Visit the Alhambra with acclaimed author Wendy J. Dunn – as featured in her captivating novel, The Duty of Daughters #HistoricalFiction #KatherineOfAragon #RecommendedReading

The Duty of Daughters

Falling Pomegranate Seeds, Book #1

by Wendy J. Dunn

Castile, 1490.

Doña Beatriz Galindo is an uneasy witness to the Holy War of Queen Isabel of Castile and her husband, Ferdinand, King of Aragon. A holy war pushing the Moors out of territories ruled by them for centuries.

Beatriz does not want a life like other women. She desires power over her own destiny. Even if this means walking a far harder road.

A passionate and respected scholar, Beatriz serves her friend Queen Isabel of Castile as her advisor. She also tutors the queen’s youngest child, Catalina of Aragon.

Dedicated to Queen Isabel and her children, Beatriz guides the young Catalina of Aragon to walk her own hard life road.

But can she prepare Catalina to be England’s queen?

Finalist in the 2020 CHAUCER Book Awards for pre-1750s Historical Fiction.

Remembering the Alhambra

Beatriz stepped deeper into the garden, her movements breaking apart the silver light. A few butterflies flew close to her face, the wings of one tickling her nose in passing. A haze of showering light rendered them into flying, living sapphires, their wings edged with bright rubies. Laughing with simple joy, Beatriz spun around, watching their beauty vanish into the dark recesses edging the garden. She stood there, her palms upraised, grieving again for beauty lost. She wanted to rail and weep at her empty hands. How long must I wait to see them filled? Then she scolded herself. She had so much more than most women she knew.

From The Duty of Daughters, first part of Falling Pomegranate Seeds: the Katherine of Aragon story.

I first visited Spain in 2007 – a long time ago – after writing my original vision of Falling Pomegranate Seeds: The Duty of Daughters, a novel that imagines the growing-up years of Catalina of Aragon, one day known as Katherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII. I wrote my first version of The Duty of Daughters through the point of view of the child Maria de Salinas, and then faced the fact I needed to write it through an adult point of view.

Beatriz Galindo

While I knew this had to be Catalina of Aragon’s tutor, Beatriz Galindo, I also despaired at the thought of starting again. So much so, it took completing my Masters of Writing and then my PhD – when I wrote The Light in the Labyrinth as my creative artefact – before I felt ready to return to this work in 2016.

But back to 2007. Researching Spain and the places Catalina would have known fired my desire to go to Spain myself. There was one place I especially wanted to see – the Alhambra.

Alhambra

Writing my first version, I kept on having visions of white butterflies, countless white butterflies, fluttering a graceful dance in a garden where sunlight flittered through pomegranate, orange and cypress trees. I did not know if the vision had any similarity to the reality of the gardens of the Alhambra, although an internet search reassured me that butterflies are indeed a part of the natural environment of the Alhambra. In fact, countless butterflies abound at the Alhambra.

Wendy J. Dunn at the Alhambra

My problem with imagining places still in existence today is that it only makes me more than yearn to see them with my own eyes. I live in Australia, but my imagination has never really latched onto the history of my beautiful homeland. My Australian ancestors only arrived here in the 1850s. Yes, I am fortunate enough to count a convict as a forebear (we call them Australian royalty!) and have followed the trail of one my ancestors in his search for gold (his brother struck it rich, not him), but that does not take it away the simple fact that my ancestry is mostly British, with my Irish blood singing loud in my veins, too. For many years now, I have wondered about ancestral memory – and if that may explain why my imagination is so fixated on Britain.

In my lifetime, I have managed to fund six trips to the United Kingdom. Four of those overseas trips include time in Europe. That includes a seventeen-day tour of Spain in 2007, when I was working on my first version of Falling Pomegranate Seeds: The Duty of Daughters.

