Settings that Inspire Inspiration

 Inspirational Kantara!

 

Personally, the Island of Cyprus and most especially the above pictured castle of Kantara was the setting which had the most profound influence on my writing. An unplanned trip to Cyprus (my husband and I had booked a trip to Egypt but because of a terrorist attack had to rebook our holiday at short notice), inspired years of further research and travel culminating in six published and three unpublished novels. The most obvious of these is The Last Crusader Kingdom.

 

I was immediately intrigued by Richard the Lionheart's sojourn on the island, but then became fascinated by the dramatic opposition of the Cypriot barons to the tyrannical Frederick II Hohenstaufen. I wrote a series of novels about Cyprus during the civil war in the early 13th century, but doubting the appetite of the reading public for such an obscure topic I never sought a publisher.

Several years later, the release of the film "The Kingdom of Heaven" re-ignited my interest in this period of history. Suspecting Hollywood might not have gotten all the facts right, I started to research Balian d'Ibelin and discovered that the historical Balian was considerably more interesting than the Hollywood Balian. I became inspired to write my Jerusalem Trilogy, set in the Holy Land during the end of the twelfth century. Yet having come to the end of Balian's known life I was confronted by an alluring mystery. How was it possible that the ever incompetent Guy de Lusignan had managed to pacify an island the Knights Templar had given up on? How had the disastrous King of Jerusalem become the wise and successful ruler of Cyprus. 

The mystery took me back to Cyprus and indeed a new and exciting hypothesis, which is the basis of The Last Crusader Kingdom.  Not only that, but the story of Balian's eldest son, the historically more famous John d'Ibelin, Lord of Beirut, had its roots in Cyprus too. And so I returned -- to Kantara again and again. 

Find out more about the novels set in Cyprus at: https://helenapschrader.net/crusades-era/