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The Ruling Passion
"The Ruling Passion" is a superbly crafted historical novel retelling of the story of Edward Prince of Wales, and his passionate and defiant relationship with the Gascon warrior Piers Gaveston, that brought England to the brink of civil war. Set in the early 1300s, this historical novel recounts one of the most sensational episodes in English history - the relationship of Edward II, when he was Prince of Wales, with his lover Piers Gaveston. Its underlying theme is that of the troubled relationship between sexuality and duty in the royal family and the conflict between the disposition of the young heir to the throne and the expectations of his domineering father. Poignant and compassionately narrated, it is a story of infatuation and a relationship pursued to destruction.Prince Edward was the only surviving son of Edward I, one of England's greatest warrior kings, whose subjugation of the Welsh, campaigns against the Scots and massive programme of castle building near-bankrupted the realm. Not only was Prince Edward completely unsuited to carry through his father's military ambitions, but, his defiant resistance to every pressure to abandon his relationship with Piers Gaveston was to have disastrous consequences.
278 pages, Paperback
First published September 2, 2008
About the author
David Pownall
57 books5 followersDavid Pownall is an award winning British novelist and playwright. He has had over eighty radio plays broadcast on the BBC and worldwide, and his work for stage has been produced in many countries throughout the world.During his extensive career, David has written in a number of different mediums including thirteen novels.
He was born in Liverpool in l938 and educated at Lord Wandsworth College and Keele University, it was during this time that he became involved with writing and managing student publications. After graduating, David worked for the Ford Motor Company before going to Africa to work as a Personnel Manager in the copper-mining industry. During this time he worked with local drama groups, who performed his earliest stage plays. He returned to England in l969 to start a new career as a writer.
He was born in Liverpool in l938 and educated at Lord Wandsworth College and Keele University, it was during this time that he became involved with writing and managing student publications. After graduating, David worked for the Ford Motor Company before going to Africa to work as a Personnel Manager in the copper-mining industry. During this time he worked with local drama groups, who performed his earliest stage plays. He returned to England in l969 to start a new career as a writer.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 11, 2015
I was so thrilled when I heard that The Ruling Passion, a novel about Edward II and Piers Gaveston, was coming out. Featured on BBC Radio Four as a Book At Bedtime, it promises to tell the story of "a passionate and defiant relationship that was to bring England to the brink of civil war" and "a story of infatuation and a relationship pursued to destruction". Amen to that, I thought; I'm always in the market for a novel about the relationship between Edward and Piers, and there's precious little fiction worth reading about them. I read two excellent reviews of the novel on Amazon UK calling it "deeply engaging" and "really gripping," and various websites repeated that it's a "superbly crafted historical novel," and so I ordered Ruling Passion with great anticipation, expecting a passionate, compelling story about my favourite couple in history.
Well. For a novel with the word 'passion' in the title, how utterly disappointing and passionless it proved. A large part of the book, and I do mean a large part, involves Edward II's father King Edward I discussing his son's relationship with Piers with his adviser, William Wild. Who is always, always referred to either by his full name or as 'the Irishman', which made me grit my teeth with irritation; the first four words of the novel are in fact 'William Wild, the Irishman', and he is referred to as 'the Irishman' four times on the first page alone. (I had a similar problem with Liz Jensen's novel The Rapture, where one of the main characters is always referred to as 'Frazer Melville' and never, ever as just 'Frazer'.) In point of fact, Ruling Passion is not really 'about' Edward II and Piers Gaveston at all; the dull and made-up William Wild The Irishman and his wife Valmai are, contrary to what the blurb says, the main characters. It reminds me of Edith Felber's Queen of Shadows, which claims to be a novel about Isabella of France but is just as much the story of her dull, invented attendant Gwenith.
There's far too much telling in Ruling Passion and not nearly enough showing; why do we need to read endless pages where two men discuss the relationship of two other men when we could be reading about the relationship itself? (The novel opens in 1303, when the future Edward II is nineteen and four years before Edward I dies, and ends shortly after Piers' murder in June 1312.) And when we do get to see Edward and Piers, it's impossible to see why this is a "relationship pursued to destruction" as the blurb says, or threatens the English throne as the blurb says, or why Edward is so infatuated with his lover. We're told, constantly, that Edward adores Piers but not *shown* it. We're told that their relationship will bring England to civil war, but not why. Piers' characterisation is utterly minimal, and even at the end of the novel I had no idea what kind of man he's meant to be, except that he's bisexual and...ummm, well, that's about it. It's never made clear why this man is so sexy, so seductive and so powerful that he can topple thrones. A boring Piers Gaveston?? I would have thought that was impossible, but there's nothing at all here of the historical Piers' famous wit and charisma. Likewise, Queen Isabella remains a one-dimensional enigma throughout the novel. We're told what she's like ("Strong within outlandish contradictions [huh?], austere, sensual, pious and violent"), but she seldom does anything to demonstrate that she is any of these things, and appears to be much older than her stated age of thirteen. There is very little description or action but a lot, a lot, of talking in the novel; the first thing anyone says is Edward I telling William Wild to "Sit down, you old whore". Lovely. Usually I enjoy 'talky' novels, but the dialogue in Ruling Passion for the most part reveals very little about the characters and too often, in my humble opinion anyway, comes across as excessively modern and/or anachronistic (such as William Wild The Irishman Who Is Irish asking his wife "How do you know I'm not a former homosexual?").
