Bonus: Seth Margolis Interview

that with you. So what we're gonna do here is we're gonna go ahead and actually share with you the interview. Uh. It was Joe and myself for that interview. Devin wasn't unfortunately able to make it. But it's a great interview. It's a lot of history and a lot of good information, and I think you're gonna like it a lot. So let's rule that interview. And you've got a lot more research on this really than we have. And so I guess i'd like to know, do you really think Elizabeth

had a child? You know, I don't know. I would suspect not. I tend to be a discounter of conspiracy theories um. And so you know, it was a really intriguing idea for a novel, and there are bits and pieces of her life and the circumstances around it that might lead you to think she had a child. Um, but I tend to think she didn't. But you know, I think it's sort of like, you know, if you

think about the Kennedy assassination. Again, I'm not a conspiracy theorist in general, so I think Lee Harvey as Oswald acted alone. But a lot of people just feel that it's it's just unthinkable that this great and who was so beloved at the time and maybe even more so in retrospect, could be brought down by one lunatic with good aim. You wanted to be a conspiracy because it seems unfitting that such a great person could be eliminated

by such a nobody. With Elizabeth, there's a similar frustration that you know, arguably the greatest certainly the greatest monarch and in English history and maybe one of the great leaders in world history just ended, you know, her her line ended with her death, and the tutors were no more, her genes were no more. How could that be? It just it doesn't seem fitting somehow. Um. So people constantly want her to um to have left something behind um and and in a way that's the I think that's

part of the fascination with her in general. And it's and it's certainly the reason that a lot of these theories continue to flourish. And it's really the reason I wrote the book. So after Elizabeth, Elizabeth's death, the Tudor line ended, and a lot of people believe that the

English monarchy went kind of downhill after that. Yeah, well it I mean the Stewarts were particularly mediocre and um, you know they within less than half a century, you know, led to the English Civil War with Oliver Cromwell, the the assassination or the execution of Charles the first um and but you could also argue that things didn't get

much better after that. There weren't executions. But I don't know that, um, you know that that that there have been that the monarchs who came after Elizabeth the first ever were particularly distinguished bunch. No no um disrespect intended

to the current queen who just turnedlinding. Um So. I guess that's another source of frustration, is that you know, if she had had a child, I guess a son in particular, but a daughter too that you know might have been you know who inherited her talent for leadership as well as her father's. It might have changed the course of history, certainly the history that immediately followed um. But you know, so I think that's another reason that people want to think that, you know, there could have

been a different path. So in real life, one candidate for a child was Elizabeth that's really popular with a lot of people as Robert Devereaux. What do you think about him as a suspect, and right, he was one of several people that she sort of showered her um royal pleasures on in ways that that um mystified people at the time, you know, why him And so there were always rumors and she did. She did have a very close relationship with his father, Robert Dudley, also known

as m Lester. And you know, I think she had his bedroom moved next to hers. And you know, there are all sorts of so you know, if if there was going to be a h An offspring, it would have been most like glee with him. And there was actually there was someone named Arthur Dudley who surfaced at one point who claimed to be the offspring of the

two of them shut up at Philip of Spain's place. Yeah, because the Catholics never never saw her as a legitimate well as a legitimate period, but as a legitimate monarch of England. So if they could find any sort of scandal that would um, you know, add further I legitimacy to her, it would work to their ends. And in fact, in my book, that's one of the reasons that she um disguises the fact that she had a child, was that it would just it would imperil her her claim

to the throne. And of course in the Semprasonic she has the child before she becomes queen. Most of the rumors about or their theories about her having a child have her having the child while she was queen, and and there's and as I said, there's so many of them. You know. She at one point, Um, she she took to her bed. She had some sort of mysterious illness which I think they called at the time dropsy, but today we would call it a demon which is the

swelling in the mid section. So of course, if you um, and I think that's pretty much historical fact that she had that she was taken to her bed with dropsy or a dema, and that she had a swollen abdomen. So if you're inclined to think that she had a child, this might have been a good time for that child to have been carried, because she had you know, she could have used that as an excuse to disguise her pregnancy.

