Guest Susanna Fraser: The History I Left Out

Linda Banche here. Today I welcome fellow Regency author Susanna Fraser and her debut novel, The Sergeant's Lady. For all you Regency fans who like to overdose on history, read about the fascinating subjects Susanna had to leave out.

Susanna is giving away a $10 gift certificate to one lucky commenter. See below for details, and check back here for the winner. The winner is Beth Trissel. Beth, please email Susanna at susannamfraser AT gmail DOT com and let her know whether you'd prefer Amazon, B&N, or Books on Board for your gift.

Welcome, Susanna!

It’s a truism among historical authors that you only show about ten percent of your research. The other 90% is useful to the writer, since it gives you a fuller understanding of your characters and their world. But if it doesn’t directly impact the story, it doesn’t belong on the page. You’d just be showing off--”Look at ME! I did LOTS of research!”--and boring even the history geeks among your readers, because they’ve picked up your novel for a story, not a lesson.

So today instead of talking about fun facts that made it into The Sergeant’s Lady, I’m going to tell you about two big events I left out and why.

Badajoz
In early 1812, the British army’s key objective was to seize and hold the fortress cities of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz, enabling them to secure their communication and supply lines and push further into Spain. Ciudad Rodrigo fell in January, completely offscreen from my story’s perspective. The army then marched on Badajoz and spent most of March laying siege to and bombarding the city in preparation for their attack.

The storming of the city on the night of April 6 did make it into The Sergeant’s Lady. As a sergeant in the Light Division, my hero would’ve been in the midst of the worst of the battle, so I put him there and had him wounded--both a likely outcome, as the division lost some 40% of its fighting strength, and one necessary for the resolution of my overall plot.

What I had to leave out was the aftermath of the battle. Once the British finally made it into the city, the soldiers went on a 72-hour rampage of rape and pillage, an atrocity made even worse because the Spanish civilians who were their victims were ostensibly allies. While it wasn’t the first or the last time an army went wild after a siege, it was an unusually bad case and is a serious black mark on the British army’s otherwise solid record during the Napoleonic Wars.

And I had no reason to put it in my story. My character was too severely wounded to be there heroically trying to stop it, or even to know about it till well after the fact. Mind you, I wanted to put it there. It felt like sugar-coating the British record to leave it out. Also, I wouldn’t want any fellow history geeks reading my novel to think I didn’t know what happened! But neither of those reasons was enough. It had nothing to do with my character’s arc, so it didn’t belong in my story.

Spencer Perceval’s Assassination
Only once has a British prime minister being assassinated. Spencer Perceval was shot and killed on May 11, 1812 by a lone and probably mentally unstable assassin with a personal grievance against the government. This event had no impact on my story whatsoever. However tragic it was for the Perceval family and whatever upheaval it created for the British government, I didn’t want to write about it.

Unfortunately, I needed to have some characters in England discussing current events--such as Badajoz, which, given the pace at which information traveled at the time, would’ve been news in England in May. I wanted to date the scene around May 15 or 20, when I felt like letters from the characters’ connections with the army in Spain would’ve had plenty of time to arrive. However, when I looked up what was happening around then and was reminded of Perceval’s death, I knew I couldn’t use those dates. My characters are politically involved enough that a prime minister’s assassination would’ve trumped everything else...for them, but not for me as an author with a different story to tell.

So I moved my scene to May 10 and neatly avoided the issue. I felt like I was stretching credibility a little to have my characters get letters from Spain so quickly--but not so much as I would’ve if I’d had the wife of politically active peer not even MENTION the prime minister’s death when a character recovering from a dangerous illness asks her if anything important happened while she was almost dying.

What history do you most want to see left out or included in your romance? One randomly chosen commenter wins a $10 gift certificate to your choice of Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Books on Board.

The Sergeant’s Lady Blurb:
Highborn Anna Arrington has been "following the drum," obeying the wishes of her cold, controlling cavalry officer husband. When he dies, all she wants is to leave life with Wellington's army in Spain behind her and go home to her family's castle in Scotland.

Sergeant Will Atkins ran away from home to join the army in a fit of boyish enthusiasm. He is a natural born soldier, popular with officers and men alike, uncommonly brave and chivalrous, and educated and well-read despite his common birth.

As Anna journeys home with a convoy of wounded soldiers, she forms an unlikely friendship with Will. When the convoy is ambushed and their fellow soldiers captured, they become fugitives—together. The attraction between them is strong—but even if they can escape the threat of death at the hands of the French, is love strong enough to bridge the gap between a viscount's daughter and an innkeeper's son?

Excerpt here.

Susanna Fraser bio:
Susanna Fraser wrote her first novel in fourth grade. It starred a family of talking horses who ruled a magical land. In high school she started, but never finished, a succession of tales of girls who were just like her, only with long, naturally curly and often unusually colored hair, who, perhaps because of the hair, had much greater success with boys than she ever did.

Along the way she read her hometown library’s entire collection of Regency romance, fell in love with the works of Jane Austen, and discovered in Patrick O’Brian’s and Bernard Cornwell’s novels another side of the opening decades of the 19th century. When she started to write again as an adult, she knew exactly where she wanted to set her books. Her writing has come a long way from her youthful efforts, but she still gives her heroines great hair.

Susanna grew up in rural Alabama. After high school she left home for the University of Pennsylvania and has been a city girl ever since. She worked in England for a year after college, using her days off to explore history from ancient stone circles to Jane Austen’s Bath.

Susanna lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and daughter. When not writing or reading, she goes to baseball games, sings alto in a local choir and watches cooking competition shows. Please stop by and visit her at http://authorsusannafraser.blogspot.com/, get to know her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/authorsusannafraser and follow her on Twitter at @susannafraser.