After my recent forays into Medieval England through Elizabeth Chadwick's novels about William Marshal (I wrote about them here and here), I thought it might be interesting to read about the same time period (Pargeter's books pick up roughly where Chadwick's left off) but from the Welsh perspective. Sourcebooks has just reissued Edith Pargeter's quartet of novels, Sunrise in the West, The Dragon at Noonday, The Hounds of Sunset, and Afterglow and Nightfall, in one very hefty volume, The Brothers of Gwynedd.
Sunrise in the West begins the story of the Welsh struggle to unite and gain its independence from England's Henry III and later his son, Edward I in the 1200s. The novel opens with a divided Wales. Not only does England claim parts of it as its own, but the Lord Griffith and his elder son are held as guests, really nothing more than prisoners, at King Henry's behest. Brother clashes against brother for control and unruly chieftains balk at uniting against one foe, and this rivalry has been passed down over two generations.
The bloody and tumultuous story of the brothers Gwynedd is narrated by Samson, a character of mysterious lineage who becomes a learned clerk and secretary to Lord Griffith's second son, Llewelyn, and witness to the events that unfold. He is a most faithful chronicler of this tale.
"I tell what I know, what I have seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears. And if it should come to pass that I must tell also what I have not seen, that, too, shall be made plain, and how I came to know it is certainly that I tell it as though I had been present. And I say now that there is none ever knew him better than I, and God He knows there is none, man or woman, ever loved him better."
Samson and Llewelyn were born on the same day so share a bond of sorts growing up together as children and becoming close friends as men. Samsun's mother is a waiting-woman to the Lady Senena whose four sons, Owen Goch, Llewelyn, Rhodri and David, will grapple for for ultimate power. Divided loyalties and the will of the English split the family. As the eldest son is held hostage with his father and later the youngest two are raised in the English courts, its only Llewelyn who has stayed true to his Welsh heritage and must deal with treacherous behavior from his own brothers once they are free from King Henry.
Henry's own far reaching interests and attentions to the East give Llewelyn just the chance he needs to unite his countrymen and defeat his adversaries in order to look towards a more forceful enemy--the English. It's perhaps prophetic when Samson notes that Prince Edward, who had been granted lands in Wales, has had " his nose rubbed in the mire", which is never a good thing to do to Edward.
"But remember what we have scored up against us, for very surely Edward will remember it, every heifer and every grain."
As historical novels go, I think Edith Pargeter did an admiral job of portraying a slice of history both factually and realistically. Her scholarship is creditable and this is a serious work of fiction. It has a very different feel to it than other works of historical fiction I've read and I'm not sure I can explain how (or that my thoughts are even correct). Maybe it's a matter of some stories playing out against a backdrop and this story being completely intertwined with with it. In a sense this is really very much a chronicle of the events that occurred in 13th century Wales. You couldn't very easily take these people out the story and put them somewhere else, which is what a historical novelist must want to achieve in her work.
For myself, though, there seemed to be some dimension of the story missing. The personal? Even though Samson narrates the story in the first person (or maybe because of this fact) I never felt quite close to any of the characters. Samson is our storyteller and partakes in many of the adventures, so there is a certain sense of immediacy, yet I never felt close to him or witness to his own interior world. He is only recounting this tale. I always felt outside the picture looking in, whereas with other stories I might feel close to the characters. I mentioned that I had been struggling with this book, and to be honest I am still feeling conflicted about it. It may be a case of I admire and appreciate it yet can't quite give myself over to completely loving it. In any case I have three more books to warm up to the story and characters! As a side note the book has a glossary, which is very helpful as I found the Welsh words and names (for which there was no help unfortunately) extremely challenging.
And so the saga of the four brothers Gwynedd will continue in Pargeter's second novel, The Dragon at Noonday, which I'll be reading next month. Thanks to Sourcebooks for sending me a review copy of The Brothers Gwynedd.