One part of writing Remember My Royalty that I really enjoyed was incorporating as many real people into the story as I could. There are easily more than seventy-five characters in the book, and out of all of them, only eight are fictional.
In fact, the idea for the story came to me when I learned about one of the men of the Alamo. I knew that I needed to tell his story.
So, who are some of the real historical figures you will be meeting in Remember My Royalty? Well, there are the well-known ones: Sam Houston, William B. Travis, Stephen F. Austin, Jim Bowie, David Crockett. And then there are some lesser-known heroes of the war: James Northcross, Richard Ballentine, Sion Bostick, John Tom, and others.
You’ll be meeting government leaders, military leaders, regular enlisted men, and the families who remained behind. You’ll meet Alamo widows, Tejano soldiers, men willing to fight to the death, and civilians caught in the middle of the war. Besides the heroes of the war, you’ll also meet scoundrels and cowards, the ones who ran instead of fighting. And there’s a certain frightened Mexican general who just might make an appearance.
While it was challenging at times discovering information about the different real people, it was also fun digging into their lives and seeing what I could learn about them. As with most things I went to research, I discovered conflicting information about some of the people.
There is one family who plays a prominent part of the story, and one of the daughters was claimed to have been both four and fourteen. I had to do some digging to see which age seemed to be the most likely. But I was able to use birth locations for her and her other siblings and decided that fourteen was the likely age. And since I had already written her as fourteen before discovering the possible age of four, it was a relief for that to be the age she probably was. After all, a four-year-old wouldn’t be interested in poetry or the writings of Sir Walter Scott.
I also ran into an interesting situation where I wrote a sister of one of the soldiers into the story only to discover later that she had actually died a year or so before the war began. So I had to change her out for another girl from another family.
As much as possible, I enjoyed weaving in personalities and traits of the different people. Some of them I know very little about, but occasionally, I would find a contemporary account that would talk in some detail about a person that I included in the story. Whenever I found these little tidbits, I made sure to bring out that aspect of the person’s personality. In this way I came to include Si’s coolness under fire, Mr. Rusk’s kindness, and the Dickinson’s hospitality.
Does this sound like the kind of book you enjoy? Do you want to learn more about the real people who helped Texas win her independence? Then check out the book! It’s chock full of real events and true stories of real people. And it’s on sale for two dollars off through launch day!
Thank you for including mostly real people in your book, Hannah! I look forward to read the book again.