CTP (S3EFebSpecial3) Founding Love: A Queen’s Defiance

CTP (S3EFebSpecial3) Founding Love: A Queen’s Defiance (DHMorris)
Exploring more of the fascinating intersection of Activism, Community Engagement, Faith / Religion, Human Nature, Politics, Social Issues, and beyond   
We trace Judith’s path from princess of Francia to first anointed Queen of England, her refusal to be bartered again, and her daring flight with Baldwin Ironarm. Along the way, we unpack the Carolingian Renaissance, church power, Viking pressure, and how fact shapes fiction.
• genealogy spark leading to decades of research
• choosing historical fiction over biography for flow
• Judith’s forced marriages, refusal, and imprisonment
• Baldwin Ironarm’s loyalty, warfare, and moral code
• anointing of queens and its lasting ritual legacy
• Carolingian learning, script, and cultural reforms
• Vikings, border shifts, and the birth of Bruges
• appendix method for historical clarity without footnotes
• http://NewClassicsPublishing.com 
https://tinyurl.com/SubscribeToCTP  
CTP Audios: https://tinyurl.com/CTPonBuzzsprout 
CTP Videos: https://tinyurl.com/JLDonBITCHUTE 
https://tinyurl.com/CTPgear  

A Short Story: A Lasting Legacy? book Trailer

Transcript

Meet D H Morse And The Book

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Thank you for tuning in as well. Let's get on the show. Joining me today is Deborah Morse, although on her book is D-H Morse. So D H Morse will be what I ultimately put on the scroll at the bottom of the screen and post for the video behind the scenes version. That's D-E-B-O-R-A-H, not D-E-B-R-A. D-E-B-O-R-A-H Morse, like the cat? Yes. Yes.

unknown 1:06

Okay.

Life Abroad And Teaching Roots

SPEAKER_01 1:07

That makes that part easy, but more important to remember D-H Morse. Welcome to the show, D H. Thank you so much, Joseph. I'm so delighted to be here. What what MLB team do you play for as a designated hitter? But um bum. DH designated hitter baseball. Uh not sure. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, I my audience knows I can't pass the lame punt. Anyway, I I'm excited for you to be here because my audience pretty much most knows I have a historical fiction book. I'm wearing the shirt for terror strikes coming soon to a city near you. It's historical fiction or aka as I call it, faction. Part fact, part fiction. And you are a historical fiction author. So I'm excited to have a conversation about that with you. Welcome again to the show. Thank you. So before we get into the book kind of stuff, and people on video could see my latest book, uh short 30-second trailer playing behind me. I'm getting fancier these days. I'm running video off my green screen now. At any rate, nitty gritty. Uh, where were you born and raised? Where are you now? Significant places you've been in between. How much time have you spent in prison and for what? For the record, for the transcript, she's laughing. It's a joke, people. It's a joke. Go on. Gotta clear it out for the transcript, though.

SPEAKER_02 3:07

I was born in San Diego, California. And I was raised mainly in California, but um moved to Japan. I lived my husband was in the military, and so we lived for 12 years in Europe. I lived in Egypt for six months. Um I've traveled a lot throughout Europe and uh Mexico, lived in Canada for a little while, not long, maybe six months.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

What part of Canada were you in?

SPEAKER_02 3:48

In uh Alberta.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Alberta, okay. I used to vacation up native sun uh RIP Gordon Lightfoot, Aurelia, Ontario, Canada area. I used to vacation all the time. So but go on.

SPEAKER_02 4:04

And um I met my husband as a student at Utah State University, and that was my alma mater, and uh graduated in theater and music, and uh went on from there on for a master's in English, and then switched to law school, but during law school became very ill, so I was not able to complete my last year of law school, but the training was great, and I've taught um as a grad student, I taught in the English department at Utah State University, and then I taught for five years at uh in English um in their business department, so business English, business writing, business grammar, and business law at Salt Lake Community College, and have four children, eleven grandchildren, and a little Yorkie. A fur baby, yeah. A Yorkie named Max. And he's basically runs our household here in Kansas City, Missouri. So we've actually lived on both coasts. We've lived also in Texas. We've we've because of the military lifestyle, we moved around a lot. And uh it was very interesting life. Enjoyed it a lot, but we are firmly planted right now in the middle of the country, and we love it here.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

In the state of Missouri, I mean Missouri.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

I've said that before.

