Having this conversation with Katy was very difficult, and not just for the obvious reason you might think. The conversation was hard because I don’t think she always agreed with me about what was in her best interest. A writer of a multicultural novel or interracial romance who overlooks cultural differences does so at their peril.

Anyway, here’s the interview with Katy about The Diary of Katy Yehonala and you can see for yourself how unreasonable Katy can be. We’re talking about being a hero in a multicultural novel, or I was trying to…

Katy: First of all Robert, my name’s on this new book of yours so I need to get one or two things off my chest, okay?
Me: Sure, I didn’t create you to be a wallflower. What’s on your mind, Katy?
Katy: Firstly, did you know how cold it was going to be up near the Siberian border in winter? I know you want to exploit my misfortunes for monetary gain, but that was pretty mean sending me to a gulag when I was only ten. You write multicultural romance novels, not arctic survival epics.
Me: Don’t be such a princess. I’ve been skiing at Aspen and I know how cold it gets in the snow. Though I admit, sometimes I couldn’t wait to get back to the chalet for a decent steak and a Grange Hermitage after a day on the slopes. You need to toughen up a bit, Katy. Don’t make me regret giving you Empress Cixi Yehonala as your ancestor. I never read about her complaining over a bit of snow.
Katy: A bit of snow!! That’s like saying the Gobi Desert is a bit of sand. So it’s going to be one of those conversations, is it? Secondly, what about making me carry those buckets of everyone else’s poop? Was that supposed to be character-building? I call it child abuse.
Me: Could have been worse. I might have had you tripping over with a full load. Anyway, you had a nice friend, that Mei kid, and don’t forget how you loved the walk in the mountains with your dad.
Katy: Thanks for nothing. Neither of those relationships ended well. How come I got to be the one who got a psychopath for an author? Didn’t you ever read Jane Austen’s stuff? Women have a great time in her stories.
Me: Look, it wasn’t my fault you were born during the Cultural Revolution. Don’t be so ungrateful, it was tough for a lot of people in China back then. I did my best to help – I gave you a nice mum and dad, a nanny, and even a terrific house to live in. You had it pretty good, considering.
Katy: Considering what? You took those away as well the first chance you had. Every time I thought I was doing okay, you pulled the rug from under my feet.
Me: Oh, come on, Katy, it wouldn’t have been much of a story if you lived happily ever after from page one. At least I didn’t make you poor. You should learn to look on the bright side.
Katy: That’s easy for you to say. Well, okay, I suppose it wasn’t all bad, and I admit my little doggie, Maomaochong, was a nice touch. And that time with Emily and her family was great. Thanks for inventing her, I enjoyed you sending me off to England. And that stuff at the Taj Mahal, well…that was amazing.
Me: There you go, you see. I always had your best interests at heart. And what about Simon? Surely you’re not complaining about him?
Katy: No, of course not, but the racist boyfriend you hooked me up with first wasn’t your finest literary achievement. You tricked me, especially by making me drink an extra glass of wine to lower my guard. That date ended pretty badly, even you have to admit you went a bit too far.
Me: Mmm, I agree the dating episode was unfortunate, and so was the Lagos stuff – but those Nigerian beaches were fabulous weren’t they? And it makes great reading, every book needs a bit of spice.
Katy: Listen Robert, I was there remember, and those disasters weren’t so “great” for me. You definitely need to see a relationship counsellor, I can see the reason you still live by yourself. And why did you take Simon away so soon? A year isn’t enough time for a love affair. Are you going to bring him back to me one day?
Me: We’ll see. I gave you a kid and the chance to be with your mum in exchange. Why aren’t you ever happy? Maybe I should have made you all Danish, those Scandinavians are a much more cheerful bunch of people.
Katy: We’re fine being Chinese thanks very much. Having a daughter is all well and good too, but now I’m worried you’re going to do something terrible to her and Mama. Why can’t I let them know what’s in your mind for them in the rest of the book? Knowing would help them sleep better.
Me: And ruin the surprise? Come on Katy, you know how these novels work. There’s no point in giving you the ending, it’s the journey that matters. Besides, you believe in fate.
Katy: I didn’t agree to accept fate without complaining. That was your idea. And you’re not the one who has to wake up every morning worrying if your author’s had too much wine the night before and might be in a bad mood at the keyboard.
Me: Don’t worry, Katy, I never drink and scribe, and I know the ending. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other and you’ll be fine. I’m going to write another book afterwards and you’ll be in it, so relax. I thought you might like to travel more next time.
Katy: Don’t play your smarty-pants word games with me, Robert. It had better be first-class travel after all the stuff you’re putting me through. Do all the others get to be in the next book too?
Me: The book will be about family, Katy. You can tell them that much.
Katy: I hope you leave enough of us around to still be a family.
Me: What’s with you Chinese protagonists, you’re always finding something to complain about, I should have asked Amy Tan to write the story. I’ll bet the Danes would be easier to deal with. Okay, why don’t you tell me what you want next time.
Katy: How about you find me someone nice to settle down with? I’m not getting any younger, you know. Maybe walks on the beach would be nice, sipping a nice shiraz at sunset. There must still be some remnant of romance in that black heart of yours. Jane Austen always let her girls live happily ever after.
Me:: I’ll have a look at Pride and Prejudice if it will make you happy, but to be honest, you don’t seem the type and you know I like a good multicultural novel or a multicultural romance. By the way, have you read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? I’m writing Australian crime fiction books now, one might suit you.
Katy: Don’t you dare!![sigh]