There are few sex scenes in Ruling Passion, rather oddly in my opinion, in view of the subject matter (unless I blinked and missed them). One of the very, very few has Edward "being noisily buggered" by Piers in front of a group of actors, one of whom later brains himself "rather than live with such poisonous shame." Yes, that's the exact quotation; yes, that's the entire description of the sex; yes, it's as incredibly unerotic as it sounds. Oh, and there's another bit where Piers "fondles" Edward in front of the archbishop of York, not out of sexual desire but from a wish to embarrass and shock the archbishop, which just seemed childish to me. There is no passion in The Ruling Passion at all. NONE AT ALL. A strange inconsistency: Edward tells Piers at one point "I can't possibly get a woman with child" but half a dozen lines later tells him that he has, in fact, made a woman pregnant, and has an illegitimate son called Adam. Regarding his impending marriage to Isabella of France, Edward tells his lover that he will never be able to have intercourse with women as "their bodies appal me" and the thought revolts him, and that "It doesn't matter how beautiful she [Isabella] is, I won't be able to do it." But a few chapters later he consummates his marriage with Isabella with no problems or hesitation at all and with no awareness that women's bodies are meant to 'appal' him, despite the fact that - bizarrely - her father's pet dwarf is spying on them from the bed hangings. (Seriously. I am not making that up.) And a few chapters after that, Isabella is pregnant with Edward III. Equally bizarrely in the consummation scene, the pubescent Isabella tells her new husband that she has previously enjoyed sex on her knees "like the animals," and Edward shows not the slightest shock or horror that his young royal bride is not a virgin, saying merely "God's Mother, what have I got here?". There is not enough 'What the hell???' in my vocabulary. This is some alternate reality, not Europe in the fourteenth century. There are other contradictions: William Wild at one point says about Edward "It's not that he doesn't like women...In fact he likes them as people more than most men," yet later in the novel the narrative says "Almost incidentally, Ned revealed his attitude to women - which was not entirely hostile..." being one example.
I did like some parts of the novel. There are some lovely insights into Edward II's character, which make it obvious how hopelessly unsuited he is to his position as heir to the throne and king, and some nice flashes of humour, such as Edward - or Ned, as he's called throughout - groaning "why couldn't I have been born someone else?" when realising he'll have to consummate his marriage while being spied on by a voyeuristic heavily-breathing dwarf. There are some great bits showing the king's historically-documented love of physical labour, and a vivid scene on a bridge just after Edward has recalled Piers from exile in 1307, where Edward is unsure whether to continue to stand with his arms open to welcome Piers, who is kneeling a few yards away, or whether he's starting to look ridiculous. William Wild (The Irish Irishman Who Is Irish, lest we forget) remembers Edward's long-dead mother Eleanor of Castile with great affection and comments several times how much Edward resembles her in character, which I liked - I've often wondered how much, or whether, Edward resembled Queen Eleanor in appearance or personality. I'm extremely glad that Pownall didn't go the clichéd route of making Piers a Goddess-worshipper - boooooooring and based on a myth about Piers's witchy mother not recorded until three centuries later - and didn't turn Edward into the usual shrieking, foot-stamping, snivelling, tantrum-throwing stereotype so beloved of bad novelists. The novel is reasonably historically accurate, with a few exceptions (such as portraying Hugh Despenser becoming Edward's 'favourite' just after Piers' death, a good six years too early) and at least it doesn't depict Isabella taking a lover who fathers Edward III, for all Edward II's protestations that he won't be able to make her pregnant. For these reasons, I gave the novel two stars rather than one, though really it's one and a half rounded up. But overall, Ruling Passion achieved something I always thought was impossible: made me bored with a novel about Edward II. It took me a few months to finish it, because every time I put it down there was nothing at all compelling to make me want to pick it up again and I turned to other books instead. I still feel like I've missed plot threads in the novel - there's something going on between William Wild The Irishman Who Is Irish's wife Valmai and Piers Gaveston, but I don't know what and couldn't possibly care less - because I skimmed rather a lot of it in sheer boredom. A novel about such a passionate, obsessive and destructive relationship should make the reader feel lots of things, but 'bored' is not one of them. There's an excellent review of the novel by Fiona Glass on the (also excellent) website Speak Its Name, which identifies much of what is wrong with Ruling Passion: basically, it's incredibly dull. Brenda Honeyman's The King's Minions, despite being a very short novel, contains far more genuine passion, infatuation and eroticism between Edward II and Piers Gaveston in a handful of pages than Ruling Passion manages in its entirety.
