Tonypandy's got me pondering life

Over the years, I’ve been assigned a number of books to read for a variety of different classes. The majority of the time, I can tell just by glancing at the book whether or not I am going to enjoy the text. I seldom find my first impression to be wrong. However, I can honestly say “Daughter of Time” surprised me. I was under the impression that I was about to read a book which would simply spit out facts about Richard III; I certainly didn’t expect it be so thought provoking.

            Throughout the first few chapters, I knew I’d been wrong already, and was definitely interested in where the story would go. It wasn’t until this whole idea of “tonypandy” came up, though, that my mind really started racing. At first, I was just amazed at how easily Alan Grant made me question the legitimacy of everyone’s thoughts on Richard III. Everyone’s thoughts on the King were so negative, and so concrete, but when they were asked to elaborate on what they “know” about him, they’re responses were almost comical. The Amazon nurse said he had been born with a full set of teeth and chewed his way out of the womb. The Midget nurse never really supported herself, she just “knew”. Naturally, the more Grant researched, the more I started to believe he may be onto something.

            Sure, I thought about Richard III for a little while after I put the book down. I thought about messed up it would be if his image has been tarnished over the years, when he may not have actually been the villain he was made out to be. However, as I continued to read, I almost found it hard to concentrate on Richard III specifically. Richard is an important part of history, but in the grand scheme of things, such a small piece. Not to undermine his importance, but what if tonypandy is applicable to all of history?

            We grow up learning about thousands of years of human activity on Earth. I’ve sat in classrooms learning about history’s biggest wars, inventions and figures. I’ve been told which presidents were great, and which were terrible. I’ve been told who caused every major war, and who the “bad guys” were. BUT IT’S 2016. I wasn’t alive for 99% of things I’ve learned in history classes. My teachers also weren’t alive for most the content we learn, and neither were most of the historians putting this information in textbooks. So how do we know what to believe?

            Obviously historians and history teachers are essential, and most of what we’re taught is accurate; it’s just that after reading this book I feel like that “what if?” question will always be in the back my head as I go forward studying important figures and past events.

History: Is there some fact in the fiction?

On the first day of class, we discussed what we believed to be the meaning of history and fiction. Many of us saw a clear distinction between the two. For the most part, the consensus was history is a series of events that are factual and fiction is a concoction of the imagination- made up events, if you will. After reading Tey’s, The Daughter of Time, it is clear that both history and fiction can be one of the same and that it is very difficult to sway from popular beliefs that have been credited as history. But what is history? Is it just a series of beliefs that have been adapted over time and commonly viewed as factual? These are questions that arise from the novel. Even until this very day Richard III is viewed as the epitome of villainy. Our protagonist, Alan Grant, begins to question that view because to him, how could the face in the portrait be a murderer when there is so much sadness and pain behind his eyes? Grant adopts this notion of topandy; an idea that much of what is viewed as history is just a myth.

Now I am no history buff and I really do not know much about English history, but I question why Richard III became the quintessential villain of English history. Then I turned to something that interests me a little more- American history. I googled “American historical myths” and came across this list of top 10 “myths” that Americans believe to be fact (here is the link if anyone is interested:  http://all-that-is-interesting.com/american-history-myths ). The first myth took me by surprise. It was the story of Paul Revere and how he had warned American troops that “the British are coming!” According to the article (and I am sure if I researched it more in depth I would find similar evidence), the story has been twisted in a way to make Revere appear to be this grand hero, when in fact he did not utter those words and was accompanied by a group of people. Despite what actually happened, Americans still views Revere as the quintessential American patriot.  But this was the point. The story was adapted as a sort of American propaganda to instill pride and patriotism in the American public. This idea is very similar to Grant’s notion that Richard III was portrayed as this evil creature to arouse support for the Tudor monarchy.

I concluded my reading and research of historical myths questioning history as a whole. Obviously, many events occurred and are told as they had happened, but it is difficult to know the truth behind everything that we believe to be fact. Were heroes really heroes? Were villains really villains? I guess we really will never know. But in the mean time, history really does make one hell of a story.

What can I believe?

I can definitely trust the information that I read in my textbooks, right?  Aren’t they just filled with facts about what happened in the past? But where and who is all that information coming from?!?  I don’t know what to believe anymore!

