This is one book where I knew the ending before I actually began writing it! I am not talking about the battle that was to end the civilisation of the Anglo-Saxons, I mean the book itself. It was a destination that I knew that I could reach, I just did not want to be too obvious about it. Perhaps, as a writer, I wanted to offset some of the sadness that I knew was going to be inevitable in that nearly all of the Saxon characters that I had created as warriors were going to die at Hastings. I had actually grown to quite like them.
There was one important opportunity that this book gave me and that was to set the record right in respect of what actually happened in this apocalyptic encounter. The victors, as we know, usually get to write the history. The Normans won and they represented the feat as inevitable, that they were superior, and that the Saxons were crushed. In researching this period of history, I discovered that the facts did not support the popular view of the battle. King Harold did not have a depleted army of tired warriors and Duke Guillaume's forces were not superior to their enemy. The truth is that King Harold and the Saxons came very close to winning the battle, which made writing about it all the more interesting.
As the last book in the trilogy there were various other stories that I had to conclude, such as Mildryth and the unwelcome attention that she had to suffer from Wulfhere. Although this struggle of wills was secondary to the main story it was still important. Mildryth was a strong Saxon woman, not a warrior, but theign-worthy. She was not about to bow down to a man of Wufhere's character, so their final encounter was going to be deadly.
In writing this trilogy of books I learnt a lot about the period and gained a new respect for the Saxons as a people. For some reason they always seem to play second fiddle to the Vikings but in many respects they were at very least the equal to their Norse enemies, if not also the superior of the two. It was the Saxons who withstood Viking incursions for five hundred years, overthrew the kingdoms that they tried to establish in England, and defeated the greatest Norse army ever to invade the island. The Vikings had their moments of success, but it was the Saxons who were ultimately victorious. They might have defeated the Normans as well if political infighting had not kept all of the English lords and their men from joining King Harold at Hastings.
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