Curious about what’s behind Wards of the Roses? Explore my author notes about the historical details behind the book.
These notes do contain some plot spoilers! Otherwise, they’re as shared at the end of the book, with edits only to share the most useful links and cleaning up some formatting for the web. Posted March 2026.
Thank you so much for picking up Wards of the Roses. This is my favourite title in the series so far. As always, I owe a great deal of thanks to my editor and to my early readers. Any remaining errors are of course entirely mine.
I knew I was going to write a book about Kate as soon as she appeared in the final chapters of my first book, Outcrossing.
You can find more about Giles and Kate, a little further along in their relationship in Country Manners, found in the Winter’s Charms collection.
Going more or less chronologically through the book, here are my notes and inspirations. If you have a question not answered here, please do get in touch.
Bohort is a magical game based on a mediaeval game designed to train people for fighting. The magical version is played by teams of five players who need to solve various puzzles (magical and otherwise), and complete one or more tasks. Think of it like capture the flag only with more things throwing coloured powder, creating a highly localised ice storm, or repelling you from the goal like two poles of a magnet. There’s a mounted variant called pavo.
As you’ve likely figured out by now, The Guard serve as the police force of the magical community, providing assistance and dealing with violations of the law, but also investigating odd situations and figuring out if they pose a danger to people around them. Women can and do serve (and in high-ranking positions), but there tend to be fewer in active service than men.
The 1920s were a fascinating turning point for people who were blind. Guide dogs and the long white cane many people use today actually came out of rehabilitation work with soldiers who were blinded during World War I. They weren’t yet in use in the United Kingdom in 1920. People commonly used the sighted guide method that Giles has Kate use (taking her arm just above the elbow), also still in use today.
Poison gases were the cause of a significant amount of blindness during the war – mustard gas, chlorine, and phosgene were some of the major ones. Giles was blinded by a magical gas which had many of the same effects. Use of these chemical weapons was hotly debated during the War.
St Dunstan’s, the place Giles got initial rehabilitation training, was founded in 1915, after the earliest cases of war blinding came home. It’s now known as Blind Veterans UK. There’s an excellent book about the history by David Castleton, In The Mind’s Eye: The Blinded Veterans of St Dunstan’s.
(The Refuge, the magical equivalent, is something I made up, but it taught similar skills in independent living and navigation using magical techniques. The locational tool Giles uses in his townhome is a magical version of some current locational technology.)
The issues Giles deals with are based on my conversations with a number of people who are blind (as well as additional reading). There can be a tremendous amount of vulnerability in relying on someone else to handle business affairs, or in navigating interactions with strangers (such as when Giles holds out his hand, and isn’t sure if Kate will take it). The constant effort to keep track of the space or who is speaking in a group can also be exhausting.
People sometimes wonder about whether one capitalises braille. The common convention in the blindness community is that you use a lower case when talking about the method of coding text, and a capital when referring to the original creator, Louis Braille.
Giles mentions there are half a dozen variants of braille in use (the United States didn’t standardise on one until 1919, and the United Kingdom standardised in 1916 but still had a lot of books in different versions floating around). The other method he mentions, and my favourite of the raised type methods, is called Moon Type. It uses symbols that are easier to read for some people (and easier to learn for many people who become blind later in life).
Many people are really afraid of becoming blind – it’s reliably one of the top fears people list. Giles quite reasonably points out that there are skills that help, and many of them aren’t that hard to learn, they just take practise. The method he teaches Kate for navigating an unfamiliar room without hurting your fingers is one of those. If you’d like more resources about blindness and what people get up to in the present day, the website Blind New World has great resources.
As my bio mentions, I’m a librarian, so I’m delighted I got to include a chapter or two in a magical library with helpful librarians.
The composer Giles insists on playing in chapter 13 is Arnold Schoenberg, born in Austria and who emigrated to the United States in 1933. He was extremely influential because of the number of composers he taught. Schoenberg was just beginning to explore twelve-tone composition techniques when this book happens, but they are heavily rooted in mathematical structures and patterns.
I’m fascinated by lost languages, and the Guard have one all of their own, known as the Lost Tongue which they use to discuss orders and practical issues and ensure no one can overhear them.
The Pact (and The Silence) are given context in the book, but I admit I have a particular fascination for the Wars of the Roses and for Richard III. There’s a little more background in the guide on my website, and I expect to be revisiting what brought Richard to that point in future books. We will definitely be hearing more about the Fatae (that’s for book 7, Seven Sisters).
I could not resist naming the people who unweave magical workings penelopes in honour of Penelope, wife of Odysseus of Greek mythology. She kept her home and herself safe from outrageous suitors while her husband was taking the long way home. She refused to pick any of the suitors until her weaving was done, so she would weave during the day and unweave it at night.
Kate quotes from the Mabinogion when she’s reciting all the Welsh names. It’s a collection of stories compiled from mediaeval Welsh in the 12th and 13th centuries. Lady Charlotte Guest did a widely read translation in the mid-1800s that distorted some of the myths. Patrick Ford’s translation is considered one of the best modern ones, and I’ve been reading interesting things about one recently done by Sioned Davies. The list of names comes from the beginning of Kihwch and Olwen (also called Culhwch and Olwen.) In the story, the names go on for a couple of pages.
As Giles notes, they were still discovering planets in the 1920s. (Planet X was Pluto.)
Opium became illegal in the United Kingdom in early 1921- right around the time of the book. It was illegal in the magical community slightly earlier.
The newsletter and my social media accounts will have all the details about new and upcoming releases. If you sign up for my newsletter, you’ll get a copy of Ancient Trust, a prequel novella taking place in 1922 when Lord Geoffrey Carillon inherits his title. Giles makes a key appearance.