Check out my new novel,The Diary of Katy Yehonala, a great multicultural romance novel – plus an interesting life story. Katy’s a girl who follows her destiny, like we all can.

Buy a copy by visiting Shawline Publishing HERE

You can also leave your email at the bottom of the page for some great free stuff, and pre-previews of my latest books about multicultural romances. You can read a preview of The Diary of Katy Yehonala HERE

Robert Barclay

Robert Barclay is an Australian author of some of the best Australian crime fiction books. His new Australian multicultural novel follows the lives of Katy Yehonala and her daughter, Clara, his strong female protagonists as they confront the evils of society.

Author Robert Barclay moves into the thrilling genre of murder mystery novels after the success of his first novel The Diary of Katy Yehonala. The Diary of Katy Yehonala, his first novel, is nominated for Australia’s preeminent literary prize, the 2022 Miles Franklin Award. The novel is published by Shawline Press and available from Shawline Publishing. His latest novel provides his readers with a riveting sequel.

The Orphanage of Secrets promises to be one of the best murder mystery novels for 2022. The book continues the story of these two amazing, quirky women on a quest to exotic places after Katy discovers an unfinished manuscript called Chavy’s Story, hinting at her husband’s secretive work in Cambodia. The manuscript tells the gut-wrenching story of a young village girl trafficked for sex.

The riddles buried in the pages of Chavy’s Story mask a forgotten horror from Katy’s own childhood. For Clara, a beautiful Italian charity worker threatens to upset a lifetime of modesty. Chavy’s Story changes Katy and Clara’s lives forever.

The Orphanage of Secrets will be published by Shawline Press in June 2022.

His book is a riveting, exotic murder mystery novel about irrepressible women, and a reminder of what is still happening to thousands of children, robbing them of what all parents take for granted, that their daughters are loved and kept safe.

Read a preview of one of 2022’s must read murder mystery novels HERE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Barclay is on the way to becoming a favourite Australian author with the release in 2022 of his second novel The Orphanage of Secrets.

Robert grew up in a picturesque English village, a 1000-year history engraved on tombstones and birth records in its Norman Church. Fate intervened when the family migrated to Australia in 1965 and seduced by the sea voyage, he yearned to see the world. During the Vietnam War, he found himself in the murky waterways of The Mekong Delta dismantling booby traps.

The inspiration for his writing and charity work comes first-hand from the war-ravaged villages and the children affected by the inhumanity of adults.

The Miles Franklin Literary Award is Australia’s most prestigious literature prize. Established through the will of My Brilliant Career author, Miles Franklin, the prize is awarded each year to a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases.