Why Historical Fiction Over Biography

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Yeah, when it gets too cold or too hot. I say that all the time, yeah. Uh uh and you said business several times, uh and now you're here to give me the business, right? Again, my audience knows any lame pen, no matter how lame it is, I cannot pass on the chance. At any rate, I see you already hold up the book. Let's hold up the book again for the benefit of behind the scenes video, but for audio and benefit of the transcript, it is uh girl of many crowns, the girl of many crowns. There's a the in front of it. Again, D H Morris, like the cat. So what what prompt what is the historical part of the historical fiction in this?

SPEAKER_02 7:02

Okay, um I would say that it's 90% fact and just filling in the gaps with uh narrative.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

So So it's like a movie on the screen, uh based on a true story, but hey, dramatization to make it flow better and uh fill in some potential holes with it kind of probably went this way, but uh it's not close to it type thing.

SPEAKER_02 7:34

Exactly. I uh the story behind this book is that I was doing I when my husband and I got married, my aunt gave us a huge genealogy chart because she was the family genealogist, and she said, We have royalty in our background if you go back far enough. So I looked at that and it didn't look right on the chart, and I thought, I need to fix this. So I got into genealogy, thoroughly enjoyed it, and the more I delved into trying to fix what I thought was an error, just became a more and more intriguing story, and it kind of was in the back of my mind for decades, and then when it came to COVID, uh, like probably a lot of other people, your my husband said, You have all this research still on this book. So I finished, I did a lot more research, finished the research, and I thought, I'm going to write this up as a biography. But then it was very long, very cumbersome, and I thought, if anybody's gonna read this, it's got to flow like a novel. But for me, the important thing, because it is an ancestor, I wanted every single detail to be as exact and real as possible.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

Well, you read my mind, you anticipated where I was going next. Indeed, writing it as a historical fiction novel, as opposed to a biography. A lot of people think of them like movie documentaries. Oh, boring, put me to sleep, right? Or a memoir. Who the heck is D. H. Morris? Why do I care about her memoir? Right, a historical fiction book provides the tale with the details, but it's much more presentable, much more uh uh open, isn't the word? People are much more receptive and interested in reading it that way. Yes. It was your thinking, it would be my thinking anyway.

Judith’s Marriages And Defiance

Baldwin Ironarm And Parallel Wars

SPEAKER_02 10:08

And I I realized that all these footnotes were just making it read like a textbook. So I went back and removed every single thing that the reader did not absolutely have to know and and tried to make it flow better. It's actually the story of the great-granddaughter of Charlemagne. It takes place in the ninth century, and it's not just her, it's her and her family. Her father is the first king of France. He's known by historians as Charles the Bald. Uh he wasn't Bald, but he that was his name, uh, by his given to him by historians several hundred years later because there were so many Charles's they had to distinguish between them. And so um he at her age of twelve, her father um has her married off to the 50-year-old widower uh who is the king of Wessex, father of Alfred the Great. And he marries her off to him for political reasons, and a year and a half later he dies, and then he has her marry his son, who is 24, she's 14. And that is part of the gap that I fill in. She is so traumatized by that that when he dies a year and a half later, she comes back to France, and when her father says, I I'm gonna arrange another marriage for you, she's now 16, 17, and she says, No, you're not. I am not going to marry again at your command. And so he imprisons her. That's half of the story. The other half of the story, and these run simultaneously. There is a knight who is the companion of her brother, Louis the Stammerer. And we follow both of these stories until they join. The knight's name is Baldwin Ironarm. He's a very brave and uh honorable knight. It's very important to him for both of them. Their religion is important, their ethics and morals are important, and um he we follow him throughout wars and assassination plots in France, while we follow her story in England, and then when she comes back, they uh reunite and fall in love, and he helps her escape, and then they're on the run from the Empire, and it's uh it's a pretty exciting story, it ends happy. They they are the founders of Bruges, which is the um one of I think the most beautiful city in Belgium, and often considered kind of the founders of Belgium, even though Belgium wasn't really a country till hundreds of years ago.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

