Interview with Anna Engels

I first encountered Anna Engels, the subject of today’s written interview, through a Facebook comment and was fascinated to learn that she had written what was then an almost-completed novel about the prince known to historians of medieval Russia as “Ivan Molodoi,” meaning “the young Ivan,” to separate him from his father, Grand Prince Ivan III of Moscow.

We started an online conversation, realized we lived nearby, and eventually became both friends and members of the same writing group. Before we reached that last stage, she had also agreed to chat with me for the New Books Network.

She has since begun a growing series of novels featuring an earlier Muscovite grand princess, Sophia of Lithuania. Today’s interview primarily addresses the new book, although you can also expect a bit of background information on the previous one. Read on to find out more.

Your debut novel, A Fool for an Heir, followed the life of Prince Ivan Ivanovich, the eldest son of Ivan III of Moscow. What should readers know about that story?

Born in 1458, when his parents are still teenagers, Ivan has a unique perspective on his father’s rise to power. His story was the inspiration behind “Ivan Tsarevich,” the brave, compassionate, and dangerously naïve hero of Russian fairy tales who befriends a wolf, marries Elena the beautiful, and is murdered by his stepbrothers. The title, A Fool for an Heir, is a reference to another fairy tale character, Ivan the Fool. To his father and most other characters in the book, Ivan’s compassion and decency make him a fool who could undo everything his father has worked for.

What made you decide to focus your next novel on Sophia, the daughter of Duke Vytautas of Lithuania?

Sophia is Ivan’s great-grandmother, and although she is long dead by the time Ivan’s story begins, she is one of those people a family remembers and tells stories about long after they’re gone. She is the Lithuanian witch, the she-wolf, the woman who caused a fratricidal war by undressing a man at her own son’s wedding.

The more I learned about her, the more I wanted to tell her story, and not just the story of her reign as the Grand Duchess of Moscow but of her life as a girl during the Lithuanian Cousins’ Wars in which her father played a central part, a young girl who witnessed some of the most significant, dramatic, and horrific events in the history of Eastern Europe.

When we first meet Sophia in Daughter of Lithuania, she is eleven years old. How would you describe her (meaning her character) at that point in her life? What does she want most?

Sophia loves her father and worships her grandfather, the daring Duke Kestutis, and her formidable grandmother Birutė, a pagan priestess. When her grandfather is killed and her father is imprisoned, she is thrust into the middle of war and intrigue that she cannot fully comprehend. She wants to earn her father’s love, but she is not thrilled about the prospect of marrying a stranger to help him find friends. She also ends up spending a lot of time with her annoying little brothers and with her mother, who she has never had a very good relationship with, and she is angry that she is not getting the love and support from her mother that she feels she deserves.

Her father, Duke Vytautas, and his cousin, Grand Duke Jogaila, were once close. What drove them apart?

You’ll have to read the book to find out. I will say that they were childhood friends who had a conflict in their teens that one of them thinks was not a big deal. Later, when Jogaila’s father died, Jogaila became the Grand Duke of Lithuania, but disagreements with his uncle Kestutis, Vytautas’s father, led to a civil war and ultimately to Kestutis’s death and Vytautas’s imprisonment.

Vytautas and Jogaila are very different people, but underneath all the mutual hurts and betrayals, they still miss each other.

Sophia’s grandmother Birutė plays an important role throughout the book. What would you like us to know about her?

Birutė is wise, charismatic, decisive, and used to being obeyed. Sophia loves her and misses her terribly, but I also tried to show how this kind of person might be perceived very differently by different people in their life. Her daughter-in-law, for example, might not see her the same way as her favorite grandchild.

Sophia is closer to her grandmother than to her mother, Ona, which is not uncommon for girls of that age. How does she see her mother, and perhaps more important, how would you describe Ona?

Ona can be cold and distant, and Sophia thinks that she likes her sons better than her daughter. She is also prone to anger and is often mean and sarcastic toward her husband, Vytautas, who has fallen short of her expectations in more ways than one. As the story develops, however, you will see unexpected sides of her and learn about events that have shaped her.

This is the first part of a larger series. What can we expect from the next novel, Lithuanian Princess?

A new war between Vytautas and Jogaila erupts in book 2, and Sophia’s life is upended once more. She must flee Lithuania. She is imprisoned by a family member with a dark secret. She has her heart broken. She is kidnapped by pirates. And eventually she must make a life for herself in a new country with a husband she’s not particularly fond of and a domineering mother-in-law. Meanwhile, Vytautas and Jogaila are still trying to find their way back to each other while the fate of Lithuania hangs in the balance.

Anna Engels writes historical fiction set in medieval Eastern Europe. Daughter of Lithuania, the first installment in the Sophia of Lithuania series, is her second novel, following 2024’s A Fool for an Heir. Find out more about her and her work from her Facebook profile.