Jasmine Maya Royce

Her publicist, Jessica, is there waiting for me. She quickly ushers me into a small conference room just off the left of the auditorium. A large table sprawls out before me and at the end sits Mrs. Gregory. She looks relaxed in her freshly-pressed, light cream, linen pants suit. Her curly, strawberry blonde hair wisps at the edges of her face. She smiles openly at me as I take my seat next to her. Her eyes have touches of gold and green eyeshadow, hinting at the hidden creative nature of this enchanting historian.

Her countenance is warm and comforting. She is the type of person who seems at ease with herself. She gives off a true matriarchal presence as she offers me a glass of sparkling water and no wonder as she is the mother of two children, four step-children, and grandmother - a point she hints at later during her speech when she calms the mother of a new born, fussy baby in the audience and tells her to, ‘Sit tight and do your thing.' That baby doesn’t bother me as I am a doting grandmother.’ A clear comfort to the obviously relieved mother.

We are pressed for time, and so I am quick to get to the questions I have prepared for her. ‘You have been writing professionally since 1987, nearly three decades. In 2008, you began publishing novels annually; a grand achievement by any writer’s standards almost all of which have been number one bestsellers. What do you think is the key to your ability to write such research heavy novels while keeping the consistency and quality in such short amounts of time?’

‘Well, probably one of the biggest things is that I got a year off, around about when the Other Boleyn Girl came out. We did a film, and we did a television tie in the book, so there is a volume for that year, but I didn’t write it. So that meant when I moved on to the Plantagenets, I think the same thing happened with the White Queen. It meant I had an extra year. So, each book takes about two years, but you don’t see it, and also, I do write very fast. It just happens that I do, and I suppose I rewrite less than I did at the beginning of my career. Technically, it’s a skill that you learn, novel writing, because as you say I have done it for 30 years next year. I write very differently now. I write different subjects and different styles and I probably always wrote fast, but now I don’t make as many mistakes.’ 

‘Well, you started as a journalist as well, didn’t you?’ 

‘Yes, I started as a journalist, so I always had an attitude from when I started being a journalist at the age of 17. I always, therefore, had the attitude of that you get up in the morning, and you do it. You don’t say to your editor that ‘I am just not feeling inspired.’ Can you imagine?’ She giggles. ‘‘I am just not in the mood; it’s just not coming to me today.’ So I have a craft person’s attitude towards it, I am not practically precise or artistic about it, but I don’t think I could ever say, ‘I can’t write today.’‘

‘Due to your work, many key women throughout history are getting a wider array of attention in modern society. Why do you feel so connected to these women and the importance of telling their stories?’

‘Well, I am going to critique the question. They are not ‘key’ woman. What’s interesting is that they are woman that are in the footnotes if they are there.

What is interesting to me is to look at women who aren’t very much reported of whose reputations are badly reported for all sorts of reasons and try and get to something of the truth of their life that is not seen through, fundamentally, a misogynistic filter.’

‘So if you look at say a really famous one, Margret of Anjou. Two generations after she was Queen of England, Shakespeare calls her ‘She Wolf’ and that reputation follows her right the way through to today. The title of her biography is ‘She Wolf’ You know, a wolf is one of the worst things you could call someone, especially in the medieval world, Gregory explains to me.  She tries to defend her husband who is in a comma and then she tries to keep the throne safe for her son. Now she does engage in brutal battles, but medieval battles are brutal, and for that, she is called a ‘She Wolf.’ The reputations of these medieval woman are so interesting to me. I look at women like that, and in a sense, I feel I am trying to rescue them from the platitude of men of the time and subsequent historians, and sometimes I find someone like Lady of the Rivers Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford or Mary Boleyn for example. When I wrote The Other Boleyn Girl, there was no biography of her. Her only existence in the history books was as a footnote, and now there are three books about her.’

‘During your experience researching and writing about historical figures, is there anyone, in particular, you have been drawn to?’

‘Oh, I think I am always drawn to the one I am working on at the moment. I have just finished thinking every day about Margaret, Queen of Scotland in Three Sisters, Three Queens. I am going on to work on Jane Grey, so she is my current obsession. But looking back it would be Elizabeth Woodville the heroine of The White Queen. She lived an extraordinary life. She went from commoner to royalty and lived as an impoverished prisoner when she would not bow down to the Tudor power.’

‘If you could meet her face to face and only had one question you could ask, what would it be?’

‘Where are the boys? She knows. It might be an incredible story because the skeletons they discovered might not be of the boys. I think she would have gotten one or possibly two of them out or at least tried to get them out.’

‘In your career, you started as a journalist, and now you are a bestselling novelist and a producer. You have a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh. Your novel, The White Queen, was made into a television hit in 2013. The Other Boleyn Girl was adapted for film in 2008 starring Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson. You have been nominated for a BAFTA and an EMMY. You are continually featured on the BBC as a presenter and historian, but is there something still that you have not done that you would like to achieve?’

‘Yes, I want to write and produce a theatrical play. So that’s the next thing. I’ve got some characters in mind, and I am thinking and working on them at the moment, but that would be the next thing.’

After our formal interview is concluded, we chat a bit longer about the women in our own lives. She begins to tell me about the importance of our female lineage. That we are today learning and discovering the fact that our female heritage is just as spectacular and amazing as our forefathers’. Such as in the case of Elizabeth Woodville. Her family history and its ties to the river goddess are historical facts. The power, the beauty and the mystery of Woodville’s ancestry are one the reasons we are drawn to her as a character. This is a theme she continues to discuss later in her speech and her tour that continues around the UK in September.