Drawing from historical research on gender, race, illegitimacy, and epistle writing, this fictional history novella tells three nested stories about women finding connection with each other through writing. At the core of the narrative is a long running fourteenth letter exchange between Lady Olivia Sofia Silvestrez and her legitimate half-sister Princess Zésaria of Malalma as they navigate life, marriage, and the potential succession crisis of an unborn male heir to the throne. When these letters are discovered in the mid-twentieth century, Rachel Elizabeth Barlowe, a scholar trapped in the tiny principality of Malalma during World War II, decides to translate them and writes a manuscript on the sisters' lives before her own is tragically cut short. Finally, in the twenty-first century, Jeanette Isaacsen rediscovers Barlowe's unfinished manuscript in her university archives and vows to edit and complete the work and share these women's voices with the world. As Zésaria and Olivia's political drama comes to a head, Barlowe's work begins to unravel as the text inches closer to her death, and Jeannette attempts to bring clarity to the work and her own understanding about how history should be written. This fictional narrative is accompanied by two historical research chapters. The first outlines the history of royal women's epistolary tradition from the first century to the nineteenth century. It argues that the dearth of documentary evidence for royal women writing personal letters to each other does not preclude them from having written in this style in the Medieval Period. The second essay discusses the complex intersections between race, religion, and illegitimacy in the Medieval Period. It argues that while racialized individuals were sometimes viewed with a lens akin to illegitimacy by white Christian Europeans, blood connections to royalty could have plausibly mitigated these effects. It further suggests that the diversity in Medieval Iberia could have allowed for nuance across what are normally seen as distinct socio-cultural barriers in the period.
"},{"label":"Degree","value":["Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors"]},{"label":"Administrative Note","value":"Drupal Node ID: 33846