New Release/Guest Post: Empire's Heir by Marian L Thorpe

 I am so excited that Marian L Thorpe's new book, the latest in her Empire's Legacy series, is released today!

I have read all the books in the series so far and have thoroughly enjoyed them all. Marian has built such a believable world and peopled it with brilliantly rounded characters.

I'm delighted to welcome Marian to the blog today to talk about a poignant and central theme in the new book.

But first, a little about that new book:

Some games are played for mortal stakes.

Gwenna, heir to Ésparias, is summoned by the Empress of Casil to compete for the hand of her son. Offered power and influence far beyond what her own small land can give her, Gwenna’s strategy seems clear – except she loves someone else.

Nineteen years earlier, the Empress outplayed Cillian in diplomacy and intrigue. Alone, his only living daughter has little chance to counter the Empress's experience and skill. Aging and torn by grief and worry, Cillian insists on accompanying Gwenna to Casil.

Risking a charge of treason, faced with a choice he does not want to make, Cillian must convince Gwenna her future is more important than his – while Gwenna plans her moves to keep her father safe. Both are playing a dangerous game. Which one will concede – or sacrifice?

So now over to Marian:

A Father Growing Old

“To a father growing old, nothing is dearer than a daughter.” Euripedes

Fathers and daughters: often a complex and layered relationship, and more so when your daughter is heir to your country’s leadership – the position you turned down. Add dangerous secrets and sensitive marriage negotiations to the mix of family and political dynamics, and they only amplify the conflicting views of love and duty that lie at the heart of Empire’s Heir.

Eighteen-year-old Gwenna is summoned to Casil, the capital of the Eastern Empire, to be considered as the bride of the young Emperor Alekos. Her father, fifty-three-year-old Cillian, disabled and in pain, insists on accompanying her: the diplomacy of Casil’s palace will be too subtle and nuanced for her skills. And possibly for his now, too.

Like Gwenna, I had an ‘older’ father: when I was eighteen, my father was sixty. Like Gwenna, I would follow in his footsteps of interests and career, at least for a while. At sixty, my father was still active, physically and mentally, but he was slowing down a bit, preferring to spend his leisure time in reading. Like Cillian, he’d always had his head in a book: an amateur historian, his interest was focused on the Tudors and the Plantagenets. And I, taught to read at three by a bored ex-teacher grandmother, growing up in a small farming town, would read anything – and so I read the biographies of Henry VIII and his daughters; of Francis Walsingham, of Cromwell and Cranmer, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II… and a dozen others, at least. In that reading, I absorbed not just timelines and characters, but the intricate dance of diplomacy and power in all its facets, whether wielded by kings or queens, spymasters or administrators. As I grew older, and began a degree in history I didn’t finish, we talked a lot about social history, too; how events affected the common man and woman, about failed grass-roots rebellions and the slow process of change, all of which has influenced all my books enormously.

But there was a second period of British history that also interested my father – and inevitably me, for more personal reasons: the reigns of Victoria, Edward VII, and George V.  His grandfather worked for both Edward VII and George V (or more precisely, Queen Mary) at their country house at Sandringham in Norfolk. (Sandringham was bought for Edward, then Prince of Wales by Victoria and Albert in 1862, and my family’s connection began when Joseph Rainbow, my great-grandfather and a cabinet-maker, came from the firm of Holland and Sons in London to assist with furnishings. He ended up staying to work for the Prince of Wales.)

My father spent six or seven years living with his grandfather in the 1920s, attending Christmas parties for the staff’s children at Sandringham House, playing in the gardens, and observing his mother serving tea to the Queen and princesses when they came to visit his grandfather’s home, as they did every so often. His interest in their history was born of his own social history, of wanting to better understand the family his family had served.

I heard those stories, from the grandmother who lived with us, from aunts and from my father, and I read the biographies, because they were there. One of the many things that stayed in my mind was Victoria, ascending the throne at eighteen, dependent on older, ‘father figure’ advisors, her marriage prospects limited to men of her rank. I cannot believe that did not influence my concept of Gwenna at eighteen!

In my depiction of Cillian in Empire’s Heir, the aging man worried for his daughter’s future, I often saw glimpses of my own father, his measured speech, his logic and sense of history, his undemonstrative affection. My father died, at nearly 99, in the same month my first book, Empire’s Daughter, was published; he never read it in any form, but I think he would have seen his influence in it and subsequent books, most of all in this newest one. I dedicated Empire’s Heir to him.

Thanks so much to Marian. You can connect with her HERE

and you can purchase Empire's Heir from today.