Hi, I’m Kris Kennedy, and I’ve
got a little ‘Behind the Research Scenes’ glimpse for you, from THE KING'S
OUTLAW, in the Captured by a Celtic Warrior anthology that I’m doing with fab
authors Eliza, Vonda Sinclair, and Jennifer Haymore!
The story is set in 1193, deep in
the era of crusading knights and questionable chivalry, and despite all my
research on this time period already, while researching THE KING’S OUTLAW, I
learned still more!
One of the coolest things I got
to research was the history of the Hashashin, the real, original Assassins.
This were a Nizari sect of Islam
that formed in 11th century, lead by the "Old Man of the Mountain."
They were a military order, but conducted high-level espionage and political
murders through one class of their order, the "fida'i." These were
young men, highly trained in many arts and skills, from combat to linguistics
to espionage techniques.
Although they often conducted
extremely public murders of high-ranking figures, to terrifying effect, they
primarily worked covertly, in secret and quiet. They would assimilate into the
towns and social worlds around their targets, sometimes for months on end.
They were immensely fond of using
daggers, sometimes poisoned, both as a weapon and as a threat. They were
legendary for sneaking into the tents of political opponents at night and
leaving a dagger and a note lying on the pillow or the floor, right beside the
body of leader they'd stood beside, undetected, in the dark.
One of many stories of their
exploits: In 1092, upon his coronation, the new sultan of the Seljuk empire rebuffed
a Hashashin ambassador. Bad idea. He woke up one morning soon after with a
dagger stuck in the ground beside his bed. He didn't say anything about it--who
wants to announce a weakness like that??--but a little while later, a messenger
from the Assassins arrived, saying, "Did I not wish the sultan well that
the dagger which was struck in the hard ground would have been planted on your
soft breast."
Gotcha. For the next several
decades there was a ceasefire between the Nizaris and the Seljuk.
Saladin, the Crusaders best
opponent, was repeatedly targeted by the Assassins, and finally came to terms.
Many, many Crusading leaders did as well. In fact, almost a hundred years
later, Prince Edward—later to become King Edward I of England, the ’Hammer of
the Scots’—was wounded by a poisoned Assassin's dagger in 1271 while he was
crusading!
The
reason all this entered my research lens during the writing of THE KING’S
OUTLAW for the CAPTURED BY A CELTIC WARRIOR anthology is because there’s a
jeweled dagger that runs though all four of our stories. Since my story
was appearing first, I knew I wanted to set up a compelling, exciting ‘tale for
it. But I also had to keep the storyline
relatively tight—no sprawling 400 pg epics here! And of course, it had to be über-sexy. All
within a ‘captured’ theme.
So, there I was, looking for a
crusade-era story that did—or could—involve a dagger. And I found the Assassins.
In fact, not only did I find the
Assassins, but I found them involved in the very public murder of
about-to-be-crowned king of Jerusalem, Conrad of Montferrat, in 1192. And more not onlys…when captured, the
surviving Assassin claimed that Richard the Lionheart, King of England, had hired them to murder Conrad. The perfect
tie-in!
Sometimes research can feel
external, like a layer atop the story, but I like it best when it shapes and
informs the story, when it’s so integral to the unfolding events that you
couldn’t transplant it to any other time period.
I didn't get to use my research on
the Assassins as I would have liked, so I might have more crusades-related
stories in my future!
For more info on the anthology:
ABOUT
KRIS KENNEDY…
Kris writes sexy, adventure-laden
romances set in England and Ireland, during the ages when chivalry and knights
reigned supreme. With hard alpha heroes, strong heroines, and loads of
adventure, her books have won multiple awards, including DECEPTION, which received Romantic Times' Book Reviewers K.I.S.S. Hero
Award, for the best historical hero of the year, and THE IRISH WARRIOR, which won the Romance Writers of America's®
Golden Heart Award.
To learn more about Kris, visit
her website at http://kriskennedy.net, find
her on Facebook at https://facebook.com/kriskennedybooks, and
on Twitter @KrisKennedy.
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