That is definitely how The Daughter of Time is making me feel.  On Grant’s quest to discover the truth about Richard III, he realizes that different sources of history tell different accounts about the life of Richard.  There is no way he could know what ACTUALLY happened unless he lived during that time.  Yet, we are taught in schools with the aid of textbook and we are just supposed to trust what is written.  At the same time, our parents or teachers probably taught us: “don’t believe everything you see/read.” 

This is just like articles found on the internet.  While I’m scrolling through Facebook and reading a few of the articles that my friends’ shared, I usually make a conscious effort not to believe everything that I read.  I have fallen for those fake or misleading articles too many times.  But because we are taught not to believe everything we read, why do we still do it outside of the internet?  We shouldn’t automatically believe the words in our textbooks just because they are “scholarly” or educational tools.  The authors of history books were probably not present during the times they wrote about, so how can they be sure about anything?  They must have gotten their information elsewhere and there is no way of knowing what is true and what is false. 

On another note about this topic, we must be aware of author biases.  I was taught that every author has a bias and sometimes their biases show (even when trying to be as unbiased as possible.)  If this is the case, the authors of textbooks are biased too.  This means that readers might only get the information that the author believed or wanted to share, not the full story.  Maybe this was the case with the books written about Richard III.  It seems that people had very strong opinions about him, so that is why textbooks portray him as a villain. 

I think that The Daughter of Time is reinforcing a lesson that we all know very well.  We can’t be too quick to trust what we read.  Our textbooks cannot be completely accurate because the authors have not experienced all of history or know everything that happened.  Even biases can get in the way of the truth.    

Making It Up

Josephine Tey's book The Daughter of Time poses many questions that a reader wouldn't otherwise be asking. What is "history"? How can we know if something is truly fact? Is it actually possible to judge a book by it's cover? What stuck with me the most was the word "tonypandy" which I still cannot find a proper definition for, but we'll get to that.

Discovering that only some of what once was fact regarding Richard III is true, made Grant and the readers question how much of our history is actually just stories people told to fill in the blanks of what they didn't want people to know. When you think about it, that's how the education system has always taught us. The first time we learned about Thanksgiving, it was the most basic and pleasant description that adults could think to tell children. As we grew, the story became more violent and harsh. Now that we're grown, we say we "know" what happened when Columbus came to America, and we "know" what happened at the Boston Tea Party and Pearl Harbor and we "know" that the United States went to the moon in 1969. (Debating the moon landing is for another time) My point is that by these few accounts of false history having been passed through centuries of writings, can make an individual question any history book's legitimacy.

This is where the question "What is history?" meets the question "What is real?" It becomes difficult to answer when you cannot pinpoint a definition for the two. What we know to be true and real, may not have been. When I was six, I knew that unicorns were real! I was determined that the French took them all and were hiding them in the Catacombs. That happened in the past, but does that make it real? Does that make it history? In the novel, Grant and Carradine use the term "tonypandy" to describe false history. The two learn that their most reliable source for accounts of Richard III's life, was not reliable at all. Through other thorough investigating, they come to a conclusion about Richard III's true character, but who's to say that other sources were 100% accurate as well?

If you haven't noticed, this book has turned me into a major skeptic. It astounds me that there is no known individual who kept account of Richard III's life, leading to people making their own stories. The book really challenged what is and is not history, and it seems to define the term as actual events, whether known or not. While I agree with this, having said in class that history is something that happened in the past, I think it is flexible.

I mean to say that while history should be recorded as the true events that occurred, it is not always so. Sometimes there are gaps and unanswered questions - things people should have taken note of but didn't, or all records of the event became lost somehow. People would go mad if these gaps were not filled and questions remained open! Then again...sometimes "I don't know" can be a legitimate answer...

tonypandy... one hell of a word.

We all have a general understanding of the message of The Daughter of Time. How bias, perspective, and history add to the mystery of the already little know events surrounding Richard III.  We are taken into the authors thought process and research of the king. Recorded history itself is a mystery because of popular understanding and truism, victors write the history. I find it interesting that a single idea can shape the course of history. This is evident not only in today's world but understood by individuals in the past. It happens over and over, for example the 5th of November nearly 120 years after king Richard III. The 5th of November is still practiced today in an obscure way, now dubbed the million mask march.
 
