 hen, a generation ago, I sat down before an old Olivetti typewriter, ran through a sheet of paper, and typed a title, The Game of Kings, I had no notion of changing the course of my life. I wished to explore, within several books, the nature and experiences of a classical hero: a gifted leader whose star-crossed career--disturbing, hilarious, dangerous--I could follow in  finest detail for ten years. And I wished to set him in the age of the Renaissance. Francis Crawford of Lymond in reality did not exist, and his family, his enemies and his lovers are merely fictitious. But the countries in which he practices his arts, and for whom he fights, are real enough. In pursuit of a personal quest, he finds his way--or is driven--across the known world, from the palaces of the Tudor kings and queens of England to the brilliant court of Henry II and Catherine de Medici in France. His home, however, is Scotland, where Mary Queen of Scots is a vulnerable child in a country ruled by her mother. It becomes apparent in the course of the story that Lymond, the most articulate and charismatic of men, is vulnerable too, not least because of his feeling for Scotland, and for his estranged family.
The Game of Kings was my first novel. As Lymond developed in wisdom, so did I. We introduced each other to the world of sixteenth-century Europe, and while he cannot change history, the wars and events which embroil him are real. After the last book of the six had been published, it was hard to accept that nothing more about Francis Crawford could be written, without disturbing the shape and theme of his story. But there was, as it happened, something that could be done: a little manicuring to repair the defects of the original edition as it was rushed out on both sides of the Atlantic. And so here is Lymond returned, in a freshened text which presents him as I first envisaged him, to a different world. Books@Random + Alfred A. Knopf + Vintage Privacy Policy |