Filed under: Literature | Tags: alison weir, book reviews, british history, queen isabella
As someone who aspires to be a professional historian, I have been forced to read a great many books and a great many dull and uninteresting topics. But when it comes to books that I love, I tend to admire those who write with a more populist bend. In history, as it most other humanitarian fields, a binary has been established that presents one set of authors on a pedestal as more “academic” minded, and another set as more fashionable and therefore, “popular” in nature. Alison Weir has been classified as having fallen into the latter category. She is not a trained historian in the way that David Como, Peter Lake, or Tim Harris are – her works on the Tudors, The Wars of the Roses, and Eleanor of Aquitaine come from a place less concerned with breaking new ground and more preoccupied with telling an intriguing and, given today’s climate in regards to history, informative story.
Rather than read the books I have assigned myself for my thesis, which are all “academic” in nature, I have found myself picking up Mrs. Weir and losing myself in some of the best story-telling and historical analysis possible. My current favorite, and they all bleed into one another when it comes time to rate them, is her work on Queen Isabella, the She-Wolf of France. Married to the homosexual Edward II, and tormented by his power hungry lover, she fled the country with her son and heir Edward, Prince of Wales, and began a torid love affair with Roger Mortimer, eventually using Edward II’s unpopularity to lead the first successful invasion of England since the Norman Conquest – installing herself as regent for her still adolescent son. It is an amazing story (homosexuality, court intrigue, assasination, and adultury) and I don’t want to give away the ending.
I am sometimes asked by friends to reccomend well-written history, and no matter the scarlett P that Alison Weir is forced to wear, I think this is the book I should start lending out.