First presented in 1957, the Award helps to support authors and to foster uniquely Australian literature. Miles Franklin believed that “Without an indigenous literature, people can remain alien in their own soil.” She also had first-hand experience of struggling to make a living as a writer and was the beneficiary of two literary prizes herself.

Perpetual, as trustee of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, and The Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund are proud to be a part of this literary legacy.

About The Diary of Katy Yehonala

The author, Robert Barclay is proud to represent the amazingly talented authors of Australia and equally proud to be nominated for the Miles Franklin, Australia’s most cherished literary award.

His novel, The Diary of Katy Yehonala is a story of love embracing three generations of amazing women who faced their personal demons and stood strong and proud against the challenges tumultuous times threw against them. The storyteller is May-ling, later to become Katy Yehonala and lives, eventually, in Melbourne. Katy, her mother, and Clara, each have their destinies forged by those times. Their extraordinary lives mirror their homeland’s rocky coming of age.

The three women, are, in a way, “universal women,” struggling to cast aside their cultural millstones, each to travel the world along their separate paths like modern-day Marco Polo’s, eventually to honour their love of family and the humanity they share.

Robert Barclay is an Australian author of some of the best Australian murder mystery fiction books. His Australian multicultural novels and murder mystery books follow the lives of Katy Yehonala and her daughter, Clara, his strong female protagonists, as they confront the evils of society.

My third novel, The Body Shop, is a murder mystery novel featuring Katy and Clara Yehonala in their most dangerous adventure. In the book, the beautiful Clara Yehonala becomes the face of a global fashion and cosmetics brand and I’m looking for fabulous ideas from readers for the name of the fashion house. [House of Dior, Fendi, Versace, for examples.]

Please email me ideas HERE.

The top three suggestions will receive free copies of my first three books.

My first book, a multicultural romance novelThe Diary of Katy Yehonala is out now, the second, a murder mystery novel The Orphanage of Secrets is due mid 2022.

If you follow the links, you can read previews of the two books.

Here’s the really brilliant news!

The winner will be named in the book as CEO of the global brand he or she names. So, have some fun, help me, and become a fashion icon!

Here’s a little help…

* The fashion house is based in Paris.

* They want to expand into China, hence their interest in Clara.

* The company is launching an upmarket perfume brand – possibly named “Clara”.

* They are launching a fashion range for millennials and Gen Z women, possibly called “Boulevarde Girl”.

* Clara will be the brand ambassador for both.

There’s much more and I’ll work closely with the winner in shaping the “new company” image.

You can also leave your email at the bottom of the page for some great free stuff, and previews of my latest books.

Good luck with the name, I’m looking forward to receiving some gems of wisdom about haute couture.

Robert Barclay is an Australian author of some of the best Australian murder mystery fiction books. His Australian multicultural novels and murder mystery books follow the lives of Katy Yehonala and her daughter, Clara, his strong female protagonists, as they confront the evils of society.

The Diary of Katy Yehonala.

This exciting new novel by an emerging favourite Australian author is a sweeping saga of three generations of extraordinary women who lifted their gaze beyond their turbulent history, each to fulfil unique destinies.

* The first is a proud matriarch who believes honouring family is worth any sacrifice.

* The second is born into a revolution and travels the world, still scarred by her childhood demons.

* The third soars to breathtaking heights on the world stage, a mother’s selfless love beneath her wings.

The Diary of Katy Yehonala is from a new, soon to be favourite Australian author and brilliantly evokes another time and place, laying bare its drama and beauty in haunting landscapes and vivid portraits of unforgettable women, so exquisitely narrated that they resonate long after the final page is turned.

“… an immersive and gripping book that resonates deeply with the reader. Throughout, the characterisation is strong, memorable and nuanced suited to the intricate, powerful, compelling narrative.” Rebecca Black, AM

READ A PREVIEW HERE

Whether it’s a Covid-enforced seclusion and raining buckets, or a quiet park in the sunshine, it’s always a perfect occasion to feast on a good book.

Sometimes overlooked on an international scale, there are many brilliant Australian storytellers with magnificent novels to read.

From comedy to mystery, real crime, multicultural romance and historical fiction, this diverse group covers established writers and debut novelists.