The only thing I know about Bruges is the movie with uh Colin Farrell, I think it was. Have you seen that movie? I have not. No, it's just I'll have to look it up. Pretty off-the-wall kind of movie, so I don't know if it represents it well or not, but it it you mentioned footnotes, and that kind of perked up my ears because weirdly, in my latest book, Complicated, I have a few footnotes because I don't believe in doing everything the traditional way, even though in my life I'm pretty much a traditionalist. But when it comes to publishing, this is the 21st century. If you buy a movie on Blu-ray, you get bonus materials, right? Everything's on the internet. The way I see it, a book should give you bonus materials. So I actually have footnotes, not a ton, uh, in my complicated book, uh, so that people have some online material references as bonus-free items they can go to. But I understand what you're saying. Indeed, too many footnotes then start to clutter things up.

Appendix, Sources, And Carolingian Renaissance

SPEAKER_02 15:23

It interrupts the flow, but I wanted to have some of that extra material also. What I did was I have an appendix at the end because this covers seven years in the foundation of Europe. It's where they are fought, you have Vikings attacking the uh country, the infant country of France. It's called Francia at that time. You have um the German King Charles' half-brother, Louis the German, is trying to take his country from him. If he had succeeded in the war that takes place in these seven years, he would, we I guess the French would have been speaking German, but but it's it is a very volatile period of time, and it shows the foundations of Europe and how all these borders are being formed, and it's a fascinating period of time, it's one of the most important uh periods. It's during the Carolingian Renaissance, too, and people think of it as the Dark Ages, but it this little jewel of a time during the Carolingian period, which lasted not too long from the time of Charlemagne down to his probably second great grandson, maybe a hundred years, it was uh, or maybe a little more than a hundred years, it was a time where our actually our um handwriting, our writing, our form of writing was created by them. That's when that was created. They they were creating beautiful works of art, beautiful buildings. Um they had very progressive ideas about education. Charlemagne and his grandson King Charles, they wanted their entire realm to be educated, including the women. And so that kind of disappears later. It all depends on who's the leader as to whether these things take place. But at the end of the book, I got off track, sorry. At the end of the book, I do have an appendix, and what it does is it takes each of the characters and tells you what happened to them ultimately in their life. When they died, how they died, what you know what went what they went through. Um usually it's just like a paragraph or two for each one.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

It's kind of like also, too, in movies based on a true story at the end, they'll roll as part of the credits. So-and-so went on to this and that and the other, so-and-so is still alive, or so-and-so died in blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. So, yeah, I it sounds like you're writing it clearly ready for movie adaptation.

SPEAKER_02 18:57

I've had a number of my readers say, Oh, I hope somebody picked this up for a movie, it needs to be made into a movie. Um, maybe that's partly because of my undergraduate theater background. I basically see it in scenes.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

That's how I write, also, yes.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

It just to me, it's more visual, and then I try to describe what I see.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

Right, exactly. And like most of my books actually come to me in a dream, so I kind of see it as a movie, then I write it. So exactly.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

That's a very similar process.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

Yeah, I understand where you're coming from, and before I forget, let's repeat, we're talking with D. H.

