Update on My First Novel: ‘Warrior Princess and Errant Page.’

It has taken sixteen years, but next spring, around March or April 2025, copies of the young adult historical novel ‘Warrior Princess and Errant Page’ – all about King Wenceslas’s page and his relationship with King Alfred the Great’s granddaughter – should be available in ebook and paperback versions.

The page, who in my book is second cousin to the Bohemian King Wenceslas, is called Podevin. He meets Emma, the Anglo-Saxon princess, when Emma is sent half-way across Europe to Bohemia (present-day Czechia). She is to marry into King Wenceslas’s family. However, despite them being of an age (Podevin is sixteen, and Emma’s fourteen, when the story begins), King Wenceslas chooses his ten-year-old nephew as the groom. No-one is happy with the king’s decision: least of all, Emma herself.

On their journey to Prague, Emma and Podevin are attacked and have to fight side-by-side for their lives. Things get worse for the star-crossed couple when Emma is married off to her young groom, and Wenceslas is assassinated by his own brother. The King’s untimely death means Podevin (as a Wenceslas supporter) has to flee for his life to the forests around Prague. Will he ever be reunited with Emma? And how much more killing will have to happen before there is any peace?

While some facts are known, a lot of the history around Wenceslas is uncertain, and myths abound. There is no evidence, for example, that the King ever ‘looked out on the feast of Stephen’ (as the well-known Christmas carol says), but a version of that snowy incident does appear in my story.  I have written a novel bringing to life shadowy figures from over one thousand years ago. I hope, once it comes out, you enjoy it.