Last summer, I was lucky enough to take a trip to Scotland. One memorable afternoon, I drove across the Sleat Peninsula of Skye, from the ruins of Knock Castle to the ruins of Dunscaith Castle, on a one-lane road that had more sheep than cars. Seeing the castles I was writing about was an amazing experience, and the island is breathtakingly beautiful. The landscape hasn’t changed much over the centuries, so I found it easy to imagine my heroes traipsing over the hills or sailing the shores.
Researching clan histories of five hundred years ago proved far more challenging. Not much was recorded in a written record at the time. While there is a rich tradition of oral histories, clans often have different versions of the same long-ago events. And clan alliances, including marriages between chieftains’ families, were made and broken with a frequency that is hard to follow.
The MacDonalds of Sleat are a prime example of the complex family relationships. Hugh (Uisdean), the first MacDonald of Sleat and the grandfather of my fictional character Connor, had six sons by six different women, all from prominent families. If I have this right, Hugh, one of his sons, and one of his grandsons all married daughters of Torquil MacLeod of Lewis—and another of Hugh’s sons married Torquil’s former wife.
As is often the case, Hugh’s proliferate ways did not lead to family harmony. Hugh’s first son hated his half brothers so much that upon his death he turned the clan’s lands over to the Crown to keep the others from inheriting them. The lack of legal title to their lands caused later chieftains problems for years. Two of Hugh’s other sons were murdered by their brothers, and another was murdered by Hugh’s grandsons.
In this series, I’ve kept the family animosity, but changed the details and timing of these events. I’ve also changed the name of one of Hugh’s sons from Archibald to Hugh. A number of other secondary characters in The Guardian are real historical figures, including Shaggy Maclean and Archibald Douglas. I embellished freely upon what I knew of their personalities.
For ease of reading, I used anglicized versions of Gaelic names for some of my fictional characters. For the same reason, I did not follow the practice of calling a person by different names when he was with his mother’s clan, his father’s clan, or somewhere else.
Finally, I confess that I shortened travel times to suit the needs of my story and that Knock Castle was still known as Castle Camus, or Caisteal Chamuis, in 1513. I did not, however, make up the legend of the Green Lady of Knock Castle.