THE BOOK OF ELEANOR

A romantic take on the powerful medieval queen.

A central figure in the 12th-century wars between France and England, Eleanor, at 15, became Duchess of Aquitaine, a wealthy and independent French province coveted by both countries. While still a teenager, she married Louis VII, a religious zealot who kept her closely confined, and after years of conflict, she persuaded the Pope to annul her marriage. Within a year she married again, this time to the brutal English Henry II. Despite bearing him eight children, the two came to hate each other. As her children grew, she persuaded them to revolt against their father, who in turn imprisoned her for 17 years, though in the end she had the last laugh, serving as regent after his death while her son, Richard the Lionhearted, crusaded in the Holy Land. Historians are silent on Eleanor’s sex life, but Kaufman (Shield of Three Lions, 1983) well understands that romance requires romance and so she invents the great Baron Rancon of Aquitaine and recounts a secret, dangerous, and passionate affair, Eleanor’s only consistent joy during years of unhappiness. Kaufman is unarguably an expert on the period, but her tale is told at the level of, say, a Hollywood epic, whose historical characters behave like modern Americans except for the funny clothes. Heroine Eleanor is a fiery queen, dazzlingly beautiful yet as skilled in statecraft and horsemanship as any man. She’s also a feminist, outraged at the treatment of women in medieval Europe. Because Kaufman doesn’t re-create a world through the narrative, she is forced to stop the action periodically and have a character to deliver a lecture on, say, the structure of feudalism (“ . .. any child knows the system of homage and overlords. My father used to call it a pyramid with the king at the top . . . ”).

Historical fiction for the Barbara Cartland set.