Return to the Eyrie Guest Post by Katerina Dunne

Honour, revenge, and the quest for justice.

Belgrade, Kingdom of Hungary, 1470:

Raised in exile, adolescent noblewoman Margit Szilágyi dreams of returning to her homeland of Transylvania to avenge her father’s murder and reclaim her stolen legacy. To achieve this, she must break the constraints of her gender and social status and secretly train in combat.

When the king offers her a chance at justice, she seizes it—even if it means disguising herself as a man to infiltrate the vultures’ nest that now occupies her ancestral ‘eyrie’.

Plagued by childhood trauma and torn between two passionate loves, Margit faces brutal battles, her murderous kin’s traps and inner demons on her quest for vengeance. Only by confronting the past can she reclaim her honour—if she can survive long enough to see it through.

Return to the Eyrie is an epic coming-of-age tale of a young woman’s unwavering pursuit of justice and destiny in 15th century Hungary.

Who Was Margit’s Father

The young heroine of Return to the Eyrie is Margit Szilágyi, the daughter of a Transylvanian middle-rank nobleman related to King Mátyás’ mother, Lady Erzsébet Szilágyi.

Margit’s mother was also a noblewoman of the Bátori of Ecsed family from Eastern Hungary.

Margit’s father, Sándor, is the hero of my first novel titled Lord of the Eyrie. He is the lord of a large estate called Szentimre (Saint Imre) and a castle named Sasfészek (Eyrie) in Transylvania.

Sándor’s story was inspired by the border lords of the 15th-century Kingdom of Hungary. Although mercenaries had always been employed in Hungary, the men of middle and lower nobility, serving powerful overlords, were the backbone of the feudal armies of the period. Very few of them made it into the chronicles and history books. Their lives must have been hard: a constant struggle to run their own estates and protect them from the relentless Ottoman raiding as well as from attacks by other local lords while also leaving home for long periods to campaign with the king and his barons.

Although Sándor is a fictional character (as is his estate and his immediate family) he embodies all those heroic and battle-hardened figures of the Borderland, who defended the kingdom for centuries. While Hungarian noblemen only had an obligation to take up arms within the borders of the kingdom, the frontier lords were forced by the nature of their location to be constantly at war.

Sándor’s overlord was János Hunyadi, one of the most famous figures in late medieval Hungary: a lesser nobleman who rose to power very quickly, thanks to his military successes against the Ottomans. He is considered a hero not only in Hungary, but also in many countries of the Balkans. In addition, Hunyadi was probably one of the first army commanders in Hungary to use mercenaries on a larger scale. His son, King Mátyás, set up a proper standing army of mercenaries, which was retrospectively called “The Black Army”.

Sándor served in János Hunyadi’s army faithfully and participated in many battles. After his overlord’s death, he swore fealty to young Mátyás when the latter ascended the throne.

Without going into much detail—so as not to spoil it for those who wish to read Lord of the Eyrie—we find teenage Margit living in exile in Belgrade at the start of Return to the Eyrie and trying to find out what happened to her father many years earlier, when she, as a little girl of four, was whisked away by a family friend as her land was violently taken over by her cousin, Márton, and his mother, Anna. Those relatives had also smeared her father’s reputation by painting him as a traitor to King Mátyás.

So, Margit’s goal is twofold: clear her father’s name and reclaim her land. Her quest is by no means easy, and she finds herself fighting an uphill battle in a dangerous, male-dominated world.

In Return to the Eyrie Margit is a mirror image—or rather, a female version of her warrior father. She has inherited some of his physical attributes, such as his red hair, green eyes and height. But she is also like him in character: dashing, righteous, fiery, determined and even stubborn occasionally. His warrior blood surges through her veins, making her prefer the companionship of her trusty steed and reliable bow and arrows to the confines of feminine pursuits. But while her father was also a learned man, Margit scoffs (perhaps misguidedly so) at the notion of traditional lessons and education.

The character and life of Margit’s father is slowly revealed as the story progresses in Return to the Eyrie. I hope readers will enjoy this book and also check out Lord of the Eyrie to learn more about an area of Europe whose medieval past is not so well-known to the English-speaking world.

Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/bz8gJL

Meet Katerina Dunne

Katerina Dunne is the pen-name of Katerina Vavoulidou. Originally from Athens, Greece, Katerina has been living in Ireland since 1999. She has a degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Athens, an MA in Film Studies from University College Dublin and an MPhil in Medieval History from Trinity College Dublin.

Katerina is passionate about history, especially medieval history, and her main area of interest is 13^th to 15^th century Hungary. Although the main characters of her stories are fictional, Katerina uses real events and personalities as part of her narrative in order to bring to life the fascinating history of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary, a location and time period not so well-known to English-speaking readers.

Return to the Eyrie (published April 2024) is the second book in the Medieval Hungary series, a sequel to Lord of the Eyrie (published in February 2022).