The idea for the book came from watching a really interesting video about the 1984 miner’s strike, which I thought had a lot of great aspects to it, which with some changes and a more brutal Medieval setting gave me the inspiration for a story people would really enjoy. From there I thought about who might want to de-stabilise the Kingdom by helping the men on strike and fomenting unrest, and that led to the creation of the royal storyline, with plots against the King and hidden enemies. As a fan of Game of Thrones and the Byzantine era, I thought it would be fun to take some of those ideas and put my own twists on it.