Lucy Pick, "The Queen’s Companion" (Cuidono Press, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: New Books Network – Interview with Lucy Pick on The Queen’s Companion

Host: C.P. Leslie
Guest: Lucy Pick
Date: September 11, 2025

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Overview

In this compelling episode of the New Books Network, host C.P. Leslie interviews historian and novelist Lucy Pick about her latest historical fiction novel, The Queen’s Companion (Cuidono Press, 2025). The discussion delves into the lesser-known early life of Eleanor of Aquitaine, focusing on her experiences during the Second Crusade, and is uniquely told through the perspective of the fictional Lady Ode (Haud) of Antioch. Central themes include female friendship, cultural displacement, and the complexities of historical narrative.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Journey from Historian to Novelist

• Lucy Pick’s Motivation for Writing Fiction
  Pick began writing fiction to complement her academic writing and reach a broader audience. Her fiction emerged as a way to explore the human dimension behind historical research.

  "I started writing, I think, as a sort of a companion piece to doing academic writing... because I wanted to tell stories that would get a different kind of audience than an academic audience." (Lucy Pick, 02:46)

2. The Intertwined Stories: Pilgrimage and The Queen’s Companion

• Narrative Connections
  The Queen’s Companion builds off her first novel, Pilgrimage, following the story of young Ode—who appears as a secondary character in Pilgrimage—and imagines her life intersecting with Eleanor of Aquitaine.

  "The first novel and the second novel, they can be read in any order, but they do intersect at a certain point." (Lucy Pick, 03:19)

3. Why Focus on Young Eleanor and Antioch?

• Unexplored Historical Period
  Pick is drawn to the enigmatic “lost year” of Eleanor’s life during the Second Crusade, when Eleanor vanishes from the historical record, presenting fertile ground for imaginative reconstruction.

  "...Eleanor...disappears for a year while on Crusade. So I had this wonderful opportunity to...imagine a period of, oh, nine to ten months about what happened to her." (Lucy Pick, 04:39)

• The Cosmopolitan Character of Antioch in 1148
  Pick describes Antioch as a "cosmopolitan, interesting place" featuring a mix of cultures, religions, and histories.

  "It's this very kind of cosmopolitan, interesting place in 1148, when Eleanor arrives there and meets Ode." (Lucy Pick, 07:06)

4. Female Friendship & Agency

• Unique Focus
  At the novel’s core is the depiction of female friendship that is non-pathological and mutually supportive, informed by Pick’s scholarly work on women’s networks in medieval Spain.

  "I wanted to...write a book about women who kind of grow together and who rely on each other...women of that era relied a lot on other women." (Lucy Pick, 07:22)

5. Constructing Ode’s Backstory

• Dual Timeline Structure
  The narrative weaves between present day travels with Eleanor and Ode’s recounting of her earlier life, gradually revealing the trauma and longing that shape her motivations.

  "She is telling her own story to Eleanor, beginning from her youth, and then the two kind of timelines join up at the end." (Lucy Pick, 09:22)

• Theme of Home and Identity
  Ode’s persistent journey is driven by a longing for home, which over time she learns is as much about relationships as it is about place.

  "Home is not just a place. Home is the people and the relationships that she has." (Lucy Pick, 12:54)

6. Character Insights: Ode’s Family and Eve the Barbary Ape

• Mixed Heritage and Early Loss
  Ode is the “insecurely attached” daughter of a French Crusader and his Armenian wife, leading to an early sense of displacement and self-reliance.

  "Her father was a French crusader...They're very preoccupied with each other...and they're not so preoccupied with Ode." (Lucy Pick, 13:45)

• Eve as Alter Ego and Comic Relief
  The inclusion of Ode’s companion, Eve the Barbary ape, brings both levity and symbolic resonance, mirroring Ode’s journey of self-discovery.

