Blog Tour: Ascent – Cathie Dunn. Guest Post.

I’m excited to be working with Rachel Random Resources to be bringing you a stop on the Ascent tour today.

Cathie Dunn is an award-winning author of historical fiction, mystery, and romance. The focus of her historical fiction novels is on strong women through time.
Cathie has been writing for over twenty years. She studied Creative Writing online, with a focus on novel writing, which she also taught in the south of France. She loves researching for her novels, delving into history books, and visiting castles and historic sites. A voracious reader, primarily of historical fiction / romance, she often reviews books on her blog, Ruins & Reading.
Cathie is a member of the Historical Novel Society, the Richard III Society, and the Alliance of Independent Authors.
After many years in Scotland, Cathie now lives in south of France with her husband, and rescued Charlie Cat and Ellie Dog.

ACROSS THE WEB:
Website: https://www.cathiedunn.com
Amazon Author Page: https://author.to/CathieDunn
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cathiedunn
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CathieDunnAuthor/
Ruins & Reading FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/722966445318513
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/cathiedunnwrites/_saved/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5066224.Cathie_Dunn

Now that we’ve met the author, let’s take a look at the book itself:

A brutal Viking raid heralds the dawn of a new, powerful dynasty – the House of Normandy.

Neustria, Kingdom of the West Franks
AD 890

Fourteen-year-old Poppa’s life changes when Northmen land near Bayeux. Count Bérengar, her father, submits to them, and she is handfasted to Hrólfr, the Northmen’s heathen leader, as part of their agreement.
To her relief, Hrólfr leaves immediately in search of further conquest, only returning to claim her years later. In the face of retaliating Franks, they flee to East Anglia, where she gives birth to their son and daughter.
When Hrólfr and Poppa return to reclaim Bayeux, his new campaign strikes at the heart of Frankish power, and King Charles of the West Franks offers him a pact he cannot refuse. In exchange for vast tracts of land in Neustria, Hrólfr must convert to Christianity and accept marriage to Gisela, the king’s illegitimate daughter.
Poppa’s world shatters. She remains in Bayeux, with her daughter, Adela. When Gisela arrives one day, demanding she hand over Adela, to be raised in Rouen, Poppa’s patience is at an end. But Gisela makes for a dangerous enemy, and only one woman will survive their confrontation high up on the cliffs.
Will Poppa live to witness the dawn of a new era?

ASCENT is the first in a new series about the early women of the House of Normandy – women whose stories have been forgotten through time.

Trigger warning: Loss of a child. Some battle and fighting scenes.

Published: April 8th 2022. Ocelot Press. Page Count: 293.

Book Hype.
Goodreads.
The Story Graph.
Amazon.
Book Depository.
Waterstones.

And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for! I am very excited to be bringing you a guest post.

Who was…Poppa of Bayeux?

“Who was she?”

When you research history, as a woman, I often ask myself that question. History is, usually, about men – their wars, politics, machinations.

Chroniclers tend to share the achievements of the (usually male) rulers, and their challenges and successes. We even hear about their marriages, their sons, and occasionally their daughters (where they made suitable marriages or founded religious houses, for example). But we rarely hear about their wives.

Where were they? Did they not have anything of note to contribute at all?

Of course, readers will be familiar with the indomitable Eleanor of Aquitaine, with the Lady Æthelflæd of Mercia, or Emma of Normandy, married to two Kings of England. But these tend to be the exception, and accounts are sadly often filled with the dismissive attitudes of the chroniclers. It’s apparently a rare feat that a woman succeeded in something out of her own ability, and not due to the largesse/cunning/support (add as appropriate) of their husbands/fathers/sons…

Yet more and more details slowly emerge of the power women yielded, behind the scenes. I believe we’re only now starting to see a wider picture.
But whilst the above-mentioned ladies enjoy much attention from historians and historical novelists alike, others dwell in their shadows. One such lady is Poppa of Bayeux.

Very little is known about her. Sources aren’t even certain about her father’s name or position, but it makes much sense, historically, that her father was a man of some power in Neustria. Otherwise, an invader like Rollo (Hrólfr in Ascent) would not have considered marriage to her. He had ambitions to reach high up into Frankish society, and Poppa provided a certain legitimacy, as the daughter of a Frankish count.

We know she was roughly fourteen years old when they met around 888/890, possibly younger. But her children were all born over a decade later, so it was fair to assume they may not have consummated their marriage straight away – although that was not unusual in that era. In Ascent, I sent Hrólfr away, on further expeditions along the coast of Neustria (the land that was to become Normandy decades later), to explain the gap in time.

At the end of the 890s, it appears Poppa accompanied Rollo to East Anglia, as he’d fallen out with the then Frankish king. There, some sources claim, her son William was born.
But in the early 900s, they were back in Neustria, and Rollo’s star was on the rise as he gathered control over large swathes of the county. Given that he was always on the move, it must have been up to Poppa to coordinate their manor. She likely spent much time in Rouen, the town he chose as his seat, and where Rollo would have welcomed many distinguished visitors from the Frankish court.

Whether he married Gisela, an apparently illegitimate daughter of King Charles of the West Franks, is debatable, as – again – no records of her exist.
It was Poppa’s son, William, who inherited his father’s lands and his title of ‘jarl’. In the eyes of the church, Poppa’s marriage ‘in more danico’ (in the Danish custom, i.e., by handfasting) was by then already frowned upon by the church, but at that time, legitimacy wasn’t as yet such a serious issue in minor nobility.

Poppa would have been quite proud of her son gaining such an important inheritance.
I loved plotting Poppa’s life as I envisaged it: a young lady of minor nobility who plays a vital role in the foundation of what was to become, a couple of generations later, the powerful house of Normandy.

In Treachery, the sequel to Ascent, I’m telling the story of Sprota the Breton, ‘in more danico’ wife, to Poppa’s son, William. Of William we know that he also married an heiress in a Catholic ceremony, but they had no children. Sprota’s son, Richard, became William’s heir on his untimely death.
Richard, called ‘the Fearless’, was the first to legitimise the family line after early threats to his life, and likely became the first Duke of Normandy.

I enjoy giving obscure women of the past a voice. In my dual-timeline novel, Love Lost in Time, I created Nanthild as the wife of Bellon, the first Count of Carcassonne, in what is now the south of France. Nothing at all was known about her, although her sons’ names are all recorded. I found that fact very sad, and the omission needed to be rectified.

Thank you for letting me write about Poppa, my opportunity to make a case for all the forgotten women in history.

There we have it. What do you think of this book? Does it sound like something you’d enjoy? Let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to follow the rest of the tour by checking out the bloggers in the graphic below.