I was a little put off when I first started reading the book. I kept coming across words I have never seen and didn't understand. So naturally I had to look them up. It was an annoying process for me. As I continued reading and started to get pulled into the pages, coming across a word I did not understand was like being interrupted during a movie. On the quest to discovering what the author of the mystery novel wanted to say about history, I was on a quest of my own trying to discover what words meant. Eventually I could understand them... until "tonypandy"

I focused on this term in trying to come up with a visual way of understanding it. I found the solution in Grant. Grant, like myself can pick up certain clues when he looks at faces. Looking at the Kings face I came up with a visual. I imagined the king was in the middle of circle of people. He was surrounded by the Tudors. They were playing the child's game of telephone. As information (history) got passed it continued to get muddied. On the outside of the ring were other people writing their accounts of Richard. The Tudors of course were bullies and wouldn't let the others join in the game. Thus we have tonypandy. Now we have conflicting accounts of history, facts, and perspectives surrounding Richard. No wonder he has that facial expression. His eye was twitching while he was taking his ring off. He was furious at the mockery and didn't want to hurt his "king" hand.
 

 Funny how an idea, in this case a visual idea with the help of a portrait can "accurately" shape history 60% of the time, throughout all of time.

History and Tonypandy, is there a Truth?

How do we think of history? Well when I think of history, I think of past events that have shaped the world that we live in today.  The one thing that I never thought of was whether the information was correct. Also in history, such as in textbooks, the names and dates can be correct, but the events can be told in a way that makes it bias. Grant was not going to take the information from some of the sources without knowing who wrote them and what their background was in knowing Richard III.  This does not make the sources correct just because those who wrote the history were alive during the time of Richard III.

Grant looks at all different types of history, a lot of the time a new source arises when he asks himself a new question and wants to know more about an event or a person.  I wonder why most of the time he does not consider the material that he has gone through before to see if it can be found.  As you know Grant did look through a lot of sources and I understand that he had to sort out the ones who were fake and the ones that had “truth”, but when he was asking more questions why didn’t he go back to some of the original sources? Grant wanted to prove that he could read faces; maybe that’s why he had to use so many sources so that he could get the answer he wanted.

This brings us to Tonypandy, which can be seen throughout the book. How can we define Tonypandy? After reading the book I have come up with the conclusion that Tonypandy is history that has been stretched so that readers can stay intrigued. Think about it have you ever embellished a story so that other people will stay interested?   When Grant started reading Thomas More’s History of Richard III he wanted to know more information until he found out that Thomas More was Henry VIII’s chancellor and was only eight when Richard III died.  

Grant and Carradine wanted to find an answer to the question of whether Richard III killed his nephews or not, they believe that they got around the Tonypandy and got the “truth”.  Maybe it is just what they wanted to hear, either way it remains a mystery to me.

Truth is the Daughter of Time

The Daughter of Time is a book that has a lot of really interesting ideas about how we define and preserve truth and history, or rather "truth" and "history". Throughout the book it's evident to the reader that regardless of whether Richard III was a villain or an unfortunately misrepresented king, the documents and information surrounding him are a blur of badly recorded stories.

Josephine Tey, undoubtedly knowing this after having done all of the researchherself, put a well chosen epigraph at the beginning of her book about Richard III and Grant's research. "Truth is the daughter of time." The quote has no author, cited only as "Old Proverb", which to me is in itself a succinct representation of one of the messages this book is trying to send; even this "old proverb" has no definite author to claim it, yet it is still in circulation today. Much like the rumors about Richard III.

Tey tells us many times in the book that the stories about Richard III are simply that: stories. They rarely if ever have sources or any kind of proof of their existence--save for his familial history, nothing truly SOLID is documented about Richard III.

A particular instance in the story says, "It was shocking how little history remained with one after a good education." This touches on the bias of education, how if one had an idea of Richard III that could affect teaching and whitewash the necessity of proof. In another example, one of our protagonists Officer Grant (the other debatable protagonist being Richard III) asks who a source was quoting--the response he gets is, "Quoting? It wasn't quoting anything. It was just giving facts." Another example of how when a bias is strong or someone speaks with conviction, a source seems like an afterthought.