Those magical days in Spain enriched and fed my imagination. I saw in my mind Beatriz Galindo, sitting in sunlit courtyards edged by heavenly inspired gardens and shaded by cypress and orange trees, and talking with Catalina and Maria de Salinas. I closed my eyes and smelled the perfume of flowers and heard in my mind the song of water cascading into stone water fountains. My then eleven-year-old son, who accompanied me on this wonderful adventure, was so impressed with all the water fountains we saw in Spain, he came home determined to convince his father to build one in our small front garden back in Australia. Alas, that never happened.

What happened was I fell in love in Spain – not with a person, but with a place; it is a love I know I share with so many. I only had a few hours at the Alhambra back in 2007. I remember well the grey sky, and my anxiety that a downpour of rain would spoil my long-awaited day. The rain held off until we left – long enough for the Alhambra to soak into my heart and psyche.  

Wendy & her son at the Alhambra

Once again, water fountains delighted my son, especially the stone lion protected fountain, which aptly named its courtyard: The Courtyard of the Lions. For myself, I delighted in Moorish architecture, water features and glorious gardens designed to feast the eye.

Tiled art in the Alhambra

The Alhambra was built by Badis ibn Habus, the Berber King of Granada, in the 11th century. There is a romantic legend that the Alhambra, meaning ‘red castle’, was built at night, under torchlight. The family of Catalina of Aragon took possession of it from the Moors in 1492, and her parents Isabel and Ferdinand used it for their royal court. It was Catalina’s primary home from the time she was seven to fifteen.

Arches in the Alhambra

Strolling in the gardens, it was easy to imagine Catalina there, growing up in this place of great beauty, until the day came when she would leave her parents forever. My time at the Alhambra helped me describe the palace and its surrounds in Falling Pomegranate Seeds: The Duty of Daughters. The stone interior and exterior seemed to me like delicate lace work – allowing light to filter in and out, dappling over floor and wall. The exquisite architecture of the Alhambra is married to water and its gardens. One water feature is very famous and has been the subject of countless photographs of tourists and the inspiration for artists. A long rectangular pool mirrors the arches of the partal façade in the Patio de los Arrayanes, or the court of the myrtles.

I was at the Alhambra for only a short time. It did not feel long enough, but it was long enough to embrace the Alhambra in my heart forever as one of my favourite places on Earth. I will never forget my time there, or its unbelievable beauties. It was also long enough to inspire my imagination. I saw Catalina and Maria practicing their dancing steps in The Courtyard of the Lion. I imagined them together in the bath of the Comares Palace, under a small stone dome cut with stars to let the light flicker like diamonds on the water. I saw them in the garden with Beatriz Galindo, sitting at her feet as she read them stories. I saw them preparing to say their last farewells before they started their long journey to England. To my immense delight, I have had readers let me know that they made the journey to the Alhambra because they read The Duty of Daughters.

Courtyard & arches,  Alhambra

Leaving the Alhambra, I promised to return one day. I was lucky enough to do that in 2019 – and I hope one day to make another return.

Catalina of Aragon never returned. But I have no doubt she never forgot her years growing up in the sunlight of Spain – or in the beauty that is the Alhambra.

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Wendy J. Dunn

Award-winning Australian author of Tudor historical fiction, specialising in Anne Boleyn and Katherine of Aragon novels.

Wendy J. Dunn is an award-winning Australian author, playwright and poet fascinated by Tudor history – so much so she was not surprised to discover a family connection to the Tudors, not long after the publication of her first Anne Boleyn novel narrating the Anne Boleyn story through the eyes of Sir Thomas Wyatt, the elder. Her family tree reveals the intriguing fact that one of her ancestral families – possibly over three generations – had purchased land from both the Boleyn and Wyatt families to build up their own holdings. It seems likely Wendy’s ancestors knew the Wyatts and Boleyns personally.

Her second novel, The Light in the Labyrinth, set during final days of Anne Boleyn's life, revisits the Anne Boleyn story through the eyes of her niece Catherine Carey. The Duty of Daughters and All Manner of Things tells the story of Katherine of Aragon. Shades of Yellow tells the story of a woman writing a novel about Amy Robsart.

All Dunn's award-winning works weave together the lyricism of poetry with the pulse of history, creating stories of love, loss, and the endurance of the human spirit.

