***Biography Group Read, 3rd quarter: Four Queens by Nancy Gladstone, Book discussion - spoilers allowed!

Hi everyone!

Here is the in-depth discussion thread for Four Queens: The Provencal Sisters who Ruled Europe by Nancy Gladstone.

We will concentrate our discussion in September to give everyone a chance to read the book, but I think discussion while we read is also appropriate. Since spoilers are allowed here, if you'd rather not read about discussion before you've finished, don't check in on this thread until that point. For anyone who is comfortable discussing as they read (I personally don't worry about spoilers in non-fiction), let's go ahead and discuss as we go if a subject arises.

The General discussion thread is here. http://www.librarything.com/topic/176964

Happy reading!

This is an amazing story. It proves to me that reality is stranger than fiction. you simply couldn't make up this kind of story. Especially, the story of Marguerite and Beatrice. How about a woman leading an army across the Alps! And this after participating with her husband in a crusade.

Normally we see a lot about Henry II and Henry VIII but not a lot about the Henrys in between, so I was glad to read this. Also, having lived in Geneva for a while, the Savoy history was also good at filling in some of my historical gaps.

Last year I participated in the Sharon Kay Penman group read and you are correct about the plethora of information about Henry II that is out there and the lack of good reading material about the time periods in-between. I have been reading through the Cousin's War series by Philippa Gregory and the roots of that war (War of the Roses) are found in the reign of Edward III and yet very little is written about him and his quiver full of boys.

I was fascinated by the story of both of the Simon De Montfort's. I had previously done some reading about the Cathar Crusades and I did not realize that the Simon De Montfort in that story was the father of the Simon De Montfort in this story. Many years ago I read a series of books written by Roberta Gellis about the Marshall family and the last book she wrote in that series was about Eleanor Plantagenet marrying Simon De Montfort. That in itself is quite a love story and would be wonderful fodder for a work of fiction.

I know I have read about Simon de Montfort before, but what I'm not so sure about is whether it was the father, the son, or another one.

Something else I enjoyed was the references to Kenilworth Castle. We have visited there twice in the past two years. A wonderful place to visit! (although the Elizabethan period is the one most mentioned.)

Simon de Montfort (the impetuous son, Earl of Leicester, who married the King's sister) and the rebellion around the Provisions of Oxford appears in Sharon Penman's Welsh Trilogy, in case that's where you've come across him before. He called the first Parlimanet when there were representaives of the shire towns, rather than just representatives of the nobility. Magna Carta gets rolled out as the birth of democracy, but the Provisions of Oxford were the first time that the common people had any say at all in the state of the country. They deserve to be better known than they are.

I thought this was very readable non-fiction, but a little on the sketchy side in places. When you spread the story over the 4 sisters (even accounting for Sanchia not getting up to very much) and limit the size of the book to a few hundred page,s I suppose that some areas will always have to be treated in less depth than they possibly deserve. I felt that the summary chapter at the end was incredibly short. It barely touched on what the offspring of the sisters went on to do, and how long that familial influence lasted between the various states they reigned.

Yes, it is somewhat sketchy, but now that I have read this I could handle something like a biography of either Simon de Montfort.

I've read very little Penman, but a lot of lesser known British historical fiction. (Usually whatever is in used or reduced bins when I am in England.) There is a Jean Plaidy, The Queen from Provence, which I could well have read.

This is really good as an introduction to the period. Those who want more details and references will have to go for something more academic. I find that hard going until I have a general idea of where things are going.

I agree with the lack of documentation in general. I did appreciate the maps and the bibliography at the end, but that doesn't quite cover it for me. I would say that as a bonafide academic work this fall short. however, as a short introduction and as an example of narrative non-fiction it succeeds admirably. It is definitely not in the same league as is the work of Barbara Tuchman, but it is good and should attract others to read about this period.

#6
The last chapter surprised me. I expected some sort of analysis of the immediate and long term impact of the lives of these women and did not get that. For me that might be the great failing of this book. A historian not only reports on events accurately but they should also interpret them and put them in context for the reader. This author does not do that. I believe that all four of these women had some impact on the world in which they lived and non of that was summarized. I know that Eleanor, was a much castigated figure for the next hundred years on English history and while the author tells us that she doesn't tell us what impact that has in the future. Like you, this leaves me dissatisfied with this book for that reason.

As an aside - I was home on vacation this last week, and tried to get my mother to read this book. I told her it had much church history in it. (She is very interested in church history.) As soon as I told her that the events and the women in the book lived during the 1200"s she immediately dismissed this book. She told me it was hard for her to imagine that world because it was so far removed from anything relevant to her life today that she couldn't even imagine it to be the same world in which she lived.

She went on to say that she had trouble reading much past the Reformation and found anything prior to the Thirty Year's War hard to understand in an historical context.

No matter how much I tried to convince her that this book was written in a very readable fashion she was not interested.

I haven't finished the book yet but as suggested in the first post, I don't think it is a big deal to see spoilers when it is non-fiction. I am 35% of the way through. The history is quite interesting. I too am surprised at the lack of referencing so far. Normally these type of books have a lot of numbering or footnotes. I expect there will be something about the author's sources at the end. It is less distracting though having no numbers and footnotes. Each of these women could really warrant a book of their own. I agree with the earlier statements that this is a good introduction to these historical figures. I will continue to plod through tis book over the next couple of weeks.

Finished the book yesterday and really enjoyed it. Knowing absolutely nothing about that time period or the people involved, I found this book to be a great way to get a basic knowledge in an entertaining and readable fashion.

I have finished the book too. I felt for Sanchia. It really seemed that she was not made for dealing with all those politics.