Anointing Queens And Ritual Legacy

SPEAKER_02 20:44

Morris, and the book is the girl of many crowns, because she's the first woman to ever the first um anointed queen of England. She is she has a crown as the daughter of the king, a first king of France, so she has her crown as a princess. She has a crown as the first anointed queen of England because nobody had ever anointed by the church any women before. The queen was always just, you know, the king would pronounce her queen. But the church did not take the holy chrism, which is the holy oil, and anoint queens until Judith. And when they when they did, from that point on, that became a regular part of the ritual, including for Queen Elizabeth, the most recent Queen Elizabeth, was based, everything was based on Judith's uh anointing. From that point on.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

Very interesting. Yes, it's a very interesting. This is exactly why I love historical fiction. Uh where you know, my terror strikes coming soon to see you. Very, very different kind of historical fiction, of course. But yeah, some facts, some fiction. I love how you could take uh one of my favorite movies is Beyond the Mask by Burns Family Christian Studios here in Michigan, and that's a historical fiction movie loosely based around our revolution in an attempt to assassinate George Washington. So I love stuff like that, and indeed I I could see this as a movie or a multiple part, maybe hopefully just a TV movie that could be shown in parts or even better, probably a mini series. It sounds like it's well set up for.

SPEAKER_02 23:04

That's what I I think because she I have the book divided into three parts. Part one is Judith of Francia. Her childhood well, we start when she's 11. By the time and end that first part when she turns 12 and is married to King Applewolf, the father of Alfred the Great, and leaves for England. Part two all takes place with her in England, Baldwin Iron Arm, the powerful knight, his protecting of her brother, and his duty to her father in wars and all kinds of Viking uh exploits. And then part three, and that's Judith of Wessex, and she's twice Queen of Wessex, so we get another crown on her.

Structure For Screen: Three Parts

SPEAKER_01 24:05

And then and then uh Judith of Flanders is the third part, and that's when she comes together with Baldwin Ironarm, who is actually the Count of Flanders, and um becomes gives away all of her royalty to become as in Flanders Field that the poppy poem is based on?

SPEAKER_02 24:31

As in the earlier names of the Belgium area where Belgium is today.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

Interesting. Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 24:42

It's it's a fascinating story, and it would never leave me alone. So finally I thought after 25 years or so of saying, Oh, I hope somebody writes a story about that. It was, well, it's COVID and nobody is writing it, and I'm getting old, so maybe I better write it.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

Well, thank you, DH Moores, for joining. That's great. I again I'm ecstatic to have another historical fiction author on with me. It's awfully niche as a genre, but to me, they make great stories because of the embedded actual historical relevance because our education system is so damn poor these days. We don't teach history or civics or even economics now. So we gotta get people history somehow.

SPEAKER_02 25:41

Another aspect of the book or that I discovered as I was doing the research, I was a little surprised. I don't know why, I should have anticipated this, I guess. How important their faith was to them. I was amazed, it really was in every aspect of their life.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

Yeah. Well, those were definitely tougher times. I mean, we think about all the modern conveniences we have, it's easier to take a whole lot for granted. Now then every day was laborious, I would imagine.

Faith, Power, And Moral Agency

SPEAKER_02 26:27

And the church was a huge figure in their lives. The church at that time, the only church um that well, their Islam was there. It was a fairly new religion, but the only church there in Europe, Charlemagne, decided we are gonna be Christian. So if you're a Viking, you're probably a you know, a pagan if you're if you or you're a Christian, you're one or the other. So their Christian um experience plays a great role through this. Um interesting the good and bad, because the king's main advisor, his name is Archbishop Hinckmar, who I'd never heard of before.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

And certainly gotta be his name because that's not a name you'd make up.

SPEAKER_02 27:28

No, no, he was one of the most influential writers of the ninth century, and he was responsible for writing her ceremony and coming up with the whole idea, and um, you see, it's almost a Game of Thrones type plotting, and then he also you see that he um is influential and trying to force her and Baldwin Iron Arm into excommunication, into being uh captured, and and their life is threatened. So it's it's very um interesting. I also love the fact that we have a strong male character because right now I think for a long time, women have been toxic masculinity idiot. Yes. There's toxicity in both sexes.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Oh, it's toxic, it's an individual femininity, there's a Martin Luther King Jr., content of character, it's part of the human nature, it's an individual thing, it's not a group or collective thing, exactly.

