The Queen's Lover

by Vanora Bennett

From Vanora Bennett, the acclaimed author of Portrait of an Unknown Woman and Figures in Silk comes The Queen’s Lover , a fictionalized account of the life and loves of Catherine de Valois, a woman of enormous courage who became a great queen of two countries. Fans of Phillipa Gregory, Alison Weir, Sarah Dunant, and Tracy Chevalier, and every reader who adores top-quality historical fiction will be swept away by this epic love story set against the rich backdrop of 15th-century England and France—and by this remarkable woman who triumphed magnificently by making her own rules.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical, France, British Literature, Royalty, Romance

592 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

I became a journalist almost by accident. Having learned Russian and been hired after university by Reuters (to my own surprise and the slight dismay of traditionally-minded editors who weren’t sure a Guardian-reading blonde female would be tough enough for the job), 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.

I now lead a more sedate life in North London with my husband and two small sons, enjoying the reading, research, writing and metropolitan leisure activities that I grew up expecting adult life to involve. I’ve found that writing books is much of a surprise, a pleasure and an adventure of the mind as it was to become a foreign correspondent.

As a journalist I’ve written for, among others, The Times and its website, TimesOnline, the Los Angeles Times, Prospect, The Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian Saturday magazine, the Daily Mail, the Evening Standard, Eve magazine, The Observer Food Monthlyand The Erotic Review.

Reviews

[Misfit]

Once upon a time there was a beautiful young princess of France named Catherine who had a mad-as-a-hatter father and a scheming evil mother. The poor princess and her younger brother Charles were all but forgotten by their awful parents and wore rags for clothing and had to forage for food. One day members of the English King's court came to propose marriage to Catherine and in this company's service was a young Welshman named Owain Tudor. Owain and young Catherine became friends of a great scholar named Christine de Pizan (not quite sure how that came about but this is a fairy tale after all), and they were soon BFF - until they got older and then well........true love, of course.

Eventually the beautiful princess marries the English king to escape her awful parents and has a baby boy, but you know that fairytales don't last forever. The King dies (no spoilers, this is known history) and leaves Catherine and her young child at the mercy of the those awful English barons and men of the Church battling for ultimate power over the child king. Will Catherine have to marry some loathsome Earl or Baron or will she and Owain be able to find true love and happiness in the end? Will the English King's onion-breathed brother find a way to stop the path to true love?

Ahhhh, romance and fairy tales, wonderful aren't they? The Queen's Lover is a somewhat imaginative take on the life of Catherine de Valois, daughter of the oftentimes insane King Charles VI of France. Eventually married off for the sake of peace to Henry V of England and mother to Henry VI, the widowed Catherine eventually married Owain Tudor and thus are the beginnings of the Tudor Dynasty.

Sounds like a lot of good juicy history to make for a fascinating, page turning novel, but can Bennett make it interesting? Noooooo, she does not. Perhaps it was just me but I always felt like a ghostly presence whilst reading the book - kind of like an out of body experience. Worse yet, too much time is spent on Catherine's childhood - I swear the first 200 or so pages could have been cut back to 50 and not lost any of her story. Then I got to page 300 and felt it still all could have been cut down to 50 pages. By page 400....... still the same problem. Honestly I was more interested in her brief time as queen, let alone the circumstances that led up to her marriage to Owain and the consequences of said action, but nooooooo we didn't even get to that until the last 100 or so pages - and what an interesting twist to the fairytale that was. Not.

Add to that the most bizarre misuse of colons, semi-colons and commas that I have ever come across, stir in a very imaginative version of known history and top it all off some sleep-inducing prose (I am not kidding I kept this one on the nightstand for when I was too tired to care what my mind absorbed) and serve up cold at The Shelf of Shame. Thumbs down too on the author's notes at the end. I prefer an author not to be footloose with history (egad that scene with Henry in the tent - WTF was the author thinking?), but if you're going to make it up at the very least 'fess up in your notes at the end. Even Carolly Erickson admitted to writing "whimsey". I am so done with this author, but don't let me stop you, it seems everyone else seems to love her.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read; 2009

An interesting fiction about an Interesting woman. From a strange childhood, who's grasping mother to a crazy King who thought he was made of glass. She was sold in marriage to Henry V. Produced an infant son (went mad himself) before her famous husband died from dysentery. Leaving her son in the hands of ruthless uncles.