With regard to Richard III in particular, it is important to see where the original rumors started. In his case, many of them were created posthumously by his "worst enemy" and recorded by someone whose life barely overlapped with the ill-fated king's. Even the way/where he died was shrouded in doubt given the lack of evidence, until the recent discovery of his remains. A recent facial reconstruction from his skull resulted in this: video on reconstruction, there's a side by side picture at the bottom which I find really cool.

Tonypandy, which seems to be a hot topic of discussion when reading this book and discussing Richard III, is a good word to sum up the muddling of information and "facts". This book also raises a concern about how history was recorded, and the reliability of historical documents. However, unless a time machine is able to take us back so it is discernible first hand what happened to Richard III and his two nephews it will all be speculation and debate.

Good/Bad Richard III: Will We Ever Know?

Here we go! Another semester, another blog post!

Last semester, I read Beowulf and I was quite irritated at what little back-story was given regarding the "villain" of the story, Grendel. In my head, since nothing was given in the pages, I made up some pretty elaborate back stories regarding who he was as a character and why he was the way he was. What we were given was that he was a cruel monster who was cast aside with his mother and who also happened to wreak all kinds of havoc on the local populace. Was he truly a monster or was he misunderstood? Maybe he was the bastard son of the local king and only killed a ton of people because he was pissed that he was cast aside because of his birth. I used to think like this all throughout reading that story and I was very happy to do it again with our most recent reading.

Richard III.

Not much is really known about him. And like with Beowulf, that irritated me. However, DoT really delves into the possibilities of his history. Was he a cruel uncle who had his two goons slaughter his sons? Maybe. Was he really in love with his wife (and cousin) Anne or was he just using her for her fortune and knew he needed a queen for his impending rule? The mysteries are endless and I'm LOVING IT!!! I mean his motto is Loyalty Binds Me. Even his friggin' MOTTO is mysterious!!

There's no clear cut answer! Was he a villain or not? Was he a loyal brother or was it a facade to cover up his scheming plots? Did he mourn the loss of his nephews' disappearance or was he celebrating in the royal chambers? WE HAVE NO IDEA!! And while this is frustrating as all hell for historians (and me, let's be honest), I can't seem to help but love the mystery this book brings to life.

However, I just about threw the book across the room when Grant kept reading Sir Thomas More's work. And he read it for FOREVER. I kept screaming (in my head, ofcourse, I'm not crazy) at Grant that More was during Henry VIII's time NOT Richard III. You guys will have no idea how happy I was when Grant came to the realization that what he was reading was a farce. Here's what I imagined:

The fact that there was no "current" historian in Richard's day was immensely puzzling. Where did Edward's historian go? And why didn't he stick around to document Richard's life? And HELLO how about the huge elephant in the room regarding his remains!? What's the deal with that?! How did he friggin' get buried under a parking lot!?UGH! Too many questions not enough answers but I feel like that just opens up the mind for us to make our own predictions.

Loved the book and I can't wait to keep reading and finding out more mysteries regarding Richard III.

What is Tonypandy?

What is Tonypandy? That is a great question, one I wish I had the answer to. Unfortunately, when I highlighted the term from The Daughter of Time on my iPad, there was no definition. All I know is that it has something to do with history. I have been wracking my brain trying to find the definition, or some kind of hint at what it might mean on the Internet.

The good news is that, from my point of view, it should be fairly easy to find. The bad news, it really isn't. There is no straight answer, and most of the links are just references to The Daughter of Time. Which made me give up halfway through on finding an answer online because before I knew it, I was clicking through the Google links and ended up on page eight before I decided, enough was enough.

In the end instead of looking it up online, I decided that I would see how it is used in The Daughter of Time and try and figure it out that way. My theory is that Tonypandy is something like a false accounting of history that everyone perceives as correct. That is how it was used, in my opinion. 

Though this book did get me thinking, what else is there that we get wrong about history? Their must be many things but we simply have no evidence to disprove how said history was recorded in the first place. 

On a side note, how crazy was this snowstorm, we have never had one this big in a long time and let me tell you, shoveling all of that snow was not fun. I’m surprised I was even able to get out of the house. I had to go out of the window and trudge my way over to the front door. Even after that my parents and I had to clear the snow off of the driveway and the cars, which took us a long time. Just shoveling a foot long path out of the snow took a long time because it was so deep.

