The life of medieval English queens was packed with events—love, intrigue, betrayal, extramarital affairs, and wars. But after many centuries of silence, the details of their biographies faded from historical memory, and what actually happened, as later biographers portrayed it, grew over with legendary details. Alison Weir, a recognized master of the biographical genre, invites you to touch the most reliable sources, to separate the true lives of several of these remarkable women from the centuries-old layer of romantic tales and restore their rightful place in history.
This monumental royal saga spans the years from the Norman Conquest of 1066 to 1154, when Henry II took the throne and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, became the first queen of the Plantagenet dynasty. Other heroines of this documentary epic include: Matilda of Flanders, the wife of William the Conqueror; Matilda of Scotland, revered as “the mother of all the English”; and Empress Matilda, the first woman ruler of England—whose son, King Henry II, later founded the Plantagenet dynasty.