  "Ode's recognition...of what Eve needs in her life parallels Ode's recognition of what Ode needs in Ode's life. So I would call Eve sort of an alter ego in some ways." (Lucy Pick, 14:59)

7. Ode’s Nemesis: Thierry de Gallerin and the Templars

• Thierry, a historical Templar and rival to both Ode and Eleanor, embodies the intersections of spiritual authority and militaristic ambition in the Crusader states.

  "He is a Templar...part monastic, part knightly order of men who both lived religious lives and who fought...Ode also has her own history with him." (Lucy Pick, 19:13)

8. Ode’s Coming of Age and Her Relationships

• Young Ode in Jerusalem and Charles the Good
  Ode’s youthful infatuation with the knight Charles the Good shapes much of her trajectory, providing a chivalric ideal and lesson in maturity as she later navigates disappointment and real friendship.

  "He is the figure who history knows as Charles the Good...her life gets entangled with his...coming to terms with that...is also kind of part of Ode's healing process." (Lucy Pick, 21:51)

• Displacement in Flanders, Rivalry, and Friendship with Edith
  Ode’s arrival in Flanders is marked by culture shock and rivalry with Edith, which transforms into solidarity, particularly after shared loss and hardship.

  "So Ode and Edith are...rivals, except Edith really isn't cut out to be a rival...the relationship that Ode has with Edith, I think, teaches her how to have a relationship with Eleanor." (Lucy Pick, 26:44)

9. The Historical Triangle: Eleanor, Louis VII, and Count Raymond

• The novel explores the possibility—attested in medieval chronicles but controversial among historians—that Eleanor and her uncle Raymond of Antioch had an affair. Pick weighs historical plausibility with creative narrative.

  "There's a medieval story...that Eleanor and Raymond had an affair...From my point of view...I think it's probably plausible...that's the line I took in the novel." (Lucy Pick, 28:39–31:17)

• Pick reflects on her evolving views about Eleanor’s agency and vulnerability in narrative context.

  "As I was working on the book, my view of Eleanor really changed...I realized how young she was...seeing more as Raymond as being more predatory." (Lucy Pick, 31:35)

10. Broader Themes and the Modern Reader

• Relating Past and Present
  Pick hopes readers appreciate both the resonances and distinctions between the medieval world and contemporary issues, especially in the ways women relate to each other and navigate patriarchal contexts.

  "I'd like readers to...see both how the sort of similarities, parallels to our own time...and also the differences..." (Lucy Pick, 32:19)

11. A Glimpse at the Next Book

• Pick’s forthcoming project will center on El Cid’s wife and the legends of the Holy Grail in medieval Spain.

  "It's really about his wife...and it's about the Holy Grail also." (Lucy Pick, 32:59)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the type of female friendships depicted in literature:

  "When I was trying to find other books that were similar...they're all really...disturbing and toxic...But I wanted to...write a book about women who...rely on each other."
  (Lucy Pick, 07:22–08:20)

• On historical plausibility vs. narrative invention:

  "If we take what historians write about what happened as evidence at all, that's evidence. But we also know that medieval historians...write in ways to favor one character...I think it's probably plausible."
  (Lucy Pick, 30:20–31:17)

• On character development via pets:

  "Pets always kind of humanize a character...but that's interesting. She is, in a sense, an alter ego. I hadn't thought of Ode figuring out what she wants by figuring out what Eve wants."
  (C.P. Leslie, 17:09)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:46] – Lucy Pick on writing fiction as a historian
• [04:39] – Why focus on Eleanor's "missing year" in Antioch
• [07:22] – Depiction of female friendship and supporting networks
• [09:22] – Explanation of the dual timeline structure
• [12:54] – Ode’s understanding of “home”
• [14:59] – Eve the Barbary ape as alter ego
• [19:13] – Introduction of Thierry de Gallerin and the Templars
• [21:51] – Childhood encounter with Charles the Good
• [26:44] – Dynamic between Ode and Edith
• [28:39–31:17] – The “triangle” story: Eleanor, Raymond, and Louis VII; issues of historical truth and narrative
• [32:19] – Takeaways for readers: Parallels and differences with the present
• [32:59] – Preview of next novel about El Cid’s wife and the Holy Grail

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Overall Tone

The interview is engaging, thoughtful, and personable, balancing scholarly insight with the warmth of shared storytelling. Both Pick and Leslie maintain an accessible, occasionally humorous tone, making complex history relatable and the writing process transparent.

