An Uncle and a Murder

So, again I ask, how can I write this blog without spilling all the juicy stuff I come across?  I'll have to discuss that with someone at a writing group.  I haven't actually tried to attend one yet, but I intend to.  It's just that, well, I tend to be out of town or taking a nap or even, perhaps, be busy actually writing when the group times roll around!  I do have one in my calendar, though, so I'll try to take that question with me if I ever make it there...
It'll probably be years before I get to this particular book, though, so I'm going to go ahead and relate the 'discoveries'.  It's these things that fuel my writing, you know!  In this case, I'm particularly proud of myself for sticking to my guns and reading my Memoirs of the Electress Sophia as opposed to diving into Crossed by Ally Condie.
I picked up Crossed from the library yesterday and have been looking at it longingly.  I will get there--yes, young adult novels are my choice pleasure reads--but I decided to opt for the Memoirs because of my blog to you.  See?  It helped!
Anyhow, my joy with genealogy and historical books is to read between the lines.  Sometimes, actually, to just read the lines!  Such surprises await.  For instance, I lived in Butzbach as a girl and, in my last year in Germany, attended a middle school in Giessen.  When Sophia passes through this area, she is accompanied by the Landgravine, an uncle, who rules the area.  Yes, that is quite exciting to me to think that my family ruled the territory that I lived in while in Germany.  Pretty cool.
Then, more between the lines, I pay attention this time to the fact that a priest drowns in a river just after her marriage future takes a decisive turn away from the marriage he's scheming to broker between Sophia and the Duke of Parma.  She honestly says that she can't say whether it was an accident or not--seeming to refer to suicide--but soon afterwards lets slip that the only 'witness' to those marriage discussions, to which she'd been favorable, was now dead.  And that marriage with the Catholic Duke of Parma was NOT the marriage she and her Calvinist brother thought best, after all.  She was nearly 28, though, and she'd likely decided that the marriage agreed to over a year previously was not going to happen--after the guy failed to show up.  But when it worked out with this preferred party, she of course would have regretted any promises to the Duke of Parma's representative.  It would reflect very poorly on their honour, especially as she'd already dumped one suitor--the abusive Prince Adolf of Sweden (hmm, interesting that name Adolf, isn't it?)--the year before for her Hanoverian choice.  And how did that big-chinned Prince Adolf make a fuss!
Hope this isn't all just a confusing jumble for you, but perhaps in time I'll figure out how to share bits and pieces without giving away the whole thing!  Is that how it's done?  Until I figure that out, I'll just keep you in the know.  Hmm, that wouldn't be the main point of the book, though.  Perhaps it would simply tickle your fancy to read snippets that you recognize from my blog?  I'll go with that belief for the time being--as it's easiest for me.  I mean, that priest didn't even figure into the overall construct of that book before!

Aside from the Memoirs, I've begun listening to a historical novel by Philippa Gregory.  I'd shunned them before, after associating her books with another similar book by a different author, but I'm enjoying the one I'm on about Mary, Queen of Scots, and am tickled to see that she covers many famous women of English royalty, but not the ones I plan to write about.  That's perfect for me--I can set myself up by listening to stories of previous generations and go from there.  While I just love Mary, Queen of Scots, I don't feel the urge to write on her life; not yet, anyhow.  Perhaps because it seems to be well-covered already.

Funny how little respect I give the passage of time.  It can amaze me when I realize that I'm connecting folks with their gg-grandparents.  A lot can change in just a generation.  That's just something I have to watch out for, as I tend to see their relationships as often far more intimate than they actually were.  In a book about Cleopatra, it mentioned how she and Julius Caesar visited the great pyramids of Egypt--and that Cleopatra was far closer to us in time than those pyramids were to her.  So, I don't think I'm alone in lumping the past, but it is something I need to be careful of.  Even so, it can't hurt to have a better understanding of the time periods leading up to my characters of interest.