So it really would have been kind of hard to consual the pregnancy because so she was kind of like the Princess Diana every day and there were so many eyes upon her. It certainly does and that's I think that's why I'm generally not a conspiracy theorists. Like back to the Lee Harvey oswald uh idea. You know, after all of these years, it seems impossible that no one would have come forward to say they knew about this conspiracy.

Not one person has come forward. And similarly in Elizabeth's time, the only difference is there, you know, there were no cameras then, there were no recording devices, you know, so it would all have just been people, um sort of writing letters, and so it would have been harder. It would have been, I think, much easier to disguise than in Princess Diana's day, our day. Um, than any abnormality becomes fodder, you know, for the for the for the media, over the internet and so on. So I don't I

think I think she could have hidden it. Um. But and the and the and the Elizabeth think Core was a really um to use an old fashioned were libidinous place. I mean there were you know, there was lots of intrigue going on. Um. I mean her own mother had been and Lynn had been executed for adultery. She was the wife of the king, and many believe that she was in fact adulter iss So you know, why would why would the wife of the queen take those kind of risks if she didn't think there was actually a

pretty good chance she could get away with it. Um. And some people think she actually had. One of her lovers was her own brother, oh Anne Boleyn, Yeah, which hastened her her execution. I don't know she was guilty of adultery actually, because Henry the eighth did have a pensiont for just wanting to move on and getting tired of whoever he was with and wanted to find himself a new wife. We could do another podcast on that.

You know, was she actually adulterous. But the point is that it wasn't so wildly unbelievable at the time that she might have been, because the court was a place of trists and intrigue and you know, all of which is to say that it's it's conceivable that Elizabeth could have um disguised her pregnancy UM and disguised her love affair with with Dudley or lester um, or thought she could have because there was so much going on at

the time. It was that kind of court. You have found a new potential father for a child that Elizabeth might have had, named Miles Stafford. So did Myles really exist now? So I'm sorry to say it's okay. It was much I found it much more interesting to invent

him and then dispatch him quickly. You never really hear from him other than that he had um this rare genetic disorder that passed on the this um tendency to shivering, as someone calls it in the book, which was an interesting um sort of way to keep his sort of

lineage alive. Was you know, not in a particularly positive way. UM. It also made it, you know, when you're writing a thriller, it made it interesting because you know, when the uh Lee Nicholson, the twenty first century heroine of the book, would come across various locations where the file of family lived, Um, she would seat, for instance, two fireplaces in one room and realized, you know, that became an indication that these people who lived there had a real obsession with staying warm.

So that's the one thing that that I had. My fictional father of the of the Elizabethan offspring um past onto his to his descendants um. And of course the name filer you know, as you know because you read the book, it's full of wordplay and the you know, the word filer um is an adaptation of the French word feast for son and e er of course for Elizabeth Rex and French was the main language spoken at the time of her version of it in the Elizabethan court.

So it was like, you know, it was interesting or likely that she would have had, if she had a child, might have given him that name just as a sort of sly reference to who his his at least his mother was. He said, I have a question, So this is going to kind of be a break and what we've talked about so far, But how did you how did you go about doing your research for the book,

because there's a lot of content here. Uh. Well, I this has been my one of my The Elizabethan period, or really the whole Tooter period in England is my favorite in history. It's one of those really rare times in history where there just seems to be a confluence of um of really extraordinary people. Um. So, of course you have Elizabeth, you have her father Henry the Eighth, an amazing person. You have a Balyn, a fascinating character.

You have Dudley himself, you have Sir Walter Raleigh. Of course, you have Shakespeare, Bacon and all the great artists at the time, writers, and it's and I think another period that I also i'm fascinated with, very different is the eighteenth century America, and you've had all the founding fathers. You know, this rare confluence of just incredibly um intelligent, creative people coming together. Um. And you know, you know there's always the debate did the times make the man?