What Truly is "Tonypandy?"

What truly is "Tonypandy?" Grant and Carradine use the term all throughout The Daughter of Time to describe the outcome of certain historical events. Now, I know we have discussed the fiction versus history and what the true definitions are in class, so I won't pose it that way again. I believe we all came to the conclusion that history is a series of significant events that have been recorded, either by documentation, or audio and/or visual representation, to describe the past. Fiction is a fabrication of reality, which can sometimes seem realistic. Finally, historical fiction is using the fabricated world to tell the series of historical events.

I believe Josephine Tey uses historical fiction to tell her story of what she believed really happened to Richard III. Grant, the main character, is diving into all of this research that exists in the "real" world. All of the books, he uses and quotes from all had to be read by Josephine Tey herself before she could have put them into her novel. The author portrays herself as Grant in the story, and is bringing in other characters to help her solve the mystery of what really happened to Richard III.

But let's bring it back to Tonypandy, what is it? Grant presents the term tonypandy to Carradine, after he had informed Grant that the history we know of the Boston Massacre was fabricated into a larger event than what it actually was. We know it as a mass murder of Boston citizens after an uprising against the British soldiers stationed there, when it is revealed in the book that it was really only four people that had died. The story was exaggerated to get more press. Grant brought up the issue between the government of South Wales and looters, and how the story was exaggerated to make it seem that the government sent the military in on welsh miners. Grant used the name of the city, Tonypandy, that the riots took place in to describe events that were exaggerated in similar ways.

Tonypandy Riots of 1910 to 1911

So based off of Grant's and Carradine's examples of Tonypandy, I believe that it is the exaggeration of an event to get everyone to believe it is a "good" versus "bad" situation. The "good" being the victims, and the "bad" being the government. They speak of Tonypandy so much in this novel because they make the realization that the majority of the history of Richard III's time was written after his reign ended, which was in the Tudor reign, and the Tudor's were not very big fans of Richard III. Josephine Tey had to read through all of the Tonypandy herself to find her answer as to what really happened to Richard III, so she published her struggle of reading in between the lines in the novel as Grant's struggle.

Tonypandy of Time

First off, I would like to mention that autocorrect keeps changing “Tonypandy” to “to panda”. Not that it would be totally awesome for there to be pandas in this story, but the story would have  gone from history disguised as a mystery novel to a totally fictional story about two pandas trying to solve a mystery. Now that I think about it, it is not a bad idea somebody should write that fan-fiction. Anyway, enough with my obsession with pandas, it is time to figure out what in the world of the Oxford Dictionary is the word tonypandy? 

“It’s the damnedest silliest name, isn’t it?”

My handy-dandy dictionary on my ebook version of this book says… no word found… Ok…thanks iBooks for your help. Sure I could have just googled  “Tonypandy definition” but that would only be only half of the fun of figuring out what the word means. Since I am not going to take the easy way out, I am going to have to figure out this word the hard way, reading for context clues. Suddenly this is feeling like I am taking the SAT again at least this time I know what I am doing, hopefully. 

Each time the word “tonypandy” in The Daughter of Time appears it is when Grant looks at a historical reference. Even so Grant does end up adopting this term and using it quite often in the story. Grant observes multiple sides of who Richard III really was. Some people believe he was an innocent and noble king; while other believed he was an evil, vicious, vile murder who killed the princes in the tower. So, would tonypandy mean a widely believed fact about a historical event and or person? Even then, it begs the question what is truly history and what is truly fiction? 

As both words have similar meanings in a way, history is what truly happened in the past by historical documents as proof and fiction is tale that does not have or has little any backup proof. But here is the thing, how do truly know that the history we believe is truly what happened? Let me paint this picture, in kindergarten we learned that the first thanksgiving was all joyful and happy. But, we later learned that it was not the case and in fact it was the opposite. Henry the IV had a historian to write down all the events so how do we know that what he wrote down was the truth because mostly likely he would have been persuaded to write nasty things about the previous king to make the previous king look bad and make the current king look great.

Well, whatever tonypandy actually means I can guess it has to do with something with history. Ok I could just google it at this point after going through all this analysis but, there is snow outside that is begging to be played with ( Don’t judge me, I’m from Southern California, there is no such thing as snow 😏☃)