I love how she's introduced early on to Owain Tudor. A man see secretly married. She BASICALLY Started the Tudor dynasty but was punished for it. Even sadder is she is also the 400 year unburied Queen. By the time she was buried next to King Henry V her grandson was renovating the chapel. Her remains were put in a cedar chest. College students use to pay money to kiss her corpse. Ewww! 290 years later someone bought her corpse and that's the last it's heard was heard from again. So sad 😞

This is definitely an interesting read and I highly recommend!

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've wondered how it was that an English Queen/Queen Mother was allowed to live with a non-royal lover and their children in an age obsessed with rank and birth. Author Venora Bennett presents a scenario of how it could have begun. The this novel covers most of their possible life together. At its end Catherine will only have 6 more years to live.

Could they have met in France during Catherine's late childhood? Bennett poses that due to the mental illness of their father and their mother's various preoccupations, Princess Catherine and Crown Price Charles were not only always hungry, but ignored. This situation allowed for non-royal guests and some freedom of movement. As life went on circumstances brought Catherine and Owen together. They hid their love, sometimes from themselves. Bennett has the ultimate course of their lives settled in a dramatic confrontation.

The book poses their possible lives and emotions as the infant Crown Prince Henry becomes a toddler and a twice crowed king. She describes likely disputes over the education of the boy, his discipline and his playthings. There are two coronations and the description of the planning for each. There are long discourses on the attitudes of the day on royal blood and the divine right to rule. There is a clever scene with Joan of Arc.

While the title implies the book is about Owen Tudor, Catherine de Valois is the lead character.

While the beginning is essential to the understanding of the story, it is the weakest part. Cutting the first 200 or so pages to 100 would improve the book.

I recommend this for fans of novels of this period.

[Sx · Rating 3 out of 5]

A frustrating, long-winded read but the ending redeemed itself somewhat. Historical details were presented well but in the most boring way imaginable. Catherine was a cipher most of the time, until the very end when she stood up for the last thing she could have some control over- her marriage and love. She was so frustratingly naive, clueless and trusting, I wasn't sure whether it was because Vanora Bennett made her that way to hint at the future Henry VI's traits or whether she had shut herself up to ignore her surroundings completely as a coping mechanism because of her volatile childhood. There were times I just wanted to wring her neck because of her utter thoughtlessness.

I appreciated Owen's resourcefulness and hints of playfulness and carefree, but his pining just got plain tiring after a while. This push-pull attraction that affected our main couple lost its luster after the first few hundred pages.


A good read to gain background knowledge of the Tudor ancestors and the civil wars that ravaged France, and later England, but as a novel, I wished it was more entertaining.

[Barb]

I loved 'Portrait of an Unknown Woman' by Vanora Bennett. It was so well done, the characters were well drawn, the relationships realistic and complicated, the story was fascinating and the writing was good. I thought it was a really solid and well researched work of historical fiction and I looked forward to reading more from this author. Sadly I haven't found another novel by her that has even come close to the writing in 'Portrait of an Unknown Woman'.

I also read Bennett's novel 'Figures In Silk' published in May of 2008 and I found the contrast between the two works rather shocking. The story in 'Figures In Silk' was so contrived it was ridiculous and the writing was awkward, stumbling and just plain weird with sentences often having three semi-colons.

This novel has much of the same strange sentence structure with what I would describe as an overwhelming effort to elevate the semi-colon to the popularity of the period. Here's an example:

'She pronounced the Welsh words strangely, but he was surprised and flattered that she'd even tried to reproduce the unfamiliar name; flattered, too, that she was describing his lineage with such respect, when he'd got used, almost, to being all but invisible among Englishmen; to sitting below the salt; to being ignored.'

