A top ten bestselling novelist and historian recreates in fiction the most extrordinary and tempestuous marriage in history
It is the year 1152 and a beautiful woman of thirty, attended by only a small armed escort, is riding like the wind southwards through what is now France, leaving behind her crown, her two young daughters and a shattered marriage to Louis of France, who had been more like a monk than a king, and certainly not much of a lover. This woman is Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, and her sole purpose now is to return to her vast duchy and marry the man she loves, Henry Plantagenet, a man destined for greatness as King of England. Theirs is a union founded on lust which will create a great empire stretching from the wilds of Scotland to the Pyrenees. It will also create the devil’s brood of Plantagenets – including Richard Cœur de Lion and King John – and the most notoriously vicious marriage in history.
The Captive Queen is a novel on the grand scale, an epic subject for Alison Weir. It tells of the making of nations, and of passionate conflicts: between Henry II and Thomas Becket, his closest friend who is murdered in Canterbury Cathedral on his orders; between Eleanor and Henry’s formidable mother Matilda; between father and sons, as Henry’s children take up arms against him; and finally between Henry and Eleanor herself.
Author Biography
Alison Weir lives and works in Surrey. Her books include
Britain’s Royal Families,
The Six Wives of Henry VIII,
Children of England,
Eleanor of Aquitaine,
Henry VIII: King and Court,
Mary, Queen of Scots,
Isabella: She-Wolf of France,
Queen of England,
Katherine Swynford: The Story of John of Gaunt and His Scandalous Duchess and the novels,
Innocent Traitor and
The Lady Elizabeth.Reviews