The man makes the time? I don't know the answer to that. It's probably not even worth thinking about too much. But Elizabeth in England or Tutor England was one of those periods It's always been one of my favorites, so I'm fairly knowledgeable about it, uh, you know, even before I started writing this book. But you know, of course I ended up doing a lot of research. You know, you can do a lot of it on the web,

including the Elizabeth file site that you mentioned. I just went there, and by the way, I certainly have been to that site many times. Um. There's a wonderful book by lies of a Card called Elizabeth's London Um, which is about sort of everyday life in Elizabethan England, which is something that you don't get a lot of when you read biographies of Elizabeth. You get very little of

it in fact um, and it's a wonderful book. It's actually a lot of a lot of fun to read, just about sort of what it was like to live at that time as an ordinary citizen rather than as

a member of the court. Um. And that really helped with a lot of sort of the small details about Elizabeth in medicine, particularly childbirth, so the opening scene is actually quite factual other than the fact that involved Elizabeth having a baby, in terms of the ability to smell garlic as an indicator of pregnancy and things like that that's how they knew back in the day. Yeah, they put garlic under it and if you couldn't smell it,

it made you were pregnant. Um. It's probably not that simple, but but there's a lot of that, and the idea that men were not allowed in the birthday room, for instance, only midwives. The doctor was banished. And details like that came from this wonderful book called Elizabeth's London. And then at some point I started writing it and realized I needed to go to England directly. I've been there many

times before, but for specific scenes in the book. So I went to Hatfield, which is the palace about I think it's about forty minutes from London, where Elizabeth basically held a prisoner by her older sister Mary the look known as Bloody Mary, the Catholic tutor. Um. She was sort of under house arrest there and that's where the opening scene and the birth take place. And I just had to be there. There's no way you can write

about it convincingly without going there. Um and uh. And I was able to convince it was it's open part of the year of the public. But I was able to convince the people in charge there um to let me in. And there's actually a new palace built by Cecil, Elizabeth's great advisor. But the old palace where she was held under house arrest is still there as well. It's

actually used for weddings and bar Mitzvah's apparently today. But I was able to do something I don't think Elizabeth would have appreciated, But I was able to um to tour it on my own and really get a sense of what the place looked like. And um, there's really no substitute for that, even was you know, you walk up from the gatehouse and then back down through the little village around the edges of the um of the estate, and you really get a sense of what it was

like to live at that time. And um, so that was really key. And then the other thing I did other research while I was there. I UM one of the important venues in the book, and a place that I spent a lot of time in while I was writing this was obviously Westminster Abbey, particularly the Lady chapel. Um at the very I think it's the back. I don't think it could be the back of the front. It's based it's behind the altar and it's where Elizabeth is buried, although if you read the book, not to

give anything away, but that that becomes questionable. But Elizabeth is buried there. Ironically, she's buried directly on top of her hated sister Mary. And UM, I spent at least half a day there, um, sort of taking notes and trying to, um, you know, block out the scene. What was interesting was, you know, I probably the sort of suspicious because I spent so much time there. But the

guards they were actually called Beatles. It's very Dickenzie and maybe even um Elizabeth Ethan but um, I love the name, by the way, it's a it's amazing that they're still called that. And um. There was a succession of them coming, you know, on and off shift while I was there, And what I really needed from them was information on the security not of you know, the the sixteenth century,

the cameras and stuff. The cameras. Yeah, so I um so I would you know, I would pull them aside and say what's that up in the corner there, and they look at me like I was insane or possibly dangerous and say, well, you know that's an infrared camera. So then I and that you know, they gave me more details about when they go on when they go off, so that I was able to then do some research on how you could um um disable them using actually

the phone from a fire extinguisher. So and I was really worried i'd be stopped in the way out, but maybe they were just happy to see me go after all the hours I'd spent there. That was a kind of research you really can't do when the Internet. You have to go there and see for yourself. I noticee a character Lee Nichols, does the same thing. It's hard enough. It's hard to hang out without moving because you look more suspicious than if you move around. I think, yeah,

you know, I'm really sorry. I've never been to West Mr Abbey. I've been to London, and I guess I have to go back to London now because I really want to see it now. Oh, it's it's really amazing. I mean it, particularly that part of it. It's it's it's it's just beautiful and it's and it's so full of history. Um, it's good. Actually, the character of Lee says that it was never her favorite place because it's a place that commemorates death with inscriptions rather than a

place that anyone lives. But I don't feel that way. I feel overwhelmed by history when I walk in there. Why is it set that you believe that there's this continuing fascination with Elizabeth. I think it's a couple of things. The fascination with her is because she was just out and out one of the most fascinating political leaders ever