Strong Roles For Men And Women

SPEAKER_02 28:51

Um and a man's desire to be protective is not toxic, I don't think. I agree. I think that is part of what God gave them as part of their nature, and so we have a strong protective knight. We also have a strong protective female who wants to protect her her servants from any retribution they might have for helping her escape from the palace. Um, because we know that she escaped. Uh, it says she escaped, history says, as dressed as a servant. How would she do that without help from her own maid? So her maid is the one of the few characters who is completely fictional. Almost every other person in there is um is factually based. Some of the actual um dialogue I was able to find in ancient records. Whoa. I was able to put in there. There is a surprising amount. But if you're you know, if your reader your viewers are looking for a book that gives men a great uh role model and women a great role model, and good moral principles and an inspiring happy ending. Why can't we have happy endings? I love it.

SPEAKER_00 30:31

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:32

And truth, and it's all true, which is amazing.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

It's yeah, it's more well it's amazing. A lot of this takes part in France. Is the book available? Have you had it translated and published in French? I have not.

SPEAKER_02 30:49

I've been considering it, but it does take place kind of part in France, part in England, a little bit in Italy, and a little bit in Germany.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

So you right, French Italian and German, you've got great opportunities to have it translated and sell there. The birth of Europe as we actually. Uh-huh. Okay. If people want to learn more about you and the book, do you have a website?

SPEAKER_02 31:26

Um, they can go to Newclassicspublishing.com and read a little bit more about it, but they can also pick up the book on Barnes and Noble or Amazon or Audible. Yeah, all of the usual suspects.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

Uh the number that used to be 80% of all books are sold there. I think it's probably closer to 90% of all books are sold through Amazon nowadays, I think. And especially now, uh Amazon Audible, their virtual voice. So you have an audio book. Did you hire actors to read the book or did you use Amazon Virtual Voice?

SPEAKER_02 32:18

I considered it, but I decided to do it myself. I have I've done a lot of acting in my life. The most difficult part was doing men's voices, and I can't do a man's voice, but um I think I was able to put in the passion and the meaning by reading my own.

Translation Hopes And Europe’s Birth

SPEAKER_01 32:47

Yes, yes. That's great. I I I don't want to read my own books. I I I think it is great. I think it is better if a book is read by the author rather than somebody else, and certainly better than just Amazon's AI doing it, but at least it's still available that way for people who prefer to hear a book now rather than have to read it.

SPEAKER_02 33:19

So I will tell you a funny story about that is I originally was going to do the AI because I wasn't familiar with it. And they said, let's record your voice and we will use AI. Yeah. Yeah. And so they couldn't do it. They tried for months, and the problem was one of the main characters, Judith's brother, who later becomes king after the father dies, but that doesn't appear anywhere but in the appendix. Sorry, I shouldn't have mentioned it. But he's named historians refer to him as Louis the Stammerer, because he had a stammer, and AI could not replicate the stammer.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Exactly. AI tries to be too perfect, it can't mimic that. Yeah, all that, oh wow. I would have never thought of that. But as a as a former IT guy, once you say it, it makes perfect sense to me, but I wouldn't have thought about it in that sense. So again, we've had D.H. Morris, Deborah Morris, D.H. Morris on the book which is entitled The Girl of Many Crowns. Yep, and to learn more about the book, you can go to NewClassicspublishing.com. Thank you, DH, for coming by today. Thank you so much for having me.

Where To Get The Book

SPEAKER_02 34:59

It's been a delight.

SPEAKER_00 35:01

Like and subscribe to Christitutionalist Politics Podcast and share episodes. We need your help.

SPEAKER_01 35:10

Thank you for having tuned in to another Christitutionalist podcast show. I really appreciate that. Again, please like, share, subscribe. Thank you again. Take care. Love you all.