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Conclusion

This episode offers an in-depth exploration of both the historical context of The Queen’s Companion and Lucy Pick’s creative process. The focus on young Eleanor of Aquitaine, told through the resilient, complex figure of Ode, provides a fresh lens on crusader history and women’s lives in the Middle Ages. With ample attention to the challenges and rewards of blending fact with fiction, the conversation is insightful for both historical fiction enthusiasts and scholars alike.

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Transcript

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[Lucy Pick]

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[C.P. Leslie]

Hello everyone. I'm C.P. leslie, the host of New Books in Historical Fiction, the podcast channel on the New Books Network. Today I'm speaking with Lucy Pick about her second novel, the Queen's Companion. The queen in question is Eleanor Vaquetaine, perhaps best known in pop culture through the 1968 film The lion in Winter, where she was played by Katharine Hepburn. The Queen's Companion, though, focuses on a much younger Eleanor before her fateful meeting with Henry Plantagenet, as seen through the eyes of the fictional lady. Ode Antioch, March 1148 the second time I met Eleanor of Aquitaine, I was on a pier, noisy with gulls and stinking of fish guts on the last leg of a long journey heading for home. The muck ridden scow I paid to sail me to Jaffa dumped me instead downstream from Antioch, along with my baggage and a monkey named Eve I had picked up along the way. The winds hadn't cooperated and the crew wouldn't take me any closer to my old home, mumbling excuses about it being unlucky to have a lady on board. Unlucky for me, certainly. May God take all ships and hurl them to the depths of the sea, though preferably without me on them. I had spent three months hop scotching from port to port across the Mediterranean all the way from Lisbon. I was tired and grubby from my travels and heart sore for reasons I will not go into now. Please join me in welcoming Lucy Pick. Hello Lucy. I look forward to talking with you.

[Lucy Pick]

Today, I'm glad to be here.

[C.P. Leslie]

As you mentioned in your author's note, you are a historian in medieval Spain. How did you get started writing fiction?

[Lucy Pick]

I got started writing fiction. You know, I started writing fiction, I think, when I was working, even before I was working on my dissertation. I've got two kind of trunked novels that. That I was working on. But I started writing, I think, as a sort of a companion piece to doing academic writing. I started writing my first book, actually my first novel that was published right after I finished my. Published my first academic novel. And I think it was because I wanted to tell stories that would get a different kind of audience than an academic audience.

[C.P. Leslie]

What can you tell us briefly about that first novel, Pilgrimage?

[Lucy Pick]

It was a novel, basically, it's about the pilgrimage road to Compostella in the early 12th century. If there's two plots. I think it was Stephen King who said, this one plot is somebody leaves town and somebody comes to town. So that novel was a somebody leaves town plot. It was about a woman named Gabirga who leaves Flanders kind of accidentally. She wasn't expecting to. She's kind of a reluctant pilgrim. And it's about what happened to her there. And the reason why she leaves town is because her father returns home. She's blind, and her father's been on crusade, and he returns home with a new wife. And the new wife is this very young girl ode. And so my second novel was actually trying to figure out what happened to her. You know, I became kind of curious after I wrote the first novel. Who is this young woman who's turned up and what's her story? So the first novel and the second novel, they can be read in any order, but they do intersect at a certain point.