to live. And part of the part of that is that just that she was an absolute monarch of of a great nation and helps oversee England's transition from maybe a second rate power to one of, you know, a first rate power, particularly through the defeat of the Spanish

and the Spanish Armada um. And so there's that. I think the fact that she never married is doubly fascinating because she, you know, she didn't get to power in the usual or she didn't hold on to power in the usual ways, which is exercising it through a man immediate in Her older sister Mary married Philip of Spain Um and they were very much co rulers. But Elizabeth would have none of that. There's a great line that I actually quote in the in the novel Sempers on

it by the Scottish ambassador. Um, he says, I know the truth of that, madam, you need not tell it me. Your majesty thinks if you were married, you would be but Queen of England, and now you are both King and queen. And I think that really sums up why a lot of people are fascinated by her. That she

just she ruled kind of on her own terms. And and you know whether or not she had a child, and she presumably she didn't she um, she didn't marry, and she didn't marry because she just did not want to to to share the to share power with anyone. And that's such a from from a historical purpose that perspective. Rather, that seems such an interesting and unusual attitude today, we wouldn't we wouldn't think twice about it. But then just the idea that a woman wanted absolute power and wouldn't

even share it with a man seems quite interesting. As for having a child, I think that the fascination with that, again is just that people just can't don't want to accept the idea um that that it all ended with her, that that this that this brilliant, brilliant woman's daughter, brilliant though quite vicious father sort of through her refusal to marry and had a child, um and did this this great sort of genetic line, so that people want, you know, are very they cling to any theory or a minor

fact that might prove otherwise. And I think that's that's really what it's all about. Yeah, there's that whole thing about keeping the question of marriage open as a way to keep threats away, such as say Philip of Spain for example, who if he had married Elizabeth, would have taken England through marriage instead of through a military campaign. Right,

And she also held onto an important bargaining ship. So I for as long as she wasn't married, she could use her marriage as a carrot to you know, attract potential foreign suitors. And she did that all the time that she was forever negotiating marriage, you know, sending her ambassadors out to negotiate marriage contracts that never amounted to anything. But as you say, it held off war but also

enabled her to be in a good bargaining position. You know, not to get political on this, but maybe it shows why her life still resonates so deeply with people. I was the other night, I was watching some news show about uh ched Cruz picking Carly Fiorina as his running mate, and people said, you know, it's obviously why he did it.

But some bright pundit said, you know, he's given up an important bargaining ship because now when he goes to the convention, he's already has the vice vice president, but he can't hold that out as a lure to attract other supporters. And I think Elizabeth, this is where it all ties in. Elizabeth did the same by not marrying. She always had something that she could promise. There was always the lure of giving away her hand in marriage

to attract, to gain concessions and so on. So you know, it's funny how those lessons from the sixteenth centuries still our woled relevance today. And the other thing in my book is, you know, um the opening scene I'm not giving anything away, is she gives birth, and it's a pretty horrendous birth. I think most childbirths at the time were. There were certainly no um anesthesia at the time, and she was so in my book, she was so horrified at having to endure that again that she vows, right then,

I'm never going through this again. And there were theories that one of the reasons that she never married was that if she married, she'd be expected to have a child, and if she had a child, she like, I don't know the exact figure, but but you know, a big percentage of women would die in childbirth. Um. And thus and thus not only you know, imperiled her own life, but imperiled the rain and imperil the tutor dynasty and put her country at risk. Um. So in the semper side,

did I make that quite explicit? She she knew about the peril because she had gone through it. Um. But a lot of people think that that's one of the reasons she never had a child, that she she simply was afraid, um, that it would kill her, and that that would not only be you know, obviously not good for her, but it would be very um would put

the entire kingdom of the risk. Well, yeah, chastidy was not as uncommon in those days because actually, I mean death and childbirth was very common, and there was also things like maneial disease which were incurable. Exactly there were I mean, you know, but you remember that back it Lizabeth in England, it wasn't um, it wasn't a certainly a court. It wasn't a completely chased situation. And actually, um, you know, virginity was sort of mocked. There are instances