There was also an inordinate number of ellipses used. I found eight on one page. And honestly I love ellipses... I use them a lot when I'm e-mailing, chatting and posting on-line. But the overuse of commas, semi-colons and ellipses in this work of fiction was distracting and annoying. I just doesn't present the writing in the best possible light, it gives it a very unpolished and somewhat careless and casual feel to it.

I thought the story was interesting and I wanted to learn more about Catherine of Valois and Owain Tudur but after having suffered through the entirety of 'Figures In Silk' I cannot subject myself to this particular style of writing again, especially 578 pages of it. I was hoping that Bennett had returned to the solid writing she presented in 'Portrait of an Unknown Woman' but sadly she has not.

I would encourage anyone who is a fan of historical fiction to read 'Portrait of an Unknown Woman'. You might enjoy this if you are someone who isn't distracted by an overabundance of unnecessary punctuation.

[Iset · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to bail on this one just under the 100 pages mark. Simply put, it was too syrupy, too saccharine, too cliché.

Owen Tudor being included in the delegation to the French court to arrange Henry V's match to Katherine of Valois? Just about theoretically possible, but then Owen and Katherine actually meeting one-on-one and immediately becoming BFFs and insta-love blossoming? This just stretches my suspension of disbelief too far. More than that, it's too contrived, too artificial; as a reader I'm being asked to swallow way too much sugary "romantic" schlock here.

On top of that, Katherine and her younger brother as poor neglected starving children? Oh please. I know their father had episodes of madness and France's finances were in a sorry state by this stage of the Hundred Years War, but I doubt Katherine of Valois was actually starving.

The Christine de Pizan sub-plot seems pretty engineered. It's all too easy that the Pizan family would go from being extremely hostile to Owen to treating him like one of the family in just a couple of days, or that they would even act as facilitators for Owen's meetings with Katherine.

I've read worse, but I'm afraid this is the last time I pick up anything written by Vanora Bennett.

3 out of 10

[Gretchen · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I start a book, I have to finish it no matter how bad it is. There are a few exceptions. I could not finish The Host by Stephanie Meyer or The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling. This book almost became an exception to my always finish rule. The plot was blah. I found myself wanting to skip pages just to find out if Catherine and Owain ever actually get together. Anyone who knows anything about 15th century England knows that's how this book has to end but the author sure took her sweet time getting there. This story could have been told in about 200 pages less than it was.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though sure to please those who love to curl up with a big thick historical romance, The Queen’s Lover may frustrate some with its meandering plot lines and shifting points of view. Too long, too detailed and yet somehow never managing to clarify the political contexts the characters find themselves in to a reader unfamiliar with the early to mid fifteenth century. Vanora Bennett describes much of the life of Catherine de Valois a young princess struggling to survive the neglect of her father’s war ravaged France. Her father is mad and her mother is too self absorbed to care. When her cherished younger brother declares war on what is left of the royal family, Catherine vows to escape at all costs, and her best option seems to be marriage to the enemy, the English King Henry V. Only she finds her greatest challenge will be to fight her feelings for the handsome Welshman, Owain Tudor, who depends on but offers her a love that can never be.

Bennett fails to cash in on the spirited heroine stereotype, but instead portrays a rather bland and ineffective princess. She seems more concerned about her honor, happiness and political survival then that of the ones she claims to love. She is continuously upstaged by other historical figures Queen Isabeau, her Father Charles VI, her brother Charles, Johanne of Arc, Warwick, etc… The bones of the story are grounded in fact which is fascinating as any in history, but the meat of the story and motivations read at best highly fictionalized and at worst far fetched. Recommended only for Bennett fans interested in her take on the time period and events, or those whose definition of a great read is a period romance with a love conquers all theme.

[Alexandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book after the first 150 pages or so. The excessive detail of how to illuminate a book and Owain's adventures in France as a boy were pointless. A quote on the book's cover describes Catherine as a woman who "lived by her own rules" and this could not be further from what is portrayed of her. She seems weak and powerless and submissive throughout the majority of the novel. Bennett doesn't even make it as though it was Catherine's boldness and bravery that led her to be Tudor's wife, more like it was thrust upon her like everything else. I would have liked to see Catherine possess more agency. At least the romance wasn't as overpowering as I expected, but still very cliché.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somehow I missed that this was historical fiction (or forgot it was) and so I found the amount of history of wars and politics rather annoying while I was reading. Also, I frequently have issues with titles and this is one of them. I wanted to read about the queen's lover, who turned out to be a relatively minor character for about half of the book. That said, I kept reading and at times didn't want to put it down.

[Tanzanite · Rating 4 out of 5]

Katherine of Valois and her younger brother Charles live in near poverty despite being the children of the King of France. Bennett creates a story where Owain Tudor comes to France as part of an English delegation and through the influence of the children's caretaker, he becomes friends with Katherine. The story follows Katherine's life through her marriage to Henry V, the struggle for control of her son and their time in France while Owain comes in and out of her life. I enjoyed this very much.

[Alycia]

DNF

[Rosemary Morris · Rating 3 out of 5]

While reading about the lives of the main characters, Catherine of Valois, Princess of France and Queen of England, Henry V, her husband, Owain Tudor, a displaced Welsh nobleman, the man Catherine loves, and the famous writer Christine de Pizan, the first feminist, and a large cast of other characters, I frequently asked myself how much poetic licence she took.

As children, Catherine and her younger brother Charles, the future king, were “neglected – under clothed, under fed and under educated.” Their father was insane, their mother probably had an affair with the king’s brother, which plunged France into war.

This novel of murder, war and tragic Catherine is full of doom and gloom. Until the end of the novel there is little happiness in her life apart from her joy when her son is born and her deep love for him.

In my opinion Blood Royal is too long drawn out and concentrates too much on Catherine and Charles' childhood.

Three-quarters of the way through Blood Royal my interest flagged so I skimmed through the last quarter.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I was pretending that, in reading this book, I was taking a class in pre-Tudor English-French relations. I had to really goad myself to pick it back up, since the characters were neither interesting nor well-drawn -- even the heroine remained kind of an oddball cipher the whole time. I learned a lot, including some about the level of my own ignorance (I really didn't have any historical context for Joan of Arc; I didn't know what made Tudors Tudors) although I'm not totally positive that an academic text wouldn't have covered the same ground with the same level of interest. The whole point of reading some historical fiction is so that someone else does the research for you and then tells a fun story with lots of brocade and intrigue. I'll have to see if someone's done that for the Wars of the Roses, because Lancastrians, Yorks, who can keep it straight.

[jrendocrine at least reading is good · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really liked Portrait of an Unknown Woman - learned so much about Thomas More, and Holbein - it was a ticket to lots of interesting reads.

Then I read Figures in Silk, which was very ordinary. Though not terrible.

And then this. Perfectly awful. On page 50 I had to take stock and wonder why I was subjecting myself to this clumsily told way over the top historical fiction.

I made the right decision and stopped.

[RumBelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was long, and drug considerably at times. Also, the story was very grim, depressing, and at times very gruesome. It had some light and romantic moments, but very few. The writing was good though and I knew nothing about this Queen so learning about her life was interesting.

[Erika Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes I don't pick books up because of the subject matter or the author. Sometimes I pick them up because they're in the bargain book bin ninety percent off the already discounted price. The Queen's Lover is a sprawling epic that spans from the time Princess Catherine meets Owain Tudor til the time her son is crowned King of France. The book was clearly released at the same time as The Tudors on Showtime because the front cover is trying to push the Tudor angle, but this is Henry VIII's grandparents.