Connect with Wendy:

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Meet Isabella d'Este and Lucrezia Borgia – protagonists in Renaissance Rivals by Karen Essex #HistoricalFiction #ItalianRenaissance #WomenInHistory #RecommendedReading

Renaissance Rivals

Sequel to Leonardo's Swans

by Karen Essex

Renaissance Rivals, the long-awaited sequel to the global bestseller Leonardo’s Swans, brings to life the brutal rivalry between two of history’s most fascinating women: Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, celebrated in her own lifetime as “The First Lady of the World,” and Lucrezia Borgia, Duchess of Ferrara, daughter of the infamous Pope Alexander VI and one of the most maligned women in history.

Before the doomed duchess of Maggie O'Farrel's The Marriage Portrait, there were women who built the courts, forged the alliances, and turned power into art. Renaissance Rivals invites readers to step back one generation into the glittering, dangerous world that shaped the Italy of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Niccolò Machiavelli.

Pitted against each other by the ruthless political landscape and by the men they loved, Isabella and Lucrezia must learn how to survive in a world where women are treated as prizes, pawns, and weapons. Their battle is intimate, brilliant, and borders on the fatal, a war fought with jewels, letters, seduction, betrayal, and the strategic intelligence of women who refuse to disappear.

Isabella d’Este and Lucrezia Borgia:
The Women at the Heart of Renaissance Rivals

by Karen Essex

The two central women in Renaissance Rivals could hardly have entered the historical record with more different reputations.

Isabella d’Este was celebrated as the First Lady of the Renaissance: cultured, disciplined, politically astute, and determined to shape how history would remember her. Lucrezia Borgia was remembered as something darker: poisoner, seductress, schemer, daughter of a corrupt pope, and sister to the dreaded Cesare Borgia.

One woman was praised as a model of refinement. The other was turned into a legend of depravity. The truth, as I discovered, was far more interesting and complicated.

I first became fascinated by Isabella while researching the prequel to Renaissance Rivals, Leonardo’s Swans, my novel about Isabella and her younger sister, Beatrice d’Este. Both were born into the ruling family of Ferrara and married into powerful courts in northern Italy. Beatrice became Duchess of Milan. Isabella became Marchesa of Mantua and one of the most influential women of her age.

When I finished Leonardo’s Swans, I could not let Isabella go. She was brilliant, ambitious, controlling, vulnerable, artistically gifted, and relentlessly conscious of rank. She collected antiquities and commissioned works from Leonardo, Titian, Raphael, and other great artists. Her clothing was copied across Europe. Venetian dollmakers even created Isabella dolls that circulated through the courts so other women could see what she was wearing.

We might call her the first Barbie. But Isabella understood that beauty, fashion, ceremony, patronage, and access were not trivial matters. They were forms of political language, forms of power.

Isabella’s deepest motivation was to secure a place for herself in a world where women rarely received power in their own names. She wanted influence, cultural immortality, political authority, and recognition equal to her abilities. She wanted the city-state of Mantua to matter. She wanted her children to prosper. She wanted artists and rulers to seek her favor. She wanted to become indispensable.

She also wanted to win.

Titian's Portrait of Isabella d'Este. Public domain.

That hunger had been present since childhood. Isabella had grown up in competition with her beautiful younger sister, Beatrice, and learned early that affection, attention, marriage, and status could all become contests.

By the time Renaissance Rivals begins, Isabella is no longer a young woman struggling to define herself. She has built a reputation, cultivated power, and earned admiration throughout Europe.

Then Lucrezia Borgia enters her family when she marries Isabella’s brother, Alfonso d’Este, heir to the duchy of Ferrara. The marriage makes the two women sisters-in-law and brings Lucrezia directly into the Este court.

Initially, Isabella has every reason to dismiss her. Lucrezia is the daughter of Pope Alexander VI, Rodrigo Borgia, whose papacy has become synonymous with corruption and scandal. Her brother Cesare is feared across Italy as an unwelcome conqueror. Her first marriage was annulled when it ceased to suit her family’s political needs. Her second husband was murdered. Rumors of incest, adultery, and poison clung to her name.