of Shakespeare where it's mocked. It's not necessarily, um, it's it's certainly talked about publicly as a virtue, but it was it was made fun of a bit behind the scenes. But the truth is she actually gloried in it, in her virginity, and she talked about it all the time. That was sort of a triumph of her will over you know, um, corporeal desire. You know, the the colony of Virginia was named for her virginity. Um, you know,

so it was something really I didn't realize that. Yeah, And so you know, she she gloried in it, not because I think it showed sort of Christian virtue so much as it showed her strength, you know, her resistance. Um. And to actually have a colony um named for your for your virginity is really quite extraordinary when you think of it. Yeah, it really is. And if and if and in fact, if any of these theories are ever proven correct, well they have to rename Virginia. And what

would they rename it? More importantly, I guess you would have called a pregnancia maybe west for us to be West Pregnancia. Uh, you know, I haven't want I want to say. By the way, I thought it was really funny that Will Shakespeare makes an appearance in your book, but he didn't actually get any lines. Well it was I mean, first of all, I just was, as you know, the Semper son it is a sonnet purported to be

by Shakespeare, which I unfortunately had to write um. And then not only right, but in bed with all sorts of cryptic clues and things like that. I was going to ask you about that. How top was that it was impossible? I spent so long, First of all, just that just writing a Shakespeare sonnet, which this sonic will full nobody that it was that it's by Shakespeare. But you know, just writing the sonnet um, you know, the fourteen lines, with the with the with the rhyme scheme, um,

was really really hard. And then almost every line in it has an embedded clue. UM. But I am you know, I am addicted to English crosser puzzles. I don't know if you're familiar with them from the Times, Lendon Times, with the Guardian. They do different kinds of puzzles than American puzzles, which I'm also addicted to. Um. They do cryptic puzzles, UM, which are full of puns and anagrams

and double on tender and things like that. UM. And all of that UM is very much embedded in the Sonnet, and actually in other parts of the novel as well. So and and that goes back to Shakespeare himself. He you knows, you know, his his play days and and as sonnets to a lesser extent are full of puns

and plays on words, you know. And I was in Romeo and Juliet when Marcuccio is dying, UM, he's noticed sort of a joker or a jester um, and he says, I'm I may still be a joker, but asked for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man. So any cryptic crossword compiler as they're called or set or would would or creator would would love that double entendre and would use it in in their in their crosswords. And so I wanted to embed that in the Sonnet.

And then that was a way the Sonnet was a way of connecting the story in Elizabeth's England with the story in the twenty one century, because the Sonnet is discovered by Lee Nichols and so, and she gradually uncovers the meaning of the Sonnet and what it's said about Elizabeth's child, for instance. So why did you choose a female lead character? Well, you know, I wanted to. I thought it would be interesting to um. I thought it would be interesting to make the part aagonist a woman.

I thought it would be an interesting contrast with um, you know, Elizabeth living I guess four or five years before and a woman living in the twenty one century, and all the differences in their life. So that's that's

really how I came up with her. Was just thinking, you know, I want to write a novel about two women, essentially, one the great Elizabeth and one someone named Liz living in the current day who early Rather not to give anything away, lead living in the current day, who um, you know, has many more choices um, and can live a much different life um. But and in some ways has more sort of personal power than even an absolute monarch living in the sixteenth century. UM. And that's that's

really how I came up with her. I thought it'd be interesting to contrast two women living at different times. Uh, and I made her a scholar of Elizabethan literature, just because I knew that that would be how she would plausibly come into contact with this supposedly lost sonnet and be able to read it and understand its significance. So so Lee Nichols goes on her own in the investigation, rather than having a man backing her up or anything like that, much kind of like Elizabeth. Yeah, and I

wanted that to be the case. Also, that she she took her pleasure where she wanted and needed it, but that she was very much determined to be independent and to be alone and and and actually has you know, twenty one century terms, we would say maybe intimacy problems. I don't know that Elizabeth would have said that about herself, but uh, and I and that's exactly right. That's that That was the contrast that I thought would be interesting

to explore in this book. So you handed in an email to us that there was a final clue in the book that didn't get sold. Um, so what was that final clue? Yeah, so I thought it would be fun. As I said, I am, I am a avid solver of English cryptic puzzles, particularly those in the Guardian, which you can get you can download for from the internet.

