One woman’s ambitions for power, love, and a child will cost her everything. England is in a golden age with King Henry V and Queen Catherine of Valois on the throne. Jacqueline of Hainault has come to England to ask for help to take back her birthright. A young woman named Eleanor Cobham joins Jacqueline’s court, but Eleanor desires more. She wants power, the man she loves to love her, and a child. But when all else fails, Eleanor turns to a darker path to secure the throne. How did things go so horribly wrong, and why did Eleanor go to such extreme measures? Philippa Gregory tells the tale of Eleanor Cobham and the charges that made her infamous in her latest novel, “Royal Witch.”
I want to thank William Morrow and Net Galley for sending me a copy of this novel. In recent years, I have come to appreciate Gregory’s newer books, so when I heard that she was writing a novel about Eleanor Cobham, it caught my attention. I have heard of Eleanor Cobham as a side character in books about King Henry VI, but I didn’t know much about her life, so I wanted to see how Gregory would tell her tale.
We begin the day that Eleanor Cobham’s life changed when her mother died, and Eleanor was no longer destined to live in a monastery. Now, she could chart her own path, which happened to land her in the court of Henry V. There, she meets the woman whom she will serve, Jacqueline of Hainault. Jacqueline is a woman on a mission to get her counties of Hainault, Holland, and Zeeland back from her husband, John of Brabant, whom she wants a divorce from, and Philip, Duke of Brittany. The only way she can do that is by seeking the help of King Henry V. Henry V’s brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, comes to Jacqueline’s aid as he seeks to become her husband and Count of Hainault. While navigating the complex nature of Jacqueline’s situation, Eleanor falls in love with a young Welshman, Owen ap Maredudd.
Nothing can stay the same forever, as the powerful King Henry V dies, leaving the throne to his infant son, King Henry VI. Eleanor does eventually marry, but not truly for love, but for power, as she finds out that Owen made a scandalous match of his own and married Dowager Queen Catherine of Valois. Eleanor and her husband, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, try everything to get ahead, but in the end, Eleanor resorts to consulting Margery Jourdemayne and others to help in a darker matter. The cost will be insurmountable for Eleanor Cobham.
This was an engrossing novel about a lesser-known figure in Plantagenet history. Eleanor is one of those figures you want to stop and let her be satisfied with the life she had, but you know they are digging themselves further into a hole that they cannot escape from. I am excited to see who Gregory will write about next. If you want a delightfully dark and dangerous novel about one woman’s unlimited ambitions and her fall from grace, I highly recommend you read “Royal Witch” by Philippa Gregory.
Medieval England, under the reign of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, was a turbulent time. The focus tends to be on the rebellion of Henry’s sons against their father and how Eleanor sided with her sons. This story has been told, but there is a story of another woman who was caught directly in the middle of the entire ordeal. Her story is most known for her role during the reign of King John and the Magna Carta, but that was when she was an older woman. The story of Nicola de la Haye and Lincoln Castle has been told in biographies and nonfiction books, but not really in historical fiction novels. Rachel Elwiss Joyce hopes to change that with her novel, “Lady of Lincoln.”
When we think about significant law documents from medieval England, we think about the Doomsday Book, the Assize of Clarendon, and the Statutes of Westminster. These documents would remain significant to England, but there is only one that would transcend its original purpose: the Magna Carta. To many nations, it is the foundation of liberty and justice for all. But, if we take away all the sparkling praise of the present day for the document, what can we discover about the Magna Carta? What was the Magna Carta truly at its heart, and why was it written? Dan Jones examines this document and the circumstances behind its creation in his book, “Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty.”
Throughout medieval English history, there have been some famous queens who left their marks. Empress Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Eleanor of Castile, Philippa of Hainault, and Margaret of Anjou each left an impression on English history, either good or bad. However, there was one queen whose negative reputation came with the nickname “She-Wolf of France,” and her name was Queen Isabella of France. The wife of Edward II and mother of Edward III, she left her husband for Roger Mortimer and overthrew her husband in favor of her son. For centuries, she has been viewed as a horrible villainess, but is that a fair assessment of her life? Alison Weir dives into the archives to find the truth about Isabella of France, and she presents her findings in her biography, “Queen Isabella: Treachery, Adultery, and Murder in Medieval England.”
Medieval Europe was a time of conflicts and change. While smaller disputes between countries or civil wars would define borders, the most prominent conflict during this period was the Hundred Years’ War. A conflict that has been traditionally taught to have lasted 116 years between England and France. It is often told from the English perspective, with battles such as Agincourt, Crecy, and Poitiers celebrated. But what if we look at the bigger picture and expand our lens to the whole of Europe while keeping a neutral approach to the France vs England conflict? What if the conflict did not last a mere hundred years, but in fact two hundred years? What type of story would this kind of approach tell when it comes to medieval European history? Michael Livingston takes on the mammoth challenge of telling the tale of how this war changed European history forever in his latest book, “Bloody Crowns: A New History of the Hundred Years War.”
The Plantagenets, one of England’s most dynamic dynasties, were always in the middle of some sort of conflict. Whether they were fighting foreign adversaries, their own people, or their own family, it felt like the Plantagenets were always getting into some sort of trouble. And there was one king who knew how to use the weaknesses of the kings of England to his advantage. He was King Philip II of France, also known as Philip Augustus. He had to deal with four different Plantagenet kings and had a strategy for each one of them. Just what were Philip II’s strategies, and how did his reign affect English/French relationships as a whole? These questions are answered in Catherine Hanley’s book, “Nemesis: Medieval England’s Greatest Enemy.”
The Plantagenets, a dynasty that ruled England for over three hundred years. At least that is if you include the Lancastrian and Yorkist kings. Otherwise, the reign of the Plantagenets ended with Richard II being overthrown. So, how did the Plantagenets fall? How did wars, favoritism, and the plague factor into the fall? Helen Carr examines these questions and the rule of three kings over the fourteenth century in her latest book, “Sceptred Isle: A New History of the Fourteenth Century.”