The Outcast Highlander (31 page)

The royal family of Navarre is real. Their connection to Scottish nobility is not historical fact. Queen Joan was a real person, as was Margaret of Anjou. Albert, Kensey’s unfaithful fiancé, however, is not real. He is a combination of Charles (the King’s real youngest brother) and a few other historical characters from the time period. (Details like his regency and the name of his inheritance and eventual children were stolen from different members of Phillip’s court.) He will make an appearance in future books. It was not uncommon for nobility in many parts of Europe to be interconnected.

I also want to say a quick word about Kensey’s travels to France. She never traveled alone. I thank my critique partners for the reminders about the traveling habits of the nobility in the Middle Ages, and Kensey was the picture of propriety. On her return trip from France (and she states this in the book), a large retinue accompanied her, but when her father’s steward told her of her mother’s illness, she sent her party back to France without her, where they would eventually have returned, anyway. Her father’s steward then accompanied her the rest of the way back home. Her riding on the Highlands alone was a complete act of rebellion. If her father had been alive and in his house, he never would have allowed her to be unaccompanied. However, her father was in prison, and Kensey was playing the Fixer, in her own headstrong way.

I love to pay homage to my friends by including small details that only we know about. Initially, I intended to include a small portion of a sketch by
Kids in the Hall
in the second-to-last chapter of the book when Kensey was thinking about whether Broccin was thinking of her and whom he was with. I decided to take it out to avoid any discussion of plagiarism vs. homage-paying. Needless to say, I would have acknowledged it, but instead, I’m noting that I really, really, really wanted to do it and didn’t. But if you know the sketch of which I speak, please email me so you can share in my nerdy-ness. If you email
[email protected]
, I will be happy to nerd-out right back.

A quick word about accents. All of my favorite Scottish historical romances have the Scottish accented English in them. I grew up loving the
dinna ken
out of every Highlander I could get my hands on. However, at this time, English was not widely spoken in Scotland. We know much more about the spoken languages today than we did thirty years ago. In this time, Scotland was a land of many languages. As you can see remain even to this day in linguistic patterns of spoken English, the dialect and language of Scotland is extremely regional. This did not develop only with English. It’s widely expected that Gaelic was spoken in many places, but it’s also thought that French, Norwegian, English, and other languages were spoken. These Highlanders speak Gaelic because I couldn’t find any convincing evidence to suggest they couldn’t have. Of course, it’s Gaelic translated into English for your reading pleasure, which is why there’s no
dinna ken
in this book. However, when I read the dialogue in my head, I still hear it with a Scottish accent. The fact that Broccin recognizes the French inflections in the Gaelic is something that I assume from speaking many languages where I can pick out the strange inflections in a German-speaking Englishman or a Spanish-speaking German. I hope no one sees this as author intrusion, but I believe that when we hear commonly our language spoken by many different first-language speakers, we get to know what the inflections mean and label people as being from a certain place or region because of their dialectizing. It’s more likely that Kensey would have spoken French, and it’s even possible that the Sinclairs themselves were still known as St. Claire (thus the homage-paid in the castle name) at this time. However, it’s far enough into the Anglicizing of Scotland that they’d started being known to everyone simply as Sinclairs.

In regards to Broccin (and others of the Sinclair family) being thrown out of their family. I would like to carefully reiterate that Magnus Sinclair (Broc’s father) was mentally ill and paranoid. Hopefully that makes his actions make more sense—including his betrothing several of his sons to different women over the years. This won’t be the last time you see Magnus Sinclair or hear of his insanity. Hopefully, as you get to see Magnus through the eyes of all of his children, you’ll get a sense for how truly psychotic the man was and how unusual and extreme a punishment it would have been considered (especially at this time and in this country and these circumstances) to be exiled from your family. Additionally, because Magnus hated his first wife (who, incidentally, was also French—which makes Broc and Kensey’s offspring only ¼ Scottish… that will be important later), he transferred that hatred to Broccin. He was often rumored to have said that his first wife wasn’t really his wife, and therefore, any children he had by her, not really his children. Of course, this is nonsense. He and Broc’s mother were married, they had him, and she died in childbirth. His dislike of her was his disease. She was a lovely woman. Magnus was married three times. His first wife had Broccin; his second wife had Brigid, Duncan, Malcolm, and Alana; his third wife had Morainn. His third wife survived him. Magnus’ cause of death is currently unknown, but will be revealed in a later book, by one of his children.

One final note. All of the villains in my books are chosen for their proximity, and I mean no judgment on any of the families or clans of the villains. I just needed a villain and Colin Ross presented himself. There was a record of an assault on the Ross castle in 1296, which I timed with Duncan and Broccin’s raid on Balconie. The head of the Ross family was not known to be a barbaric person. As I said, I just needed a villain.

Thank you so much for reading this note. I hope that you enjoyed the book and will continue to read the stories of the rest of the Highland Renegades as they are released.

With Love of All Things Scottish,

R. L. Syme