Better yet, for those wanting to discover more about any of these amazing writers, we recommend purchasing a novel or two through Australian publishing company Shawline Publishing who offer quick home delivery for their talented authors so you can settle into a good read without leaving your sofa.

So, for bookworms looking for something special, here’s a new Australian author destined to be a top pick in 2022:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Barclay is on the way to becoming a favourite Australian author with the release in 2022 of his second novel The Orphanage of Secrets.

Robert grew up in a picturesque English village, a 1000-year history engraved on tombstones and birth records in its Norman Church. Fate intervened when the family migrated to Australia in 1965 and seduced by the sea voyage, he yearned to see the world. During the Vietnam War, he found himself in the murky waterways of The Mekong Delta dismantling booby traps.

The inspiration for his writing and charity work comes first-hand from the war-ravaged villages and the children affected by the inhumanity of adults.

Books. They’ve been around for everyone since about 1450 when Gutenberg invented the printing press. Almost overnight, instead of hearing the local vicar’s opinion of how the world worked, we all started finding out for ourselves. Forever after, the best mystery novels of all time were no longer about heaven and hell and how to pick the right box. The Age of Enlightenment had begun. And never stopped.

The Enlightenment reminds me of the Buddhist funeral ceremony where the bereaved pours water into a cup, letting it overflow until the jug is empty. While this happens, the monks chant about overflowing rivers being like cascades of good merit flooding into the deceased, preparing a soul for the next reincarnation. Except, in our modern inter-connected lives, the jug’s never empty. These days, often the world of the living starts cascading on us more like the Yangtse floods than a babbling brook, a bit too overwhelming to swim against.

For good or bad, the omnipresent social media platforms and the internet lure us into a state of constant connection. We’re encouraged to communicate and share more than is good for us. It’s like being able to look inside and see the visceral workings of others, their thoughts and feelings, and revealing our own to the world. Who of us ever asked for these intrusions? We can create a lot of noise when we share things, and worse, we hear the noise of faraway others from their anonymous pulpits and megaphones – those new Vicars of Disenlightenment. And the pursuit of peace and privacy is a battle fast being lost.

Books.

This is not a blog decrying the New Age and lamenting the rose-coloured past. If for no other reason, that bus left a long time ago and I expect like most of us, I love the good bits about what technology has brought us. It’s just the other things…

The world’s too big. There’s too much of everything. Too much information in smaller and smaller chunks, too many messages to answer. Our lives are about making choices, not trying to keep ourselves occupied or finding some space. We don’t do that any more.

Books.

This is what’s great about being a writer – and even more about being a reader. The world’s population is increasing and literacy is booming. This means more people are earning enough to buy books, and especially younger people. Reading habits form early which means we can be confident in the appetites of future generations of readers. Just think about The Flying Dutchman or Harry Potter if you need examples.

My take on all this? We’re coming full-circle. Especially in our pursuit of managing the complexities of our twenty-first century Enlightenment. Books take us away from the many-tentacled, amorphous connected world and back into the personal world we once loved. Do we still remember those times? Those havens where we can immerse our private thoughts somewhere personal again. Whether that be in one of the best mystery novels of all time, thriller mystery novels, or multicultural romance novels – where we imagine what such a relationship might feel like – doesn’t matter.

Don’t worry about the limitless streams of trivia out there because it means nothing nearly all the time. Just remember to make the world small enough for yourself to be comfortable in. When you feel overwhelmed, take a moment. Calm down, take a breath, and let your mind be quiet. Then go and buy a book. Mine preferably. Australian crime fiction books are popular these days as are those classic mystery novels. Call it escapism if you like, there’s a lot needs escaping from…

Yes, I agree with many people who believe the world is too big and noisy. So the good news is there’s plenty of room. However, it’s important for each of us to carve out our own space, even to discover our own desert island. Once we do, start sailing towards it with your favourite best Australian mystery novels of all time on board. Food for the soul is just as important as any other food.

For a start, check out my new novel,The Diary of Katy Yehonala, a great multicultural romance novel – plus an interesting life story. Katy’s a girl who follows her destiny, like we all can.

