The True Family Secret Behind Sue Williams’ The Duke’s Secret
- Sue Williams
- 7 hours ago
- 3 min read
Read an article penned by Sue Williams about her latest book The Duke's Secret.
Ever since I was a kid, my father has been telling me the same story: a poor maid from the wrong part of town falls for a prince of the realm, and their illegitimate daughter, instead of marrying into a fortune, runs off with the butler.
When I was young, I saw it as simply an enchanting fairytale. It showed that love can triumph over everything, whether yawning chasms in social class or the promise of infinite riches.
But as I grew older, and the story never changed, with my father still insisting it was the true tale of our ancestors back in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, I felt it was high time I took a closer look. And what I found astonished me.
Just as he’d said, I did have a relative – my 4x great grandmother Mary Ann Marshall – who worked as a maid in the London household of unofficial royalty, the Duke of Wellington, the man hailed as ‘the hero of the world’ after vanquishing Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. Despite being unmarried, she did have a child too, with the father never officially named.
Even more mysteriously, she was never kicked out of his employ onto the streets, as any other servant who has a child at that time would have been. Instead, the Iron Duke kept both her, and her daughter, in his grand mansion at Hyde Park.
Later, according to my father, the Duke arranged for that daughter, Elizabeth, to wed the son of a wealthy friend of his. She refused, married the butler William Williams instead, and the Duke found them positions at Kew Palace, the former home of King George and Queen Charlotte.
And yes, the official Census bore that out too, with the couple named as living at the palace as staff, while the family tree showed every first son since named William Williams.
For a writer, it was an incredible gift, and even better as I, too, now believe it to be absolutely true. As a result, I decided to write it as a novel, to enable me to bring the past vividly to life, with a contemporary Australian character Ava – loosely based on me – investigating the historical link.
In order to research the story, I travelled to all of the Duke’s homes over the years, the sites of all his major battles and the places that made him such a larger-then-life figure who ended up the British Prime Minister. I also visited the streets of Whitechapel in London’s East End where Mary Ann came from, which, in her day, was one of the dirtiest, most impoverished places in Britain.
Of course, I looked into our DNA too, talking to experts about the chances of making a match.
And my father, William Williams, now 95 years old, is thrilled. He no longer has to tell the story; he can show everyone the book.
The Duke's Secret
by Sue Williams
From the bestselling author of Elizabeth & Elizabeth and The Governor, His Wife and His Mistress, comes a remarkable work of historical fiction based on the author's own family history.
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