[C.P. Leslie]

Ah, see, I only read the second one, so I didn't realize that. But that's very interesting. So we'll get back to Haud in a moment. I won't ask why you wanted to write about Eleanor of Aquitaine, because really, who wouldn't want to write about Eleanor Vaquadine? But why did you decide to focus on this particular period of her life?

[Lucy Pick]

Well, because of the idea from the novel came from my first novel. I kind of had the time period already set. And the idea of the Crusades was already set, too. But I think that Eleanor, this early period of Eleanor's life is fascinating because we all have this idea of kind of, you know, the lion in winter, you know, Eleanor and Henry ii. But her first marriage, of course, was to Louis VII of France, and it ends in divorce, and it ends in divorce right after the Second Crusade. And the other thing that's interesting about the period of Eleanor and the Second Crusade is she disappears for a year while on Crusade. We kind of know all about her until she ends up in Antioch, and then she just disappears for a year. So I had this wonderful opportunity to take what I knew about Eleanor, to take from the historical record, and then to imagine kind of a period of, oh, nine to ten months about what happened to her.

[C.P. Leslie]

So what is Antioch like in 1148?

[Lucy Pick]

Well, Antioch has been sort of passed like a football between the Byzantine Greeks and the Muslims, they one capturing it, the other recapturing it, until just before the First Crusade starts. It was conquered by the seljuk Turks in 1084, and then it was taken by the Crusaders after a really long siege during the First Crusade in 1098. And it's held by different Western lords, different lords from the Mediterranean. And it ends up being passed down to one of their daughters, who's very young, and she is married off in 1136, she's nine years old, and she's married off to Raymond of Antioch, because they need a man to hold the county, and he is Eleanor's uncle. The town itself, Antioch, is kind of on a earthquake fault. And so it's an ancient city, and it has been destroyed many times. It gets destroyed many times by earthquakes, but it ends up being a very cosmopolitan kind of city. So there are Greeks there, there are Armenians, you know, there are Latins there, eventually after the First Crusade. And so it's this very kind of cosmopolitan, interesting place in 1148, when Eleanor arrives there and meets Ode.

[C.P. Leslie]

So you've told us why you want to tell Ode's story, and we'll get back to her personality in just a minute. But how did you get from her story to Eleanor? I mean, what made you decide that this was the perfect connection for her?

[Lucy Pick]

I think it was because I think that what emerged eventually is this became a story about friendship between women and friendship between women. That is not kind of pathological. When I was trying to find comps for this book, when I was trying to find other books that were similar, and I was asking around for books about female friendship, they're all really, you know, often there's something really, you know, very, very disturbing and toxic about the friendship. But I wanted to. To write a book about. About women who kind of grow together and who rely on each other. One of the things I write about in my academic writing is powerful women, kings, daughters, and noble women in Spain in the Middle Ages. And what I learned from my academic work is that women of that era relied a lot on other women. They had these kind of networks of sort of allegiance and support that kind of go up and down the class structure. So queens will have noblewomen who they rely on and who in turn rely on them. A sort of a parallel structure to what we think of what we sometimes call feudal, the structure between sort of knights and nobles. And so this relationship really interested me. And since Ode had been the daughter of a Crusade, herself, was the daughter of a crusader, who ends up marrying a crusader and returning to Europe, the moment of her return back home to the place she thinks of as home, it made sense to have that coincide with another Crusade. So with the Second Crusade that Eleanor and Louis VII went on, where is.

[C.P. Leslie]

Lady ode herself in 1148? I'm not asking you to reveal what we find out at the end of the novel. I'm asking you where she is when we meet her at that point of the story.