Buy a copy by visiting Shawline Publishing HERE

You can also leave your email at the bottom of the page for some great free stuff, and pre-previews of my latest books about multicultural romances. You can read a preview of The Diary of Katy Yehonala HERE

Robert Barclay

Robert Barclay is an Australian author of some of the best Australian crime fiction books. His new Australian multicultural novel follows the lives of Katy Yehonala and her daughter, Clara, his strong female protagonists as they confront the evils of the world.

Amazon’s top-twenty best-seller list in the romance genre doesn’t exactly sparkle with heady tales of multicultural romances. Sci-fi romance is on the list, but I wasn’t so much thinking of love affairs between blue aliens with horns and nubile females, though its popularity ought to at least hint of a reader’s desire for stories other than between two white heterosexuals.

Nor do their titles feature gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender people as romantic protagonists. More the vanilla flavoured; we’ll get to the Neapolitan, same sex multicultural romances later. To put it another way, the lack of diversity is astonishing given our interconnected world, migration patterns, and the ethnic melting pots we love to call our global communities.

Why should this be? Surely it’s the writers’ role to reflect and challenge how we think about the world. If not us, then who?

One reason is because the vast majority, about ninety-five percent as a matter of fact, of romance novels that get published are written by established white authors about white heterosexual people. It’s also true that the largest organisation of romance writers, the Romance Writers of America, has a white membership of almost ninety percent. Another, related, reason is because the rich history of romance books dating from at least the Bronte sisters, to Barbara Cartland’s “penny dreadfuls,” through to Danielle Steele, as well as many other well-established authors, defined the genre decades ago.

The third reason is more prosaic, yet important. The major publishers seldom take on a new author with an uncomfortable backstory. Romantic authors seeking to challenge the conventional wisdom are often forced to self-publish, and big retailers like K-Mart and Target won’t take a risk on up-and-coming writers taking issue with the status quo. Books that are seen as risky don’t get picked up by bricks and mortar retailers, and then fail to sell, reinforcing the problem.

There are signs publishers are broadening their acceptance of our changing times. More ethnically and sexually diverse writers are forcing their way into the genre, influencing readers’ tastes – and the bottom-line calculations of publishers. Progress is slow, though today’s romance novels now offer sub-categories like horror, cowboy, historical and military romance, as well as the alien encounters of science fiction I mentioned before. Even so, the lovers are usually still restricted to a limited range of terrestrial ethnic and cultural stereotypes. There aren’t many star-struck or star-crossed lovers with mental or physical disabilities either.

If the rule-of-thumb is that readers want books that reflect the world they live in, or want to escape from in the case of sci-fi, they are beginning to vote with their feet – and wallets. I’m suggesting it’s not enough to have the currently successful authors “write more diversely,” which has been the response of the literary elite. It will be the fresh take on the genre that a new breed of multicultural romantic authors bring who will be the harbingers of change. Authors like Courtney Milan, Delaney Diamond, and Helen Hoang with their interracial, gay couples, transgender, disabled, and bisexual characters who may well be the future of romance in the years ahead.

Now, I get that Gone With the Wind would not have been such a hit with a romance between Rhett Butler and Prissy, the ditsy, subversive, slave girl who sweeps through the first part of the film like a whirlwind. Even less likely between Scarlett and Prissy. A love affair which would never have made it into a book and guaranteed Margaret Mitchell – or Prissy more likely – being strung up from a tree by the KKK of the time.

But seventy-five years on, isn’t it about time some decent – or epic – multicultural romances of that grandeur made their way into the pages of a novel?

Check out my new novel,The Diary of Katy Yehonala, a great multicultural romance novel – plus an interesting life story. Katy’s a girl who follows her destiny, like we all can.

Leave your email at the bottom of the page for some great free stuff, and pre-previews of my latest books about interracial romances. You can read a preview of The Diary of Katy Yehonala HERE

Buy a copy of this fabulous book by visiting Shawline Publishing HERE

Robert Barclay

Robert Barclay is an Australian author of the best Australian crime/mystery novels. His Australian romance novels and stories follow the lives of Katy Yehonala and her daughter, Clara, his strong female protagonists as they confront the evils of society.