And I'm hoping that the book will connect with people um here and in England and everywhere who do these puzzles, because it's they are a bit of an obsession Um and the clues that are within the Sonnet are all the kinds of clues that someone who solves English cryptic puzzles would immediately see his clues and would work at

um and probably be able to solve. So when in one of the very last scenes, I'm gonna try not to give anything away about the novel, but in one of the very last scenes of the Semper son itt Uh, just before lee Um tosses I don't want to say, but before she disposes of a certain important element in the book, Let's say she writes, but she writes on a piece of paper. I'll just read it. It's only

four short lines. She writes on a pizza paper. Here queen for word, I'd bring from distant time and place the auger class, the common man and firm embrace ony Swaki mali post you friend of gold are made in France, so only swacum ality post is the emblem of I think it's the Royal how order of the Garden, but it's actually the motto of the of the English royal family. Interestingly, it's in France, but it means shame on you who think bad of it. Only swaciuman ality post. So I'm

embedded that. But anyone who does cryptic cross words of the type that run in the Garden at the times would be able to hear read those four lines and instantly know that those are cryptic clues that have a very specific solution. So I have it in there. She tosses it into the sea. The character lead but um and and and doesn't tell the reader what those lines mean. But I'm hoping that there are readers of the novel who see it as a embedded clue and are able

to solve it. And I'm hoping to actually connect with them, maybe through Twitter or Facebook or somehow, because it intrigues me, and I'm curious how many people will will recognize that for one of those like that, that would be really interesting to see, you know, if people do solve it, and you know who shows up to solve it, and

it'll be cool to see how many people respond. And I'd like to ask you, by the way, they're going to be a sequel to your book, where the problem that's kind of at the heart of the Semper sonnet will sort of come back again. Well, so I may write a sequel. I've sort of fleshed that on my mind a little bit. Um. It won't involve Semper per se. It will involve Lee and the secret that we know

about her uh from the end of the book. Um. And it will also involve her sort of a bridge between the twenty one century and the character of Blee and elizabethan England. So it will have that, it won't be Semper again. So I have sort of sketched that out a little bit of paper, mostly in my mind because I like her as a character and I like what we know about her at the end. I think it's sort of interesting. Um, So it would be I think it would be fun for me to to try

to keep her alive. So I'll see how, you know, if readers connect with her as a actor, um, And if I do, then I will definitely um, I will solve the clue um for for all those who didn't solve them on their own. Well, it's it's been fun talking to you but indeed, yeah, but it's it's probably you're probably out of time. And so is there anything else before we wrap up the interview that you'd like

to tell us, Um, Well, not really. I mean, the one thing that I think is interesting, um and that might be relevant to this podcast is that one of the theories you've probably come across it in your research that that is not explored in the sempers on it, but it's something I've been aware of and and sort of in some ways ties it all together. That you know, one of the other theories about Elizabeth is that she actually was you know, had had a child with the

Earl of Oxford. So of course, you know, there's all these theories that Elizabeth had a bastard child. But there's also even more theories that Shakespeare didn't write his own plays, and there's you know, all sorts of theories advanced for who that could be. And one of them is Edward de vere the Earl of a Start, who was in fact a writer on his own and so you know, the thought is that he was the true author of

the works of Shakespeare. And so there are theories that actually Elizabeth had an affair with him and that and and and that their child um was someone was the Earl of Southampton, who UM figures prominently um in some of these In these theories, I think the sonnets are

are are dedicated to him. So in a weird way, the conspiracy theories about Elizabeth, about Elizabeth having a child and Shakespeare not writing his own books are conjoined with this theory that she might have been actually had an affair with the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere who was the true, the true Shakespeare. There are also theories that their son was the true Shakespeare uh, and that Francis Bacon was and that she might have had an affair with him, or that he in fact was the

son of hers. So it all gets very very tangled um theories. It's also, you know, just as we it seems frustrating that a great person like Elizabeth, you know, couldn't pass on her greatness to another generation and generations after that. There's also a frustration that, you know, the greatest writer of the English language, perhaps any language, was this obscure actor, playwright who we don't know much about.

It would be so much more satisfying to think that he was one of these larger than life characters like the Earl of Oxford or Francis bacon Um. And so from that frustration, I think is born all of these conspiracy theories.