Owain Tudor is a Welshman who's currently in the service of the King of England. Specifically, he's been sent to France as part of a diplomatic mission to ask for the hand of Princess Catherine in marriage to his master. For Owain, it's love at first sight. He does his best to remain at Catherine's side during the negotiations, even though she's far above his station and nothing can ever come from their relationship. Catherine, despite feeling a certain fondness for Owain, decides to throw herself wholeheartedly into a relationship with Henry of England. She even goes so far as to put a good deal of energy into arranging the marriage herself.

Only she quickly discovers that becoming Queen of two countries does not give her the happily ever after she's dreamed of. She's alone in England with no one who speaks her language. Her husband is still in France fighting the war. And her childhood friend is now ignoring her.

The biggest problem with The Queen's Lover is the sheer number of characters. Some of them have the same or similar names which makes it difficult to keep track of all of them. To be honest, some of the subplots and minor characters could have been dropped and the story would not have suffered. There should have been more focus on Catherine and Owain. Instead we had pages dedicated to Christine and then later to her son and the trouble he was having trying to find his footing in the war.

The historical information is very vivid, especially the parts in France. It almost feels like you're at the old palaces. The English descriptions are less evocative, in fact, most of the time we see England through Catherine's point of view. Who is very disappointed in how grey everything, especially in comparison to the colors of her youth.

Overall, it's not my favorite historical read, but it's still rather enjoyable.

[Socrate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rămas în spatele delegaţiei engleze, pajul încerca să pară cât mai şters: se uita la imensele tapiserii atârnate pe pereţii prăfuiţi ai splendidei săli pariziene, ţinând strâns la piept sipetul şi aşteptând un semn.
Stăpânul său din ultima vreme, ducele de Clarence tocmai se întorsese dinspre regina Franţei, o fiinţă dezgustător de grasă ai cărei ochi luceau cu aceeaşi viclenie ca şi giuvaierurile pe jumătate îngropate în carnea degetelor sale leneşe. Clarence îşi fixase privirea asupra prinţesei în vârstă de paisprezece ani aşezată lângă ea. Prinţesa era de vârsta lui Owain şi era chiar frumuşică, după părerea acestuia: avea părul brun deschis şi pistrui şi nişte ochi blânzi aşezaţi deasupra unui nas lung; ar fi păcat ca timpul s-o preschimbe într-un monstru umflat cum era maică-sa. Owain băgase de seamă şi că obrajii prinţesei erau foarte îmbujoraţi, ceea ce poate că nu era surprinzător, având în vedere că veşmântul ei de deasupra era o enormă mantie de catifea verde, minunat tivită cu blană de samur – deosebit de impunătoare, dar mult prea călduroasă pentru această după-amiază însorită de mai. Poate că aici la Paris sunt mai friguroşi, îşi zise. Sau poate că pur şi simplu se îmbujorase pentru că ştia ce urmează.
Thomas Clarence îşi deschise larg ochii bulbucaţi, îşi strâmbă gura în ceva ce semăna a zâmbet şi făcu o scurtă plecăciune înaintea fetei – tot ce putea face un soldăţoi de duce englez ca să se apropie oarecum de manierele complicate ale Curţii franceze. Ducele fusese întru câtva dezamăgit, atunci când ajunsese împreună cu suita lui la Paris, pe la amiază, de vestea că regele Franţei nu se simţea bine astăzi şi nu-l putea primi şi că în aceste negocieri partea franceză avea să fie condusă în locul lui de regina Isabeau. După o scurtă discuţie în şoaptă înainte de apariţia delegaţiei franceze, el se hotărâse să meargă înainte, orice-ar fi. Dar el nu era curtean. Nu ştia cum să vorbească cu femeile. Era mult prea direct.

[Janice · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Princess of the love finds that even the annoitment of God is not a guarantee of love

The book examines the short, but politically important, life of Catherine of Valois, the youngest daughter of Charles VI of France and Isabeau of Bavaria. As a princess of the royal blood of Charlemagne, she was raised to be a queen. And as such, she became the wife of the Englis King Henry V who spent much of his adulthood trying to conquer Catherine's homeland as her father slipped in and out of madness. Her marriage, which came about as a condition of the treaty of Troyes, would be a short one, lasting less than a year, but produced a heir for Henry who would die, still fighting in France, never even seeing his son and namesake.