In this last of the trilogy of short stories of the Dowager Empress Cixi, we shall walk in the footsteps of ghosts. It’s time to take a look at the legacy of this remarkable woman. And, naturally enough for me, how her make-believe descendants, Katy and Clara Yehonala, found their way into my own consciousness as my amazing, but equally flawed heroes, who are setting off to change the world. Or a small part of it anyway.

Firstly, back to the good, or not so good, Dowager Empress Cixi Yehonala. We’re people of our times and Cixi Yehonala was especially so. Even today, we can stand amazed that a semi-literate sixteen-year-old girl in a patriarchal, feudal society should have achieved anything, let alone leaving an awesome legacy. Back then, how much harder could it have been. That in itself should count as moderately heroic.

I’m not about to paint Cixi as any kind of role-model for today’s women. She was, after all, an Empress in an age when the rough justice of the death of a thousand cuts, foot binding, nepotism, and beheadings were de rigeur in society. There seems little doubt Cixi Yehonala wasn’t overly troubled by the odd bit of arsenic poisoning, or head-lopping of rivals, to retain her power. Arguably, one or two of her social norms are unfortunately out of favour in our modern times…

We got a glimpse of her achievements in some newspapers and books around the turn of the nineteenth century into the modern era, foretelling that the coming century would see the rise of China from its medieval, myopic past. If we dig into the reasons for such reports, we begin to see her impact. On the social front, she banned tortures like the death of a thousand cuts and the horrors of foot binding. She even lifted the ban on Han-Manchu intermarriages – a hundred years before western countries allowed Catholics to marry non-Catholics. Not small things.

On a larger scale, under Cixi Yehonala’s firm hand the country built the infrastructure of a modern state, including railways and the telegraph. Coal-mining began which led to the growth of private enterprise, and as a result, led to China welcoming electricity. International business for China became possible after the currency was changed from silver ingots to coinage, enabling trade with the wider world.

The road wasn’t easy. The conflicts, reparations and concessions forced on China after the Opium Wars, the Boxer Rebellion and other battles with western powers taught her that the old order in China must be left behind. For the last decade of her life she encouraged the modernising of China, and the gradual forming of a constitutional government, laying the groundwork for China’s modern age as a republic. She was undoubtedly a great ruler and one of the few women who have profoundly influenced the world’s history.

Twenty years before Cixi’s birth, was it not Napoleon who prophetically said, “when the sleeping dragon awakes, it will shake the world?” As we all know now, China is well and truly awake and we all hear the galloping feet of many large and small-size dragons.

Having lived there for some years, I was inspired to write a story about other unlikely heroes, born into awful periods in that same culture, who also grew into awe-inspiring women despite shaky beginnings. My first book, The Diary of Katy Yehonala became Katy’s journey, traversing time, space, mythology and cultures. The story follows Katy as she survives the tumultuous world of Mao’s revolutionary China, discovering and embracing the world beyond.

Katy Yehonala’s life and times are not as most of us have experienced. Nor was Cixi Yehonala’s, ranging from the unimaginable horror of exile as an “enemy of the people” as a child, to travelling the world as a modern-day Marco Polo. Her journey leads her through the soaring joys and crushing heartbreaks of falling in love, the importance of family, experiencing new cultures, and being driven by destiny to a future in a new country she could never have imagined.

As a girl of her times, Katy believes the influence of destiny is woven into the fabric of her culture’s five-thousand-year history. So, with fate and optimism as guiding lights, she steps boldly into the world beyond her homeland. When times are hard, she finds silver linings, though occasionally she has to dig deeply to uncover them. In happier times, she looks on in wonder at her good fortune.

When I set out to write this novel, I intended it as a story of Katy’s salvation. Also, offering a challenge for all of us to not stand by idly while terrors still exist for the world’s most vulnerable, hidden from sight in a land we know little about. In this scheme, Katy Yehonala is, in a way, the “universal woman” wanting to make a difference and embracing the humanity we all share. My view changed as I got to know her better. She has more of the determination found in her magnificent ancestor, Dowager Empress Cixi Yehonala. Katy needed a companion on her journey. She found two, one an extraordinary daughter, Clara, who became known around the world as The Jade Princess.

