The book explores how history is constructed, and how certain versions of events come to be widely accepted as the truth, despite a lack of evidence and/or any logical plausibility. Grant comes to understand the ways that great myths or urban legends are constructed, and how in this case, the victorious Tudors saw to it that their version of history prevailed.
The novel's title is taken from an old proverb ("Truth is the daughter of time") which is quoted by Tey as the novel's epigraph. Like all aphorisms this proverb has been directly quoted, paraphrased or enhanced many times over the centuries by multiple famous literate thinkers such as Aulus Gellius and Abraham Lincoln (direct quotes); Sir Francis Bacon (enhanced quote: "Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority." ); and Thales (paraphrase: "It is time that has discovered, or in due course will discover, all things that lie hidden.") to name just a few. Other famous quotes not unrelated to what Tey intended to communicate with her choice of epigraph and title would be: "Not being known doesn't stop the truth from being true." - Richard Bach; "People say they love truth, but in reality they want to believe that which they love is true." - Robert Ringer; "Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible." - Francis Bacon; and possibly even "It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense." - Mark Twain.
The novel also explores and pastiches different types of historical writing. In his researches, Grant starts with children's history books, then moves on to general popular histories and the very scholarly but dull "Tanner's Constitutional History of England". He also reads Thomas More's History of King Richard III and a historical novel called The Rose of Raby by "Evelyn Payne-Ellis", about the life of Richard's mother Cecily Neville. Both Tanner's history and the novel are non-existent; it has been suggested that the title of the latter is derived from Guy Paget's 1937 biography of the same name.
Other alleged historical myths touched upon by the author are the commonly believed (but false) story that troops fired on the public at the 1910 Tonypandy Riot, the traditional depiction of the Boston Massacre, the martyrdom of Margaret Wilson and the life and death of Mary, Queen of Scots. Grant adopts the term "Tonypandy" to describe widely believed historical myths, such as the supposed shootings at the Tonypandy Riots, and believes popular accounts of Richard's activities to fall into this category. This line of thought reflects a dislike and distrust of emotional popular narratives concerning supposed historical injustices which also surfaces in Tey's other works .
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