Historical facts.
Historical fiction.
You decide.

Or maybe I'll decide.

Let's travel together into the past.

As a lover of literature and Tudor history, have you ever longed to travel into the court of Queen Elizabeth I to discover what really happened? Maybe, like me, you suspect “merry old England” contained mysteries and secrets much more complex, dangerous and beautiful than we have been led to believe?

But from a distance of 400 years, what eye-witness could we trust to tell us the truth?

Home-Intro

The most important stories don't always make the history books.

Telling histories

I'm Dorothea, a life-long story teller (and recovering lawyer). My passion is reconstructing the rich atmosphere of Tudor England, especially the Elizabethan era, and piecing together the hidden truths about its inhabitants through the artifacts they left behind.

I believe that for us to inhabit another’s skin, place and time in history, thoroughly researched backstories are crucial. Not only do they sculpt historical individuals’ light and the dark sides, but they unravel their secrets and explain the mysteries about their world we do not understand. Elizabethan literature, whether poetry, plays, or song, was written by contemporary eye-witnesses to the age and has long been overlooked as a crucial historical resource.

I seek a deeper understanding of the Elizabethan age by investigating its darker and most beautiful secrets. When historical “facts” do not add up, I begin to excavate to find the hidden human motivations for people’s actions. In the places where no one who writes history books ever looks, there are volumes that explain historical events, treacheries, treasons, turf battles and coverups, through the personal motivations of the people who participated in them.

All of politics is personal on some level. You might assume that, as a novelist, I make up what I write about the Elizabethan court. I promise you that for the most part, I do not. The hidden side of Elizabethan history is the truest and most fascinating of all.

Not everything makes it into the history books.

Governmental and personal secrets, intimate relationships and disreputable details about how history’s winners won have always been erased by those who did not want us to know. Uncovering hidden truths about the Elizabethan and Tudor age and personalities requires digging below the surface.

Join me on a treasure hunt into the past. I will provide startling finds collected on my own journey as clues, but in the end, this adventure belongs to you, too!