Buy your copy of this extraordinary novel by visiting Shawline Publishing HERE

Robert Barclay

Robert Barclay is an Australian author of some of the best Australian crime/mystery novels. His Australian romance novels and stories follow the lives of Katy Yehonala and her daughter, Clara, his strong female protagonists as they confront the evils of society.

There was the time two Empresses ruled the world. Born a year apart, both died the turn of the twentieth century. These two women ruled over more than half the world’s people for more than fifty years. At the end of their lives, their two empires were soon gone, brought down by their own hands.

The two women could not have been more different, either in their achievements or outlook, irrespective of their ethnicity. Yet it’s Alexandrina Victoria von Wettin, née Hanover, better known as Queen Victoria, Empress of India, we know best. Most of us learned at school how under her rule the British Empire became the most powerful force on Earth, and was one upon which the sun never set. Westerners also remember Queen Victoria fondly through what is called “The Victorian Age” resplendent with its literary, military, and industrial achievements, as well as Queen Victoria’s story-book love affair with Albert. Or with John Brown for the more lascivious of her biographers. The other, the magnificent Dowager Empress Cixi Yehonala, a woman of far greater ability and influence, languishes in poorly told history books and some awful blockbuster movies like 55 Days in Peking.

Dowager Empress Cixi Yehonala’s story is one historians are now beginning to tell more accurately. And we shall all be the better for the re-telling of the life of one of history’s most awe-inspiring women.

Although the time two Empresses ruled the world and controlled vast empires, neither of the two empresses understood much of the world beyond their shores. A failure which proved the undoing of them both.

Victoria, metaphorically and literally a product of Victorian times and gender prescribed roles, was always under the influence of powerful male forces. Her husband, Albert, for example, was her moral adviser, and a man she relied on too heavily. And also on people like Palmerston, Disraeli, Melbourne, and others who ran the Empire while she became merely the figurehead. Her own accomplishments were few, some far from noteworthy, once earning her the title of The Famine Queen. A prize for mostly ignoring the deaths of one million Irish during the potato famine, her disinterest giving rise to Sinn Fein and the IRA. For the last forty years of her reign, after Albert died, Victoria was almost a black-clad reclusive. Victoria never supported rights for women and advised against such things. In addition, her childish enthusiasm when she received Hong Kong as reparations after conflicts with China, was an example of her naïveté in foreign affairs. In a quirk of history, her government’s Opium Wars and gunboat diplomacy were eventually responsible for bringing down the Dowager Empress Cixi Yehonala’s Qing Dynasty. More in a later blog…

Unsatisfied with disembowelling the Qing Dynasty, Victoria set about manufacturing the end of the British Empire. Her interest in seeding the royal families of Europe by marrying off her daughters to its tsars, princes, and emperors created a couple of grandchildren who brought down the Prussian Hohenzollern and Romanov Empires. And, ultimately, her own. For example, the first grandson, Kaiser Wilhelm II, kicked off World War 1. Then the second, Tsar Nicholas II, ushered in the Bolshevik Revolution and got them all shot in Yekaterinburg. The Victorian Age certainly did leave a lasting impression on the world as the sun finally began to set on the British Empire.

But what of Dowager Empress Cixi Yehonala? Well, she was almost everything Queen Victoria wasn’t. Cixi Yehonala ruled with intelligence, tireless strength, and often ruthlessness in the brutal politics of the time. Rising from sexual servitude as a sixteen-year-old concubine, she played a leading role in creating the foundations for modern China, then emerging from feudalism into its later place as a republic. She fought and prevailed against almost insurmountable obstacles from inside, ultimately failing against those ranged against her from outside China.

Unlike Victoria, Cixi was a feminist. She drove policies for the education of women by urging officials to fund schools for girls, and by decree made it official women must be educated. She set up her own school, as well as an institute of higher education for women. These efforts led to China’s first female students being awarded scholarships to go abroad. Among recipients of these scholarships were three of the most famous Chinese women of the twentieth century: the Soong sisters, Mei-ling, Ching-ling, and Ai-ling.

