While I have seen it as my lifelong mission to redeem the reputations of Guinevere (in Dawnflight and Morning's Journey) and most recently Morgan le Fay (King Arthur's Sister in Washington's Court), Diana has done something similar for King Richard III in For Love and Loyalty!
Today on The Maze Diana shares a bit about herself and the inspirations behind this remarkable time-travel story.
13 Things That Inspired Diana to Write For Love and Loyalty
- Picturing Richard III in modern times blow drying his hair
- The Richard III Society
- Middleham Castle, Yorkshire
- Blackadder (historical British sitcom)
- The concept of time travel
- Séances
- Our modern conveniences such as zippers, computers, cars
- Richard III
- Richard’s brother King Edward IV
- Richard’s other brother George, Duke of Clarence
- The Three Stooges
- Jackie Gleason and Art Carney in The Honeymooners
- The discovery of Richard III’s remains in a Leicester car park
The Maze [TM]: Where did you get the idea for the story?
Diana Rubino [DR]: I was brainstorming with my longtime critique partner Bonnie (pen name Alice M. Cole). We tossed around a few ideas for a time travel, and she said, “I can picture Richard in modern times blow drying his hair.” I thought, “Wouldn't it be fun to see how Richard adapts to the 21st century?” The story grew around that one image.
TM: Why did you write it as a comedy rather than a serious novel?
DR: The hedonistic skirt-chasing Edward and George play so well off the prim and chivalrous Richard; he’s the perfect foil for them. Also, bringing people from the past to modern times posed many opportunities for humor, seeing our world through their eyes in the simplest ways: Richard goes to an open-air market with the modern heroine, and sees things he's never seen before: bananas, tomatoes, corn on the cob, peanuts. He begins to bite into a banana, and the heroine shows him the correct way: peel and eat it from the top. He takes an ear of corn and proceeds to eat it like the banana, from the top, but she explains that it's eaten sideways. How confusing the modern world really is! Not to mention his first glance at a running computer, connected with the world through the internet.
TM: Why does Richard go back to his own time instead of staying here?
DR: Richard wanted to go back ‘home’ to live his life differently—and in the future, no one will ever know he was once called “King Crouchback.”
TM: Why didn’t you have Anne Neville travel to the present?
DR: I left poor Anne back in the 15th century because I needed a modern love interest for Richard. At the time he pitched forward to modern times, he wasn't all that smitten with Anne; she was a mere diversion—as was the woman (girl? We don't know who she is) who mothered his illegitimate offspring, John and Katherine.
TM: How can Richard return to his era at the same time his bones are discovered under a Leicester car park? If Richard changed history - no Bosworth Field, etc. - then 500+ years later there should be no 'king in the car park' and no Tudor propaganda maligning him!
DR: I considered that paradox. When Richard returned to his own time after being here, he returned to an alternate universe, in line with the theory that time is an infinite continuum and 1485 is still 'going on' just as our time is.
Same as when Edward travels from here to the far future at the end of the story. From our perspective, it 'hasn't happened yet' but it's going on in that alternate universe, or another dimension, if you will. That's why there's some speculation that UFOs and aliens who visit Earth, if they truly do, may be from the future, and are time travelers.
TM: OK, so what's happened in an alternate universe doesn't affect ours, and Richard in our timeline still ends up in the parking lot?
DR: Yes, because theoretically, the universe is multidimensional, and alternate universes also exist, so in an alternate universe, your fate takes the path you didn't choose in this one. Maybe you wanted to go to Hollywood to get into motion pictures but didn't. But in that alternate universe, you did go to Hollywood, and might be a movie star in that universe.
It's all theory, of course, no one can prove it. I'm not sure Einstein looked into that, but it sure makes for great SciFi!
My head begins to hurt when I ponder the possibility of infinity. Never-ending? How can that be? But hold a mirror up to a mirror and think about it.
Exploring these theories is the ‘serious’ part of the story.
TM: Why did you call the previously published first edition One Too Many Times?
DR: The former title One Too Many Times refers to the number of times Richard traveled through time; i.e., he should have stayed in our time instead of going back to the 1400s to change history, especially after he made the reputation-restoring movie and found his true love while here and now.
The title also hit me over the head. When I was searching for a title, I realized the song “One Too Many Times” by the Australian band Midnight Oil was going through my head at that moment. It's from their 1996 album “Breathe”. Some of my book titles are song titles. So I used it as a tribute to Midnight Oil, one of my all time favorite bands. Sadly they broke up, but the lead singer Peter Garrett was an MP from Sydney for several years.
TM: Thanks, Diana, for visiting and sharing today!
About Diana:
Every Ricardian has a story about how they discovered Richard and here's mine: I'd just finished the first historical I ever wrote, The Jewels of Warwick, set in Henry 8's court. I was trying to think of an idea for my next historical. I was in the Cambridge (Massachusetts, US) library, in the 'stacks' upstairs where they keep excess books, and found Crown of Roses, a Ricardian novel on the wrong shelf. The author thanks the Richard III Society, which I'd never heard of. This is pre-internet time, 1991/2. I contacted the Society by snail mail, and wrote my next book, Thy Name is Love, set around Richard and a fictional hero & heroine.
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