[Lucy Pick]

Yeah. So the story is sort of a dual timeline novel in the sense that we travel with Ode from Antioch with Eleanor on their journey, and what happens throughout the book. But at the same time, she is telling her own story to Eleanor, beginning from her youth, and then the two kind of timelines join up at the end. But so I can tell you that the Ode we meet in the first pages of the book, we can tell she's upset about something. She's just come off of a sort of an upsetting and somewhat traumatic experience that we are not told about. We don't fully find out what's going on there until we get to that part in her story much later in the book. But she's a bit lonely, and she is still trying to get home, and she's having a hard time getting home. And her life story, in some ways, is about her thwarted efforts to get home. And it seems like her efforts once again are gone astray, because she's trying to get to Jaffa. She's trying to get to the port of Jaffa, which is the closest place to the castle where her father, where her father and mother had lived. And she gets tossed off stray, and she ends up on the pier in Antioch, not where she wanted to be. Not quite sure how she's going to get there, but she happens to arrive when the French fleetwhat's left of it comes, and also arrives at the pier in Antioch. And she has met Eleanor once before. And so Eleanor is kind of Curious about her and invites her to come along, invites her to come along with them. And Ode kind of pays her way with them by telling these stories of her life. And she's just thinking at the beginning, this is just going to be convenient. This is just going to help me out. But she soon becomes enveloped in what's going on in Eleanor's life and in the relationship the two of them have together.

[C.P. Leslie]

She's quite a bit older than Eleanor at this point in time.

[Lucy Pick]

Yeah, she's about a generation older than Eleanor. So there's a sort of a. Eleanor is superior by the fact of being a queen, but Ode is more mature, more experienced. So there's a kind of. Because of the kind of imbalance, the sort of. Both of them have an imbalance, I think they're able to meet more as. Not quite as equals, but they're able to meet on a more level footing than, I think Eleanor and her other women, who are all clearly subordinate and belong to this. Eleanor's social world. You know, Ode comes in from the outside, so she's a kind of a wild card. She can have an independent relationship with Eleanor, regardless of who she's married to or who her other connections are. And I think that's something that allows them to create a deeper bond.

[C.P. Leslie]

Oh, to put it mildly, detest ships, as we find out right away. So you've mentioned that she's trying to get home, and I'd like to talk about her home, but what is it that. Where should I put this? What does home mean for her? That this is something that she's willing to undergo so much danger, frankly, in the Mediterranean at that period, on a ship and just confront this fear that she has of ships in order to get there.

[Lucy Pick]

I mean, I think that she. She left it when she was young. She left it under traumatic circumstances, married to this, you know, much older crusader, just shooing the cat away, this much older crusader. And I think that one of the things that she learns on the way. This may seem a little trite, but home is not just a place. Home is the people and the relationships that she has. And that's something that I think that takes her a long time to learn, and I think that's something that she learns as part of her journey with Eleanor.

[C.P. Leslie]

Tell us a bit about her parents. They have quite different backgrounds, which is actually not unusual in that time and place. But our listeners may not know that they have quite different personalities as well, as.

[Lucy Pick]

Well, Eleanor's mother is Armenian, so she's local. She's an Armenian Christian and her father was a French crusader. And so they meet at some point after the First Crusade and marry. And they are. I think they're very preoccupied with each other, and they're very preoccupied with, you know, running the little castle and being knights and things like that. And they're not so preoccupied with Ode. She is a little insecurely attached, I'd say, if I'm. If I can use sort of 20th century psychological terminology, and a little bit maybe ungrounded in her own home as a child and a little bit insecure and loses her parents fairly early on and then really has to sort of fend for herself in this world.

[C.P. Leslie]

So one of the characters we meet right away, even in that first paragraph that I read, is Eve. And I do have to ask about her. Why did you decide to include her? And what should readers know about her?