Well. For a novel with the word 'passion' in the title, how utterly disappointing and passionless it proved. A large part of the book, and I do mean a large part, involves Edward II's father King Edward I discussing his son's relationship with Piers with his adviser, William Wild. Who is always, always referred to either by his full name or as 'the Irishman', which made me grit my teeth with irritation; the first four words of the novel are in fact 'William Wild, the Irishman', and he is referred to as 'the Irishman' four times on the first page alone. (I had a similar problem with Liz Jensen's novel The Rapture, where one of the main characters is always referred to as 'Frazer Melville' and never, ever as just 'Frazer'.) In point of fact, Ruling Passion is not really 'about' Edward II and Piers Gaveston at all; the dull and made-up William Wild The Irishman and his wife Valmai are, contrary to what the blurb says, the main characters. It reminds me of Edith Felber's Queen of Shadows, which claims to be a novel about Isabella of France but is just as much the story of her dull, invented attendant Gwenith.
There's far too much telling in Ruling Passion and not nearly enough showing; why do we need to read endless pages where two men discuss the relationship of two other men when we could be reading about the relationship itself? (The novel opens in 1303, when the future Edward II is nineteen and four years before Edward I dies, and ends shortly after Piers' murder in June 1312.) And when we do get to see Edward and Piers, it's impossible to see why this is a "relationship pursued to destruction" as the blurb says, or threatens the English throne as the blurb says, or why Edward is so infatuated with his lover. We're told, constantly, that Edward adores Piers but not *shown* it. We're told that their relationship will bring England to civil war, but not why. Piers' characterisation is utterly minimal, and even at the end of the novel I had no idea what kind of man he's meant to be, except that he's bisexual and...ummm, well, that's about it. It's never made clear why this man is so sexy, so seductive and so powerful that he can topple thrones. A boring Piers Gaveston?? I would have thought that was impossible, but there's nothing at all here of the historical Piers' famous wit and charisma. Likewise, Queen Isabella remains a one-dimensional enigma throughout the novel. We're told what she's like ("Strong within outlandish contradictions [huh?], austere, sensual, pious and violent"), but she seldom does anything to demonstrate that she is any of these things, and appears to be much older than her stated age of thirteen. There is very little description or action but a lot, a lot, of talking in the novel; the first thing anyone says is Edward I telling William Wild to "Sit down, you old whore". Lovely. Usually I enjoy 'talky' novels, but the dialogue in Ruling Passion for the most part reveals very little about the characters and too often, in my humble opinion anyway, comes across as excessively modern and/or anachronistic (such as William Wild The Irishman Who Is Irish asking his wife "How do you know I'm not a former homosexual?").
There are few sex scenes in Ruling Passion, rather oddly in my opinion, in view of the subject matter (unless I blinked and missed them). One of the very, very few has Edward "being noisily buggered" by Piers in front of a group of actors, one of whom later brains himself "rather than live with such poisonous shame." Yes, that's the exact quotation; yes, that's the entire description of the sex; yes, it's as incredibly unerotic as it sounds. Oh, and there's another bit where Piers "fondles" Edward in front of the archbishop of York, not out of sexual desire but from a wish to embarrass and shock the archbishop, which just seemed childish to me. There is no passion in The Ruling Passion at all. NONE AT ALL. A strange inconsistency: Edward tells Piers at one point "I can't possibly get a woman with child" but half a dozen lines later tells him that he has, in fact, made a woman pregnant, and has an illegitimate son called Adam. Regarding his impending marriage to Isabella of France, Edward tells his lover that he will never be able to have intercourse with women as "their bodies appal me" and the thought revolts him, and that "It doesn't matter how beautiful she [Isabella] is, I won't be able to do it." But a few chapters later he consummates his marriage with Isabella with no problems or hesitation at all and with no awareness that women's bodies are meant to 'appal' him, despite the fact that - bizarrely - her father's pet dwarf is spying on them from the bed hangings. (Seriously. I am not making that up.) And a few chapters after that, Isabella is pregnant with Edward III. Equally bizarrely in the consummation scene, the pubescent Isabella tells her new husband that she has previously enjoyed sex on her knees "like the animals," and Edward shows not the slightest shock or horror that his young royal bride is not a virgin, saying merely "God's Mother, what have I got here?". There is not enough 'What the hell???' in my vocabulary. This is some alternate reality, not Europe in the fourteenth century. There are other contradictions: William Wild at one point says about Edward "It's not that he doesn't like women...In fact he likes them as people more than most men," yet later in the novel the narrative says "Almost incidentally, Ned revealed his attitude to women - which was not entirely hostile..." being one example.
