The Iron King

The first book in the Accursed Kings series. This is a novel about the time when France was a great power, and the French were the most miserable of peoples. And only one force — the Order of the Templars — managed to raise its voice against King Philip IV, surnamed the Iron King.

Maurice Druon (1918–2009) was France’s most “Russian” writer. Both because his father was born in Russia, and because he himself loved our country very much. Being not only a writer but also a famous public figure, a prominent participant in the French Resistance, and later a minister and member of parliament, Druon left behind many remarkable books. Among them was the cycle of historical novels The Accursed Kings, which we devoured some 25 years ago, exchanging waste paper with the state for them (those were wonderful times). Of course, Druon’s historical novels are not scholarly works. They are fascinating literary creations. However, historians agree that Druon handled historical facts very carefully, inventing only certain character traits and private actions, thoughts, and feelings of his historical heroes. And the value of Druon’s novels is not even in studying the medieval history of France, but in better understanding the present through the prism of that history.