Yet Lucrezia’s true character does not fit the legend. She had been used as an instrument of her family’s ambition since childhood. Her marriages were arranged and then destroyed by men seeking power. Her reputation was written by enemies, gossips, and chroniclers eager for a sensational story. Therefore, in Renaissance Rivals, her central motivation is survival.

Portrait of a Woman by Bartolomeo Veneto,
traditionally presumed to be Lucrezia Borgia.
Public domain.

Lucrezia wants safety, dignity, love, and the chance to create a life beyond the Borgias. She wants to become more than her father’s daughter and her brother’s pawn. She wants to prove herself worthy of Ferrara and to secure the future of her children. She also wants freedom from the monstrous identity others have assigned her.

Once established in Ferrara, Lucrezia became a patron of artists and poets, a charitable duchess, a capable administrator, and a woman trusted to govern during her husband’s absences. She handled petitions, manages property, corresponds with political figures, and gradually won the loyalty of people who had opposed her marriage.

The supposed monster proves alarmingly competent, every bit as competent as Isabella herself. And this is where the true conflict begins. Isabella sees herself as the natural center of the Este family. She is the dynasty’s brilliant daughter, raised within its traditions and devoted to preserving its prestige. Lucrezia is the outsider who marries into that dynasty and begins to command attention, affection, and influence.

Each woman represents a threat to the other. Isabella has lineage, beauty, education, prestige, and a lifetime of political training. Lucrezia has youth, beauty, papal wealth, notoriety, and an extraordinary instinct for survival.

Isabella has spent years building the image of the perfect Renaissance princess. Lucrezia arrives already famous.

Their rivalry is personal, political, and cultural. They compete for precedence within the Este family, influence over Alfonso, admiration at court, alliances, jewels, fashions, patronage, and public attention.

In the Renaissance, these matters weren’t merely decorative. A gown could announce rank. A jewel could signal allegiance. The order in which two women entered a room could become a political statement. An invitation withheld or a gift delayed might communicate hostility as clearly as a declaration of war.

Their similarities deepen the conflict. In the novel, both women have been shaped by dynastic ambition, understanding that their security depends upon marriage, fertility, family loyalty, and male favor. Both are intelligent enough to recognize the limits imposed upon them and resourceful enough to work around those limits.

Both brilliantly use letters as instruments of power. Their surviving correspondence reveals worlds of negotiation, persuasion, resentment, affection, calculation, and urgency. A letter might request a favor, conceal an insult, cultivate an ally, protect a child, defend a reputation, or influence a ruler. For both women, words are among their most effective weapons.

So are their relationships with men. One of the most painful challenges Isabella faces involves her husband, Francesco Gonzaga. The surviving letters between Francesco and Lucrezia reveal an intimacy and emotional charge that is difficult to dismiss.

For Isabella, Lucrezia’s hold over Francesco is more than a romantic threat. It challenges her dignity, marriage, and public authority. For Lucrezia, the relationship may offer affection, protection, revenge, political leverage, or all of these at once.

That ambiguity became crucial to the novel. I did not want Isabella to be the noble heroine and Lucrezia the wicked intruder. History had already simplified them too thoroughly.

Yes, Isabella’s ambition could make her ruthless. Her intelligence could become arrogance. Her need for control could wound the people closest to her. But Lucrezia’s vulnerability does not make her passive. She has learned to conceal her intentions, protect herself, and use the fascination she inspires. Survival has sharpened her.

Each woman possesses qualities the other lacks, and each understands the other’s power. Each sees the other as an obstacle to the life she believes she deserves.

Their greatest challenge is not simply defeating one another. It is surviving a world in which women are traded through marriage, used for their fertility, punished for ambition, and remembered according to stories written by men.

Renaissance Rivals unfolds amid war, papal intrigue, dynastic marriages, artistic brilliance, and the dangerous magnificence of the Italian courts. Its heroines fight with the weapons available to them: letters, jewels, clothing, gossip, pregnancy, patronage, alliances, and the affections of powerful men.