I did like some parts of the novel. There are some lovely insights into Edward II's character, which make it obvious how hopelessly unsuited he is to his position as heir to the throne and king, and some nice flashes of humour, such as Edward - or Ned, as he's called throughout - groaning "why couldn't I have been born someone else?" when realising he'll have to consummate his marriage while being spied on by a voyeuristic heavily-breathing dwarf. There are some great bits showing the king's historically-documented love of physical labour, and a vivid scene on a bridge just after Edward has recalled Piers from exile in 1307, where Edward is unsure whether to continue to stand with his arms open to welcome Piers, who is kneeling a few yards away, or whether he's starting to look ridiculous. William Wild (The Irish Irishman Who Is Irish, lest we forget) remembers Edward's long-dead mother Eleanor of Castile with great affection and comments several times how much Edward resembles her in character, which I liked - I've often wondered how much, or whether, Edward resembled Queen Eleanor in appearance or personality. I'm extremely glad that Pownall didn't go the clichéd route of making Piers a Goddess-worshipper - boooooooring and based on a myth about Piers's witchy mother not recorded until three centuries later - and didn't turn Edward into the usual shrieking, foot-stamping, snivelling, tantrum-throwing stereotype so beloved of bad novelists. The novel is reasonably historically accurate, with a few exceptions (such as portraying Hugh Despenser becoming Edward's 'favourite' just after Piers' death, a good six years too early) and at least it doesn't depict Isabella taking a lover who fathers Edward III, for all Edward II's protestations that he won't be able to make her pregnant. For these reasons, I gave the novel two stars rather than one, though really it's one and a half rounded up. But overall, Ruling Passion achieved something I always thought was impossible: made me bored with a novel about Edward II. It took me a few months to finish it, because every time I put it down there was nothing at all compelling to make me want to pick it up again and I turned to other books instead. I still feel like I've missed plot threads in the novel - there's something going on between William Wild The Irishman Who Is Irish's wife Valmai and Piers Gaveston, but I don't know what and couldn't possibly care less - because I skimmed rather a lot of it in sheer boredom. A novel about such a passionate, obsessive and destructive relationship should make the reader feel lots of things, but 'bored' is not one of them. There's an excellent review of the novel by Fiona Glass on the (also excellent) website Speak Its Name, which identifies much of what is wrong with Ruling Passion: basically, it's incredibly dull. Brenda Honeyman's The King's Minions, despite being a very short novel, contains far more genuine passion, infatuation and eroticism between Edward II and Piers Gaveston in a handful of pages than Ruling Passion manages in its entirety.
Want to Read
January 4, 2024On a point of information this is a novel by David Pownall not Pownall-David - one of innumerable Goodreads mistakes (I know you can submit corrections but seriously have you tried? After over half-a-dozen attempts, supported by numerous references, I have failed to get Goodreads to properly distinguish between Winston Churchill the WWII PM and Nobel prize winner and his grandson Winston Churchill MP never mind the difference between Randolph Churchill the son of PM Winston, who never did anything except write some books, and Lord Randolph Churchill, 19th century chancellor of the exchequer, father of Winston Churchill the future PM. I didn't even bother trying to correct them on the family surname which was, and still is, Spencer-Churchill. If it is such a struggle to get the information about one of the leaders of WWII and Nobel prize winner and his famous father and children right imagine trying to get them to notice a mistake like this!).
The point is please check out David Pownall numerous other works under his correct name - he is a very fine writer.
The point is please check out David Pownall numerous other works under his correct name - he is a very fine writer.
January 8, 2018
It’s hard not to feel desperately sorry for Edward II, born into the wrong era and with no hope of finding happiness. If ever a man was born not to be king, then he is it. David Pownall brilliantly captures Edward’s misery and sense of isolation. If I had one criticism it is the language, which at times is wildly anachronistic.
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