Queens of the Age of Chivalry by Alison Weir
Blurb
From one of Britain’s best selling historians, a sweeping and magisterial history of the extraordinary lives of five queens in England’s turbulent Age of Chivalry
Medieval queens were seen as mere dynastic trophies, yet many of the Plantagenet queens of the High Middle Ages dramatically broke away from the restrictions imposed on their sex, as Alison Weir shows in this gripping group biography of England’s fourteenth-century consorts.
Using personal letters and wonderfully vivid sources, Alison Weir evokes the lives of five remarkable Marguerite of France, Isabella of France, Philippa of Hainault, Anne of Bohemia and Isabella of Valois.
The turbulent, brutal Age of Chivalry witnessed the Black Death, the Peasants’ Revolt, the Hundred Years War against France and savage baronial wars against the monarchy in which these queens were passionately involved. Queens of the Age of Chivalry brilliantly recreates this truly dramatic period of history through the lives of five extraordinary women.
Review
Now I will be honest I have started with the third book of the England’s Medieval Queens series but this book is the book that contains the queens I know least about so I thought I would work my way backwards. I own the other books but still wanted to start with the third book because why be normal?
The Plantagenet period during the fourteenth century is a period I am not overly familiar with so I was really keen to learn more about Marguerite of France, Isabella of France, Philippa of Hainault, Anne of Bohemia and Isabella of Valois.
The thing I love about Weir’s books is that they never read like a stuffy history book. They read more like a novel even though they are packed with facts. I love how she includes financial details and gives you modern day values, she includes clothing details and even what they ate if the data still exists. I love how there are subtle little jokes and that I just want to keep reading because I want to know what happens next. What happens to these queens from history?
This book isn’t all about the queens because we also get a lot of detail about their spouses and this is because the only reason we know these poor women existed is because they came from royalty and married a king. An everyday woman of the period would never have been remembered and as it is we only know so much about these women because of their spouses. History sadly remembers men because history is recorded by men, so we only know what we know because these men from history decided to record what the wife did occasionally.
However, what is left behind has been meticulously researched and collected into this brilliant book by Alison Weir. She has also tried to make the book about the Queens, rather than their husbands and tried to keep the husbands to the bare minimum. I found this a brilliantly informative read where I have learned a great deal. I give this book 5 out of 5 Dragons.
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About the author
Alison Weir was born in 1951 and is a British writer of history books, and latterly historical novels, mostly in the form of biographies about British Royalty.
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