[Lucy Pick]

Well, Eve is. Well, I was going to say Eve is a monkey. She wouldn't like me to say that she's actually a Barbary ape. She has traveled. Ode picked her up on the way to Antioch. Ode rescued her. Ode had been at another part of the Second Crusade, which was the siege of Lisbon. So she's coming. She's gone from Flanders, she's gone to Lisbon, and she's kind of rounding the south of Spain. And if anybody's been to Gibraltar, they'll be very familiar with all the Barbier apes who are there. She. Ode rescues Eve when she finds some boys throwing stones at her. And Eve seems, I think, very vulnerable and needing of protection. And Ode soon discovers that actually Eve has a mind of her own. And it's rather hard to have a Barbary ape living with you. So I think that there's some kind of aspect here, probably of Ode rescuing Eve and maybe identifying with Eve a little bit and rescuing herself a little bit at this difficult moment in her life. In some ways, the sort of first new bond she creates after a very difficult time in Lisbon, which you'll learn about towards the end of the novel. Eve becomes. She becomes the excuse for some of the events of the plot. It's when Eve attacks Eleanor's hairdo, that Ode and Eve. That Ode and Eleanor kind of bond over this strange experience. And that's when Eleanor invites Ode to come along. And there's a few other moments when Eve kind of generates the plot. But in some ways, Ode's recognition. I don't want to give too much away of the plot, but Ode's recognition of what Eve needs in her life parallels Ode's recognition of what Ode needs in Ode's life. So I would call Eve sort of an alter ego in some ways.

[C.P. Leslie]

Oh, that's very interesting. I was thinking of her mostly as comic relief, which she certainly is. And yeah, you're right, she moves the plotter along at certain crucial moments. And pets always kind of humanize a character as well. But that's. That's interesting. Yeah, she is, in a sense, an alter ego. I hadn't thought of Odd Ode. I'm sorry. Figuring. Figuring out what she wants by figuring out what Eve wants.

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[Lucy Pick]

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[C.P. Leslie]

See mintmobile.com so just after Ode arrives in Antioch, she runs into an old enemy. So what should we know about Thierry de Gallerin and the Templars more generally?

[Lucy Pick]

So Thierry de Gallerin is really kind of Ode's nemesis. And actually Eleanor's nemesis too. He is a Templar. The Templar order is what's called a military order. It's a military religious order, which may seem oxymoronic but there was an idea, really, fostered by the Crusades, that war could be holy. Not just a just war, but in fact, an actively holy war, a war that brought you merit. And it was a kind of a part monastic, part knightly order of men who both lived religious lives and who fought. And they became institutionalized very quickly in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. And they get their start right around the time that Ode's story, that we start hearing about Ode's story from her childhood. So her growth and her adulthood parallel the rise of this order. So she had had an encounter and a difficult time with Thierry when she was a child. But also, Eleanor has had a very difficult time with Thierry because Thierry has Louis VII's ear. And Louis VII is more interested in listening to Thierry de Galerat than he is in listening to Eleanor. And de Galerie is actually a historical figure. And so the parts of the story that have to do with Eleanor are factual, or at least they're medieval stories. And one of the stories is that he had been castrated while being captive, and that Eleanor teases him about being a eunuch, as she would say. And this is one of the reasons why the two of them hate each other, but they're rivals. And Ode also has her own history with him. So that's how that sort of triangle fits together. There's a number of triangles in this book.

[C.P. Leslie]

There are a number of triangles. You've already told us why you included the dual timeline. I mean, this is really the story that you wanted to tell, is told in these past tales. But tell us a little bit about some of the early tales themselves. It starts with Ode's childhood, and even as a child, she's a very distinct and strong personality. So tell us about her and her initial encounter with Charles and what it means to her.

[Lucy Pick]

