J. Anderson Coats has kindly agreed to answer some questions about her upcoming book The Wicked and the Just, which goes on sale today. (Look out for my review later in the week!)
This novel is seeped in history and inspired by real life events, so I asked her if she could tell us a little bit more about it.
*all images linked back to original source*
The Welsh Uprising of 1294 in Caernarvon is a period that perhaps isn’t as well-known to some readers. Could you tell us a little bit about it? What made you want to write a story based around these events?
After the fall of native government in Wales in 1282-3, the English filled the power vacuum and made north Wales into a principality directly administered by the Crown. They sought to ensure that the Welsh never caused trouble again, so they implemented an extensive – and expensive – castle-building, urban development and settlement program to maintain control of the area through extra-military means.
What interested me was this question: Even when granted a lot of special privileges – including significant tax breaks – how did English settlers live in a place where they were outnumbered twenty to one by a hostile, recently-subjugated population, and how did the Welsh live so close to people who’d done the subjugating, especially given the burdens placed on them by their new masters?
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