banquets to masques and battles. How did you go about researching the Tudor court for this novel?

I’ve been reading about Tudor times since I was in high school and I started accumulating books on the subject at about the same time. I still read everything I can get my hands on and have file folders stuffed with notes on all sorts of arcane subjects. Fortunately, since many other people have been fascinated with the era for such a long time, there is a great deal out there. Biographies are a particularly rich source of information. For anyone who is interested, there is a list of some of the sources I used for this novel at www.KateEmersonHistoricals.com.

4. Holiday celebrations, from the Twelfth Night banquet to the St. Valentine’s Eve lottery, play a big role in The Pleasure Palace. Which holiday traditions from the Tudor era do you wish were still in practice today?

I think it would be fun to have a Lord of Misrule or a King of the Bean at Yuletide. The only problem is that you’d also have to have a very large household. With the small families most people have these days, the tradition wouldn’t work quite so well.

5. According to your Author’s Note, Jane Popyncourt might have been French or Flemish. Why did you decide to make your heroine Breton-Flemish, a sort of combination of the two?

I wanted to account for the confusion, and also for her surname, which didn’t strike me as particularly French. As for the Breton half, Jane’s mother almost had to be from there in order to make the connection to the future Henry VII work.

6. The games and tournaments of the court punctuate the plot of the novel. What were some of the challenges in describing these spectacles on the page? Which games do you think you would have enjoyed playing or watching, if you had lived in Tudor England?

The biggest challenge (and my editor will vouch for this) was deciding what to cut. I found so much information on tennis and bowls and masques and tournaments, all of it fascinating to me, that I found it difficult to choose which details to include and which to leave out. My original manuscript contained way too much description of pageant wagons and costumes and the like. I think I would have enjoyed watching most of the spectacles, but the only one I’d have wanted to participate in would have been the dancing.

7. “Courtly love” is common throughout the novel—many affairs occur, and lovers are easily replaced. Do you see any similarities to romance today, or has the battle of the sexes changed dramatically since Henry VIII’s lifetime?

Some things never change. People fall in and out of love, suffer heartbreak, and make life-altering decisions based on physical attraction. The difference in Tudor times was that young people were more likely to give in to family and religious pressure to marry someone chosen for them, opting for economic and social stability over romantic love.

8. Two murder mysteries remain unsolved in the novel: King Charles of France and Jane’s mother, Jeanne Popyncourt. Why did you leave these suspicious deaths open-ended?

The rumors I mention surrounding King Charles’s death really were bandied about. He died in a rather bizarre way and no one can be certain what happened. Even so, I suspect his death was an accident, caused by that blow to the head. Jeanne Popyncourt’s death, on the other hand, being fiction, gave me the chance to make sense of several odd historical facts: What happened to Jane’s parents when she came to England? Why is there a Jane Popyncourt listed in the household accounts of Elizabeth of York when Jane was sent to the nursery? Why did Sir Richard Guildford go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land at a time when such journeys by Englishmen were extremely rare? And finally, why did Margaret Beaufort, King Henry VII’s mother, take a vow of chastity, dress like a nun, and wear a hair shirt during the last part of her life?

9. Your Author’s Note reveals that you invented the uncle-niece relationship between Sir Rowland Velville and Jane Popyncourt, two historical figures. Were there other imaginative connections you considered while planning this book?

I looked at several possibilities, including having Henry VII bring Jane to England because she was his natural daughter. For that to work, however, Jane would have had to be much older. Whoever Jane really was, there must have been some reason why she was selected, and the most likely was that there was a family connection to some prominent figure at court.

10. Have readers seen the last of Jane, or do you think you will revisit this character in another book?

I’ve said pretty much all I wanted to about Jane and left her at a good place in her life. However, since no one knows exactly when she died, it is always possible she might make a cameo appearance in a future novel.

SECRETS OF THE TUDOR COURT