Yeah. So the first story she tells is about a visit she makes to Jerusalem with her mother. Her mother is being summoned to deal with the queen of Jerusalem. The queen is another Armenian. And this is one of the things that really, I think I knew when I was writing the book, but I knew sort of, but I didn't realize quite how important Armenian queens were to the history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. But anyway, very demanding. Queen wants Ode's mother to attend on her, and Ode is wandering around the area that we would know now as the Temple Mount, getting into trouble. And she takes a dare with a few young boys who are there and ends up basically sliding down part of the exterior wall. And she's trapped, and she's rescued by Charles of Flanders, who's also visiting on Crusade. And he is the figure who history knows as Charles the Good. Charles the Good of Flanders. He ends up eventually becoming king of Flanders after this moment. And her relationship with him becomes one of the key movers for her own stories and her own growth to maturity. What we have here at the beginning is she just falls madly in love with him. He is handsome, he is heroic, he is a knight of the sort that one dreams of, and he has very chivalrically rescued her. And so when she has this very difficult life, parents die, married off as a teen as what we would call a teen to an old man who's frankly kind of gross. He's the kind of thing she holds onto, this sort of attachment, this romance, this idealization of him. And then, as chance would have it, she moves to Flanders with her husband, and she's able to meet him again as an older, you know, as a young woman. And her life gets entangled with his, and he is not capable of being the knight in shining armor that she'd hoped. And she gets very angry about that at a certain point. But coming to terms with that and accepting Charles the way he is and accepting their really true friendship for what it is is also kind of part of Ode's healing process, as the book goes on.

[C.P. Leslie]

So now that you've explained, I know why it is that Ode marries this crusader and goes to Flanders. Talk a bit about how she fits into this new family. I mean, Flanders itself is a huge shock for her, coming as she does from the Holy Land. So could you paint the picture and talk about how she fits into the situation that she finds there?

[Lucy Pick]

It's a huge shock. The kingdom of Jerusalem is warm and sunny, and it has all sorts of the diverse sort of fruits and vegetables and produce that we're familiar with, because it ended up getting exported across the Mediterranean and it began to be cultivated in Europe. It has olives, it has olive oil. And Flanders is flat and. And green and wet and gray. And it's completely different from what she's used to. And she's all alone. She doesn't have any other connection other than this husband whom she doesn't have any feelings for. And she's completely alienated. This is the moment, actually, when it crosses with the first book. And she's a pretty horrible person. She's pretty horrible to my heroine of Pilgrimage. And I wanted to sort of figure out why she was so horrible at this point. So it is traumatic. She is young, she's in some ways, she's not a wholly sympathetic character, although I think in the end, I hope that most readers will appreciate her. She has a lot of growing up to do, and we travel with her as she grows up and as she slowly finds purchase in her new home. And again, it's through her connection, slow and hard, one with some of the other women that she encounters there and with some friendships that she forms there.

[C.P. Leslie]

Tell us a bit about Edith.

[Lucy Pick]

So Edith is. Edith is the wife of a man named Christian, Christian of Gistle, who comes to claim the castle after Ode's horrible husband dies. Ode, by this point, has a child and wants to preserve the castle for the child. But now she has this sort of distant relative who's claiming this castle in Flanders. And so Odin and Edith are. Are rivals, except Edith. Edith really isn't cut out to be a rival. Edith is very gentle and placid and maybe a little bit, you know, a little bit. A little bit shy. And so Ode just sort of runs roughshod over her for a while. But they both suffer a lot together. They end up with the events of what happens in the life of Charles the Good, which your listeners can Google if they like. They suffer a great deal in the aftermath of that. Edith is from the family of the rival, of sort of rival opponents of Charles the Good, and they bond together over that. Edith loves Ode's child, and that creates a bond between them. And so in some ways, that's one of the ways. The relationship that Ode has with Edith, I think, teaches her how to have a relationship with Eleanor. I think the two relationships, in some ways, kind of the second one builds on the first one.

[C.P. Leslie]

What should we know about the triangle involving Eleanor, King Louis and Count Raymond? I mean, I'm talking about this in historical terms more than asking you to give away things from your own story.

[Lucy Pick]

Yeah. So there's a medieval story. This is not a modern story. There's a medieval story that Eleanor and Raymond had an affair while they were in Antioch, and Raymond is Eleanor's uncle.

[C.P. Leslie]

And.