I think the hardest part of grasping the events in this book was trying to remember that France was not France as I know it. England was not the same then as it is now. The power of the landed aristocracy was much more tangible than it was in the Renaissance ages that it made the political situation much different than what we think. It was clear that the kings at this time did not have as much power as the absolute monarchs of the 1500's and 1600's. Henry III was not in the same league with Henry VIII in terms of political power, even if he had been a more potent leader.

I think this books was a good introduction to the period and a very interesting way of presenting the history of the period.
BUT
I felt that if you had a passing acquaintance with the period, it was light on detail. For example, the rebellion associated with the Provisions of Oxford was covered in a paragraph, which I felt was somewhat light when Eleanor had a hand in the way things progressed. Her manner of seeing in black & white and not seeing the shades of grey that was apparent in the rest of the book was a contributory factor.

I also felt that the ending stopped abruptly. Having said that the sisters (particularly the eldest two) forged a bond between England & France there was no discussion of how long that was a factor, how the relationships across Europe changed at their deaths. We got the very interesting rise of the Hapsburgs (and we know where that ended up) but a view of the next 1 to 2 hundred years would have been of more relevance to a book of this type.

The lack of footnotes, of itself, wasn't a major failing, but it would have been good to at least have the primary sources explained in the bibliography. So lines from Fred the Frenchman were taken from XX, XXX and XXX would at least have pointed someone in the right direction.

It was readable, it was interesting and the surmise (that the sisters had an impact on Europe at the time and beyond) is fair. However, I'm left with the sensation that the impact they had was fleeting, and that it may not have extended much beyond England & France. The crowns of Germany & Sicily were held too briefly and they cease to be discussed beyond the death of the sisters concerned.

#14
I agree with what you said. For me it had more of a feel of tabloid journalism like in People when compared to the New Yorker. There is no doubt that this family had a big impact on the world in which they lived, but there is no sense of how and how long. The author does tell us that in the end Richard and Sanchia didn't have much impact on Germany, but she doesn't tell us about the other women.

I do find the lives of the other women remarkable. I had read once that Eleanor of Aquitaine was not considered to be that exceptional in her day because many women held that kind of power, and this book leads me to believe that is true. All of the women in the book were strong figures from the Queen Mother of France right on through the mother of these four women as well as them. They went places and did things that undoubtedly had an impact on their own time as well as on into the future. For that reason they should not be "lost to history." This book, no matter its faults, brings them back into the limelight.

I think this would be a good work of history to use in a college or high school advance placement class because it is so easy to read.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book for me are its ties to Dante. I've read The Inferno a couple of times. Now I'd like to read The Inferno again to see if I recognize any of the people I learned about here.

I thought it was fairly clear from the text that the author relied on Matthew Paris for a lot of the sections on Eleanor and Sanchia, Joinville for sections on Marguerite and Louis's Crusade, and Salimbene and Villani for Beatrice and some of the sections on Marguerite. When she used quotation marks in the text, there seemed to be a mention of one of the chroniclers or to letters to indicate what she was quoting from. Footnotes/endnotes would certainly make it easier to figure out which sources go with which claims. The absence of footnotes might have been the publisher's call rather than the author's.

I know my library has Joinville's Chronicles of the Crusades. I'll add it to my TBR list and I might actually get around to reading it someday.

I also really enjoyed reading this book despite finding it a bit light on the details. I thought it ended a bit abruptly and would have benefited from exploring a bit deeper. I love reading biographies of women, so I've read enough about women in this era that the fact that they had some power was not news to me.

>14 Helenliz: I agree that I wasn't totally convinced that the author demonstrated that the 4 sister "ruled Europe" as she (or her publisher) states in the title. All of the sisters seemed to make the most of the opportunities for power that they were able to get, but Eleanor was the only one that, to me, clearly had significant times of power.

Anyway, I enjoyed reading it but think, as many of us have said, that it works better as an intro to the era than as a scholarly work.

Does anyone have any other books from this general era they'd like to recommend for further reading?

I have read several of Alison Weir's books but honestly have never really enjoyed them.

A book that was along the same lines but of an earlier era was Queen Emma and the Vikings.

>16 cbl_tn: I liked the ties to the Inferno that she pointed out as well. I've read it, but not with enough attention to detail to really count!

I also really liked that she relied so heavily on the contemporary chroniclers.

I don't know if there is a whole lot of scholarship on the women of the Medieval period in general. Philippa Gregory stated in the endnotes in one of her books in the Cousin's War series that very little survives regarding the women of the time even though it was the women who played pivotal rolls in the War of the Roses. For instance, the says that there is a dearth of surviving material about Margaret Beaufort - and she was the Queen Mother.! Given that Gregory writes fiction and has much more freedom to speculate than does the author of non-fiction, and if the same conditions apply to Goldstone's subjects, this may be all that Goldstone could do. It may also explain why there is so little written about women of that period.

Re # 18: A very short basic book about Medieval women, which was considered a classic some years ago and was recently reprinted (in 2012) is Medieval Women by Eileen Power. Ms. Power died in 1940 so that the research is not current. A review of it appears at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/413579335?book_show_action=true&page=1
The following is taken from the description on Amazon.com:
Throughout her career as a medieval historian, Eileen Power was engaged on a book on women in the Middle Ages. She did not live to write the book but some of the material she collected found its way into her popular lectures on medieval women. These lectures were brought together and edited by M. M. Postan. They reveal the world in which women lived, were educated, worked, and worshipped. Power gives a vivid account of the worlds of the lady, the peasant, the townswoman, and the nun. The result is a historical yet intimate picture of a period gone by yet with resonances for today. An intimate portrait of the writer and social historian, by Maxine Berg, is also included.