The three sisters married the most important historical figures in the early days of the Chinese Republic: Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, and H.H. Kung, the richest man in China and a descendant of Confucius. These were three other amazing Chinese women who changed the world. They were the focal point of every major decision made in modern Chinese history, up to and beyond the creation of Mao’s China.

I’ll say more about Dowager Empress Cixi Yehonala’s legacies in my next blog. But little wonder when I was looking for modern heroes for my books, I needed to look no further than inventing descendants of Cixi. An easier choice than modelling the vacuousness of the current crop of Queen Victoria’s descendants.

With their many flaws – I didn’t want to bring two Boadicea’s back into vogue – Kata and Clara Yehonala are set to change their own world as they right the wrongs of our inhumanity to others less fortunate.

Buy your copy of this extraordinary novel by visiting Shawline Publishing HERE

Robert Barclay

Robert Barclay is an Australian author of some of the best Australian crime/mystery novels. His Australian romance novels and stories follow the lives of Katy Yehonala and her daughter, Clara, his strong female protagonists as they confront the evils of society.

The year was 1851. A pretty sixteen-year-old Manchu girl named Miss Chao entered through the Gate of Divine Prowess into the Forbidden City in Beijing as a lowly concubine to the Xianfeng Emperor of the Qing Dynasty. She was to become the most remarkable woman in history.

When the gates of the Forbidden City closed behind Miss Chao, she shut out a busy world. A world filled with family, friends, fun, shopping at the vibrant markets, and a budding romance. Her life’s destiny was to be locked within the limits of a one square kilometre area of brick-paved earth, surrounded by a crenelated wall ten metres high and as many metres thick, resplendent with palaces of unimaginable beauty. Here there was only one “whole” man. He was not her father, brother, husband, or even her friend, and a man whom she might never even see.

Here she would live as neither mistress nor servant, wife nor slave, but one of a basket of peaches which had little chance of being sampled before withering away, dried and wrinkled, in silken finery. Miss Chao emerged a half-century later as the Dowager Empress Cixi Yehonala and one of the most powerful women in history.

She had ruled more than a quarter of the world’s population for nearly fifty years, through tumultuous times in China, and had lived a life shrouded in mystery and surrounded by myths of intrigue, betrayal, murder, love, and survival.

Her race, the Manchus, had ruled China as the Qing Dynasty for four hundred years and were the last imperial Chinese Dynasty in a long warlord-inspired history. The Qing Dynasty collapsed after the death of the now daunting old Empress Dowager Cixi Yehonala in 1908, and almost faded from memory after the abdication of the last puppet Emperor, Puyi, of movie fame in The Last Emperor.

Most westerners only remember the Qing Dynasty and the most remarkable woman, Dowager Empress Cixi Yehonala, these days through such Hollywood films as this, and through blockbusters like 55 Days in Peking, wherein another triumph of American values embodied in the form of Charlton Heston, the world was made white again.

The heroic Mr. Heston almost single-handedly brought down the Qing Dynasty by defeating the Boxers, a peasant rebellion, who wanted to murder all the proselytes infesting China with their talkative Christianity, a hopeless but arguably noble undertaking.

Thus complete, the western powers carved up coastal China into colonial concessions for a more sanctioned style of rape and pillage.

The Dowager Empress Cixi Yehonala has inspired authors and movie-makers for a century and her portrayals as messiah or monster are debated in every story.

What’s the truth about Cixi? The only agreed one is that the most remarkable woman in history is in danger of having her momentous life and achievements whitewashed away by the poorly written history of the men who feared her, and had better literary agents. Let’s take a new look at Miss Chao, the young girl who became the awesome Dowager Empress Cixi Yehonala.

Buy your copy of this extraordinary novel of China’s history and a love story for the ages by visiting Shawline Publishing HERE

Robert Barclay

Robert Barclay is an Australian author of some of the best Australian crime/mystery novels. His Australian romance novels and stories follow the lives of Katy Yehonala and her daughter, Clara, his strong female protagonists as they confront the evils of society.