Titles in this set:
- Devils Consort
- Virgin Widow
Devils Consort
Eleanor is not a wholly likable person and certain aspects of her character are quite unappealing - I couldn't help but feel distanced and slightly offended by her complete lack of maternal instinct with her daughters and her total lack of scruples when embarking on an incestuous affair with her uncle - but I like the fact that this makes her into a more rounded, believable figure with greater depth.
She was certainly a remarkable woman, rarely backing down, going off on Crusade with the men of Aquitaine and clearly wearing the trousers (at times, endearingly literally !) in her relationship with her totally useless, monkish husband, King Louis of France. It is heartwarming to see her meet her match and find happiness with her second husband Henry Plantagenet, future king of England, but even then, when the couple appear to have the world at their feet and things start looking up, the first cracks start to appear in this new union and we can't help but wonder if she hasn't jumped out of the frying pan into the fire.
Virgin Widow
Daughter of Warwick the Kingmaker, and to be married at the age of fourteen, Anne Neville cannot dictate her own future. Used as a political pawn in a fifteenth-century power game, Anne faced conflict, treason, grief and tragedy as well as a love strong enough to survive rejection and separation and the political murder of her first husband.
Twice betrothed as a girl to Richard of Gloucester, the future Richard III and brother of King Edward IV, she is parted from him when her father’s treason forces her to flee into exile. Trapped in an unhappy and humiliating marriage with Prince Edward of Lancaster who is controlled by his mother, Margaret of Anjou and living in a hostile, impoverished court, Anne finds herself at the mercy of other’s whims. On her wedding night, the audience assembled to witness her bedding instead witnesses a royal humiliation, Margaret determines that Anne’s marriage is never to be consummated. Anne is released when the Prince is killed, but the man responsible is Richard the man she loves. Left as a prisoner on the ‘wrong side’ in the war, her father dead, her mother trapped in a convent and betrayed by her elder sister, Anne’s future hangs in the balance, overseen by Margaret. But Anne withstands the force of political manoeuverings, makes her own choices, and ultimately secures her inheritance, her mother’s freedom and the man she desires.
