Ah, the Tower of London!  One of my favorite settings.  I’ve used it many times, in several different periods.  The very name itself is so evocative, isn’t it?  And its image conjures up all the scenes of high drama it has witnessed.  I could not have invented a more perfect setting in which to place my characters.

William and the Normans who accompanied him found a hostile populace who more than once rebelled against his leadership. William, who was no fool, was well aware of the Saxons’ resentment, and built a series of castles and fortresses in which to protect keep himself and his nobles safe from those they ruled.  The most notable of these was the Tower of London, built as much to keep the citizens of London at a distance as to protect the city from outside invaders.  It was then one massive tower surrounded by a high stone wall, but over the centuries, the fortress was expanded to include more than a dozen towers, several torn down, their remains covered now by green grass and tourists’ footsteps.

The Tower, called the White Tower after being whitewashed by King Henry III in the 13th century, often served as a royal residence, gradually replaced by the grand Palace at Westminster, but always a fortress, a safe haven in times of trouble.  It was here that Henry III cowered while his son, later Edward I, battled Simon de Montfort.  Here that the Bloody Tower acquired its name when two young brothers, heirs to the throne, were murdered so another might be king.  Here, in the now removed Lion’s Tower, where lions and tigers and elephants (oh my), lived out their lives in captivity, oddities for the chosen few to stare at. Here where queens and would-be kings died, where enemies were imprisoned, and royal families were protected during disquieted times.

In my KILGANNON series, Alex MacGannon was imprisoned in the Beauchamp Tower, where he carved the initial “A” into the wall as so many others had done before him.  It was there that Mary visited him, and there that Mary, filled with fear for her beloved,  looked down on the Tower Green, remembering Anne Boleyn and the many others who had died on that spot.

It is in the Wardrobe Tower within the Tower walls, that RIVALS FOR THE CROWN’s Isabel de Burke first encountered Walter Langton, the Keeper of the Wardrobe, who became so pivotal to her life.  There where Isabel had so often pictured her father working, only to discover that his past had been fabricated. 

THE DESTINY’S Ellen Ronley, granddaughter of a king, visited the Tower with Charles II as a child, and decades later, watched with mixed emotions as she sailed away from London with Neil MacCurrie.

In my current Work in Progress, Elizabeth Hale visits King Edward I and Queen Eleanor in the newly built St. Thomas Tower, and later has a longer stay, entering by what would later be known as Traitor’s Gate.  And in the following book, Lucy Hale, now living in London, finds her fate played out in the shadow of the mighty fortress, and within its walls.

I’ve other ideas for future books set in or around the Tower, so stay in touch and I’ll let you know when this spectacular landmark will appear yet again in the pages of one of my stories.