READ THIS: The Queen's Lover by Vanora Bennett
Before the Tudors could rise to power, Catherine de Valois became Queen of two countries by making her own rules...We love history and we love Europe at Whom You Know, so The Queen's Lover absolutely delighted us and the pages went more quickly than you'd imagine. At well over 500 pages, The Queen's Lover tells a tale of a woman born into royalty that lives a royal life that may seem less than royal to the reader as the conflicts in her life arise. Another tale that makes us want to head straight for the National Portrait Gallery in London so we understand its place in History, The Queen's Lover is a historical novel we strongly recommend. Well-written, intricately detailed, and with good character development, it is a book that will captivate the reader from the start.
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On the publication of her novel Figures In Silk, award-winning journalist Vanora Bennett was extolled for “know[ing] what drives her characters, both fictional and historical, and they seem as real and easy to relate to as your next-door neighbor.” Praised the Christian Science Monitor, “Bennett’s medieval England comes alive in ways a reader can immediately relate to, even while being transported away from the modern world.”
In her latest novel THE QUEEN’S LOVER, Vanora Bennett illustrates the turbulent life of the great queen Catherine de Valois – daughter of a mad French king, trophy wife of an ambitious English conqueror king, and mother of Henry VI, the last surviving Lancastrian heir to the thrones of England and France. In a brilliant weaving of historical fact and original plot, THE QUEEN’S LOVERis a sweeping tale of romance and political maneuvering in an age where women – especially queens – were only allowed peripheral roles.
Catherine is born in troubled times. Her father, King Charles VI of France, suffers bouts of madness; King Henry V of England continues his unrelenting invasion of France; and internal strife has held France in a vise-like grip since the brutal assassination of her uncle, Louis, the Duke of Orléans. Though she’s brought up in a royal court, Catherine weathers a stormy and unstable environment. And especially since she’s one of the youngest of eight royal children, she is largely left to her own devices; her only friend being the remarkable feminist poet and writer Christine de Pizan.
Held captive by circumstance, Catherine is married to Henry V of England as part of a treaty honoring his victory over France. Terrified at the idea of being married to a man who is a foreigner, an enemy, and a coarse soldier, Catherine does her royal duty nonetheless. But within two years, she finds herself a hapless widow, and the mother of an infant Henry VI, future King of England and France. It’s also in this lonely, dangerous time that Catherine’s brother and childhood playmate, Charles VII, claims the French crown for himself with the support of Joan of Arc.
Challenged by her brother’s army, and caught between the warring factions of powerful lords of the English court, Catherine and her son are constantly under threat. Drawing strength from the teachings of her mentor Christine de Pizan, and heartened by the possibility of returning home to France, Catherine must learn to maneuver and manipulate the court to in order to survive, especially for the sake of her young son. And even when support comes from an unlikely source, Owain Tudor, the English-appointed controller of her household, Catherine’s survival remains precarious. If the court were to ever discover their secret love, Catherine would lose her son to the political machinations of scheming English lords.
Weaving real historical figures with unforgettable and enthralling characters, Vanora Bennett’s THE QUEEN’S LOVER brings to life an age of passion and politics, of turmoil and tension, illuminating the plight of a frightened princess poised to become the queen of two countries, a woman who can survive her precarious perch on the throne only by making her own rules.
About the Author: Vanora Bennett
Vanora Bennett is an award-winning journalist. Incidentally, she became a journalist “almost by accident.” As she likes to tell:
“Having learned Russian and been hired after university by Reuters, I was then catapulted into the adrenaline-charged realm of conflict reporting. While on a trainee assignment in Paris, I fell in with the Cambodian émigré community and ended up reporting in Cambodia myself, a decade after the Khmer Rouge regime ended, as well as covering Cambodian peace talks in places as far apart as Indonesia and Paris. That led to a conflict reporting job in Africa, commuting between Angola and Mozambique and writing about death, destruction, diamonds and disease, and later to a posting in a country that stopped being the Soviet Union three months after I arrived. I spent much of the early 1990s in smoky taxis in the Caucasus Mountains, covering a series of small post-Soviet conflicts that built up to the war in Chechnya.
“My fascination with the cultural and religious differences between Russians and the many peoples once ruled by Moscow grew into a book on the Chechen war (Crying Wolf: The Return of War to Chechnya). A second, more light-hearted book followed, about post-Soviet Russia’s illegal caviar trade, once I’d got homesick for London and moved back to writer leaders on foreign affairs for The Times. This book was The Taste of Dreams: An Obsession with Russia and Caviar.”
Vanora has contributed to the London Times, TimesOnline, the Los Angeles Times, Prospect, The Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian Saturday magazine, the Daily Mail, the Evening Standard,and Eve magazine, and has appeared on numerous BBC radio programs. She lives in North London with her husband and two children.