The entire first half of the book is the story of Catherine before she departs for England and her short reign as queen. An interesting subplot of Christine Pizan, the Italian woman who became one of the few women writers of the time , adds texture to the book and provides a possible mode of introduction between Catherine and Owain Tudor, who would become Catherine's second husband and mother of the father of Henry VII and founder of the Tudor line of English kings and grandmother of Henry VIII.

As with her other novels, Vanora Bennett is a story weaver extraordinaire. Her brilliantly developed characters show royalty as well as the life of nobles in both the best and worst of lights. Her development of characters make them real enough to exist even within the license in which Bennett has cast them.

An examination of characters mostly overlooked by other writers of the genre, the book certainly fills in some of the historical gaps before the Tudors actually take the throne and also foreshadows the madness of Henry VI which led to civil war, now referred to as the War of the Roses.

[Barb · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book of historical fiction is about the life of Catherine de Valois, daughter of the French king Charles VI. She and her brother have a troubled childhood. Their father is going insane and their mother thinks only of herself leaving her children hungry, lonely, and sad. Her mother sees the opportunity to marry Catherine to Henry V, king of England. Catherine welcomes this arrangement because it will get her out of France. Catherine also meets a childhood friend, Owain Tudor. He is Welch, but is totally loyal to Henry V. Catherine and Owain fall in a young love. Owain realizes he has no chance with Catherine because he is not royalty. He leaves Paris after it it clear the arranged marriage will happen.
Catherine travels to England and is happy there, but Henry V leaves to return to France to join in the war to defeat France. Catherine gives birth to a son who becomes King of England and France after the death of Henry V.
Owain comes back into Catherine's life. He becomes a source of strong support and help to her. Eventually they resume their love affair.
Toward the end of the book Catherine returns to France for her son's coronation as the king of France. She asks her mother if it was true that her brother was a bastard and wants to know if she is as well. Her mother tells her, "It's just a game, royalty. That's the truth. We brought you up to believe kings were blessed by God; could work miracles, cure people of illness - and all because of their purple blood... It's simple enough...It's the greatest thing there is, love for your children. When it goes wrong, you never forgive yourself...it's an endless sorrow."
By the end of the book, Catherine realizes that love is more important than royalty.

[Mike Shoop · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. A rather long and dense imagining of how the Tudor dynasty of England came to be with the marriage of Welshman Owain Tudor and the widowed English queen Catherine de Valois. Bennett has done tons of research and it shows well here. From the Plantagenet court in London to the war-torn chaos of France, she gives a good picture of the English warrior-king Henry V's desire to claim France as his own during the early 1400s, and his plan to marry young Catherine is part of that.
Meeting as teenagers in Paris and both being influenced by the noted poetess Christine de Pizan, realizing they have feelings for (but not admitting them) each other, Owain and Catherine's friendly relationship becomes a very long simmering romance throughout the rest of the book as events continually divide them and bring them together over a period of years. I found Bennett's characters interesting: the often mad King Charles VI, the cruel and sluttish Queen Isabeau, Christine de Pizan, the brutal Duke of Warwick, scheming Duke Humphrey, and even the brave and troubled Jehanne of Arc. But Owain and Catherine are the heart of the story, and Bennett keeps them front and center.
This was an entertaining historical novel, with plenty of historical detail, important events, interesting characters, and a leisurely paced narrative creating a thoughtful blend of fact and fiction. Except for being a bit too long, I found it a worthwhile read.

[Gabriela Mejia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really, really wanted to like this book.