Yet beneath the rivalry lies a more intimate struggle. Isabella is trying to become unforgettable. Lucrezia is trying to escape what the world already believes about her.

Both are determined to author their own lives. That determination brings them into conflict. It also makes them formidable rivals.

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Karen Essex

Karen Essex is the national and international bestselling author of Run, Darling, Kleopatra, Pharaoh, Leonardo's Swans, Stealing Athena, Dracula in Love, and Bettie Page: Life of a PinUp Legend.

All feature iconic women—powerful women that seduced the world and ruled it. Essex is also an active screenwriter and speaker, and an award-winning journalist.

She divides her time between Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Europe. Her novels are published in twenty-nine languages.

Leonardo’s Swans, the prequel to Renaissance Rivals, was a runaway bestseller in Italy and won the prestigious Premio Roma for Foreign Fiction.

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Shining a bright book spotlight on The Fern Flower – a captivating saga of coming-of-age, folklore, dreams, and revolution by Kathleen Shoop #HistoricalFiction #RussianRevolution #RecommendedReading

The Fern Flower

by Kathleen Shoop

Russia 1908-1917

Every good folktale reveals villains and heroes. Mila Belova’s world is overflowing with both.

Born into privilege as the daughter of the Tsar’s favored vodka maker, Mila appears to have everything: wealth, status, and a household devoted to her happiness. But behind the gilded doors of her family estate, she is trapped by the cruelty of a stepmother whose greatest wish is to give birth to her own child.

Each summer on Ivan Kupala Eve, Russia turns its gaze to river bends and forest floors in search of the legendary Fern Flower—a mythical bloom said to grant fortune, power, and the deepest desires of the heart. Only one person had ever found it.

Until Mila.

Years later, in the fading grandeur of Petrograd, Mila and her friends slip into the fabled Stray Dog Café, once the sanctuary of Russia’s most daring artists and dreamers. Inspired by its ghosts, murals, and memories, Mila's group resurrects the work she'd first imagined as a child. The Fern Flower is a breathtaking ballet drawn from folklore, magic, and the secrets of Mila’s past.

But in the fiercely competitive ranks of the Imperial Ballet School, talent is never enough. Though Mila wrote the ballet and her gifted musician friend composed its score, rivals question whether Mila is worthy of claiming the coveted lead role.

As World War I intensifies and revolution ignites, the Russia Mila knows begins to collapse. Family secrets surface, loyalties are tested, and the people she loves begin to disappear. When her parents flee and her young brother’s life hangs in the balance, Mila is faced with an impossible choice: remain with the found family who helped her chase her dreams or risk everything to save the person who needs her most.

With Russian folklore, imperial grandeur, and the fierce beauty of ballet, The Fern Flower is a sweeping tale of ambition, friendship, sacrifice, and the magic that survives even when the world is falling apart.

Praise for The Fern Flower:

"IThis book is outstanding in its decision to tell the story through the eyes of the moon, Grusha... The character development of Mila is beautifully rendered."

~ The Historical Fiction Company

"Shoop captures the transformation of a young girl's world in a manner all kinds of readers will find fascinating. Librarians can thus highly recommend The Fern Flower's wide reach to audiences who will relish the story... As for the moon, she comes full circle to influence, abet, and reflect events in a satisfyingly original manner that readers won't see coming."

~ D. Donovan, Sr Review, Midwest Book Review

"Deeply moving in the cultural currents it captures... The family dynamics are one of the key elements that make it a must-read."

~ Readers’ Favorite

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Kathleen Shoop

Bestselling author, Kathleen Shoop, PhD’s novels have won awards in the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY), Eric Hoffer Book Awards, the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Readers’ Favorite, and more.

Kathleen has more than twenty years of experience in the classroom and has been featured in USA Today and the Writer’s Guide. She co-coordinates Mindful Writers Retreats and co-coordinated the 2023 Pennwriters Conference.

She frequently teaches and is a regular presenter at conferences for writers.

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