[Lucy Pick]

This was part of the earliest historiography about this Second Crusade. So John of Salisbury writes about it, and he's contemporary. He would have. He would have. He was alive to know Eleanor. And William of Tyre, who's another historian, also writes about it. John of Salisbury is a little cagey. William of Tyre pretty much says it straight out and actually implicates Thierry of Gallerin as somebody who is telling the king about it and is concerned about it. And so the question is, you know, the question for us as later readers, both readers of novels and readers of history, is, did it happen or not? And I think you can go. I think you can go several ways. There's certainly evidence. You know, if we take what historians write about what happened as evidence at all, that's evidence. But we also know that medieval historians, as do modern historians, write in ways to favor one character, to criticize another character. And it's possible that saying that Eleanor had a relationship with her uncle was a way of explaining the reason why, frankly, the Second Crusade in the kingdom of Jerusalem was basically a failure. So we can see why it could have been invented. From my point of view, speaking now as a historian rather than as somebody who writes fiction, I think it's probably plausible. I think that there's enough there, and I think there's enough there from different kinds of sources that it's highly plausible. There's another chronicler, Odo of Doi, who is writing. He's planning on writing this whole great narrative of the Second Crusade, and he just stops at Antioch and doesn't continue, and that's the end of the story. So there's a lot that makes me think something untoward happened. Now, what I did with the story, then, that's the line I took in the novel. And of course, what I did with it, that's my own imagination. But if I'm wearing both my historian hat and my novelist hat, that's where I come down on it.

[C.P. Leslie]

Well, that's the fun of being a historian, writing historical fiction, because if you are a historian, then you do have to be. I mean, if you're writing as a historian, you do have to be more careful. But scuttlebutt is not news. I mean, people told terrible stories about pretty much everyone they knew. I'm sure if we had records from the cavemen, there'd be gossip in those, too.

[Lucy Pick]

And people do all sorts of things, you know, like, this happens. Right. You're just in our own world. So, yeah. I think, though, as I was working on the book, my view of Eleanor really changed because I was working on this for a long time. And I think at first I thought of it as just sort of this salacious story. And then. And this was sort of post the MeToo era, I realized how young she was when this happened and how much older her uncle was. And so I sort of saw it through new. The version that readers will read. I'm seeing it through a different set of eyes, seeing more as Raymond as being more predatory. I think when I first saw.

[C.P. Leslie]

Okay, what would you like readers to take away from the Queen's Companion?

[Lucy Pick]

I would like people to take away. I'd like readers to read the Queen's Companion and see both how the sort of similarities, parallels to our own time, our own issues, our own questions and concerns, our own preoccupations, and also the differences, because I think that in history there are both similarities and there are differences. So I think that's what I'd like readers to see there. They'll find characters who are like us, and those same characters will do things and think things that are very different than the way we would think and what have you.

[C.P. Leslie]

Are you working on another novel?

[Lucy Pick]

I've got a novel about El Cid, the epic, the Spanish epic hero, El Cid. It's really about his wife, who's an important part of the sort of epic stories of the Cid. And it's about the Holy Grail also. And it's just strange to think of it being in Spain. But there are at least two chalices in Spain now that both claim that they are the actual really, truly Holy Grail. So I've put those two stories together and I'm working on that.

[C.P. Leslie]

That sounds like fun. I look forward to reading it. Thank you so much for spending your time with us today, Lucy.

[Lucy Pick]

Well, thank you. I really enjoyed chatting with you.

[C.P. Leslie]

And thank you for listening to our podcast once again. I'm C.P. leslie, the host of New Books and Historical Fiction podcast channel on the New Books Network. And today I've been talking with Lucy Pick about the Queen's companion. Find out more about her and her [e-mail] like us on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok UBooksNetwork. You can find out more about me and my [e-mail], where I blog about the interviews and in general, discuss history, historical fiction and the rapidly changing publishing industry. Goodbye until my next conversation about historical fiction on the New Books Network.