However, the more I read, the more the inconsistencies grated on me. Besides the unlikely happenstance of Catherine and Charles being left starved and with little else but the clothes on their backs, there was the absolutely horrendous portrayal of Isabeau of Bavaria. It is also very unlikely that Catherine and Owen Tudor would have met before her marriage to Henry V, NOT TO MENTION that she wouldn't have slept with him, or Henry before officially being sealed by marriage vows.

The pacing was far too slow and dragging, time-jumps would have been preferred, and the author really should have included years and dates at the header of each chapter, as in one chapter, Catherine appears as a child, and in the next, seemingly several years have passed. And while it was nice to see the inclusion of Christine de Pizan, again, it seems unlikely that she and Owen would have met and had friendly relations, especially considering that he fought on the side of the English.

I managed to make it to 222 pages before giving up. Hopefully I'll be able to find better novels about the unlikely romance and intrigue of Catherine of Valois and Owen Tudor.

[Gardngoyle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this one.
Unfortunately, I often felt like some of the historical references were vague - as though I had 'missed an episode.' Moreover, the writing style wasn't working for me. I understand the proper use of semicolons, and I would never suggest that an author simply not use them. But the overwhelming number of semicolons, the use of colons, and bizarre misuse of commas made the text just too choppy for my taste. Was this to purposely make the text seem archaic? I don't know, but if it was - it was a bad choice. I occasionally found myself re-reading whole pages for the sake of clarity. When I realized the snail's pace I was reading and the even slower pace the plot was taking, I bowed out. On page 95.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

6 out of 10 - specifically for helping me draw what is probably an obvious line between Shakespeare's Henry V and Joan d'Arc. Also I'd like to know more about Christine de Pizan, without whom we would know far less about any of it.

The middle ages was def Game of Thrones, with alliances forming & dissolving randomly & cousins & siblings ascending & getting stabbed in the back at the drop of a hat, all with the dissonant undercurrent of the Church claiming the blood of Charlemagne to be "SACRED" & anointed & whatever while ignoring that the inbred royals have developed psychosis (if they only knew the word).

[Maura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bennett very capably merges fact and fiction as she writes about Catherine of Valois and Owain Tudor, who became the grandparents of Henry Tudor, later Henry VII of England. She makes these historical figures come alive and lets the reader understand the current events that drove them. This one filled in some of the gaps between the time of "Katherine" by Anya Seton and Shakespeare's Henry plays and the beginning of the Tudor dynasty. And I finally understand where Joan of Arc fit in to that timeline.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Do not read this book if typographical errors bother you.

There were so many examples of type misalignment that it made me crazy. For example, "had filed in fort he first course".
Overall the book was slow at the beginning but picked up in the second half. Character development was solid and historical pieces I checked on were accurate. The cheers (stars) for love that lasts forever.

[nora · Rating 2 out of 5]

my favorite part was the description of medieval-illustration-making, tbh. i found it pretty forgettable otherwise, except for providing another "isabeau of bavaria is bad because she's fat and ugly" take (that isn't helped by the very weird conclusion where she's "redeemed" i guess) and another "what if henry vi was abused by one of his guardians" take (where do these catherine of valois novelists get this one from?).

[Happpy Flower · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading about the period prior to the Wars of the Roses as I had no knowledge of it, nor of the 100 Years War. Didn’t expect to meet Joan of Arc either. I liked Owain, Catherine not so much; she didn’t really seem to know her own mind. “I love Owain; no, I love Henry.” “I need to get out of France; I don’t like England , I want to go home.” But it all seemed well researched and I felt the frustration of the 100 Years War.

[Susan Sackett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Needs better editing

It was interesting to read Catherine' s story and compare it to Shakespeare's Henry V. The book was well written if a little slow at times. Unfortunately, the Kindle version has too many instances where a phrase is spelled correctly but the letters are grouped into the wrong words.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ★ 1414 England and France. Good read based on historical facts..although a bit too long in parts & a time or two a little on the romance side of the genre but overall a good historical read about two people who are Henry VIII's great grandparents. Author also tells us what happened in history to everyone at the end. One of the best "endings" I've read in a book in a long time.