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A review by liralen
Four Sisters, All Queens by Sherry Jones
3.0
The Louises don't come off too well in historical fiction, do they? (Mind, I haven't read much historical fiction regarding the French monarchy, so I'm basing that on this book and what I've read about Louis VII, but it's enough to make one wonder just how the French monarchy survived so long.) More interested in furthering the interests (and adding to the wealth) of the Church than in, oh, running the country.
Four Sisters, All Queens covers the lives of four sisters from Provence who (wait for it, wait for it) ultimately became queens. This is perhaps not as romantic as it sounds: the eldest two were queens of France and England, but the younger two were queens for much shorter periods of time, and in not altogether stable situations.
Four points of view and four countries and numerous crusades—it's a lot to pack into one book. Jones manages it largely by ascribing a very specific personality to each sister: Marguerite as the calm one, the quintessential eldest; Eléonore as determined and somewhat calculating; Sanchia as pious and retiring (and not always the brightest crayon in the box); Beatrice as headstrong and jealous (the quintessential bratty youngest).
I don't know how much of the story—not the historical events, that is, but the personalities and interpersonal relations and so on—is based in fact, but it's fascinating to consider just how secondary women were in their own lives. Expected to marry to the family's advantage, or to the Pope's; subject to being cast aside if they didn't produce a heir fast enough; property rather than independent humans. People died, on average, much younger in the 1200s than they do now (side note: [b:Being Mortal|20696006|Being Mortal Medicine and What Matters in the End|Atul Gawande|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1408324949s/20696006.jpg|40015533] does an excellent job of summarising why), and country boundaries were constantly in flux. You could sum one theme of the book up as grasping for power: some of the sisters have it (sometimes in name only), some want it, their husbands all want it, the barons want it, the Pope has it.
Oh, on the subject of the Pope—gosh, talk about a racket! Here's somebody basically running a city-state but also with a massive power over much of Western Europe: he's the final authority on all manner of disputes...and can be bought for a price. (Not that corruption's gone from the Church, but here it's blatant.)
Anyway. As with much of the (admittedly limited amount of) historical fiction I've read, there's just enough sex here to titillate, though Jones manages to refrain from giving more than one of the sisters an extramarital affair. (Honestly, if royalty of yore had even a fraction of the affairs that are ascribed to them in historical fiction...) I could have done without that and without the present tense, and with more complexity to the villains especially, but overall I just...got a kick out of the whole thing, really. Am really not sorry that I didn't live in that era.
Four Sisters, All Queens covers the lives of four sisters from Provence who (wait for it, wait for it) ultimately became queens. This is perhaps not as romantic as it sounds: the eldest two were queens of France and England, but the younger two were queens for much shorter periods of time, and in not altogether stable situations.
Four points of view and four countries and numerous crusades—it's a lot to pack into one book. Jones manages it largely by ascribing a very specific personality to each sister: Marguerite as the calm one, the quintessential eldest; Eléonore as determined and somewhat calculating; Sanchia as pious and retiring (and not always the brightest crayon in the box); Beatrice as headstrong and jealous (the quintessential bratty youngest).
I don't know how much of the story—not the historical events, that is, but the personalities and interpersonal relations and so on—is based in fact, but it's fascinating to consider just how secondary women were in their own lives. Expected to marry to the family's advantage, or to the Pope's; subject to being cast aside if they didn't produce a heir fast enough; property rather than independent humans. People died, on average, much younger in the 1200s than they do now (side note: [b:Being Mortal|20696006|Being Mortal Medicine and What Matters in the End|Atul Gawande|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1408324949s/20696006.jpg|40015533] does an excellent job of summarising why), and country boundaries were constantly in flux. You could sum one theme of the book up as grasping for power: some of the sisters have it (sometimes in name only), some want it, their husbands all want it, the barons want it, the Pope has it.
Oh, on the subject of the Pope—gosh, talk about a racket! Here's somebody basically running a city-state but also with a massive power over much of Western Europe: he's the final authority on all manner of disputes...and can be bought for a price. (Not that corruption's gone from the Church, but here it's blatant.)
Anyway. As with much of the (admittedly limited amount of) historical fiction I've read, there's just enough sex here to titillate, though Jones manages to refrain from giving more than one of the sisters an extramarital affair. (Honestly, if royalty of yore had even a fraction of the affairs that are ascribed to them in historical fiction...) I could have done without that and without the present tense, and with more complexity to the villains especially, but overall I just...got a kick out of the whole thing, really. Am really not sorry that I didn't live in that era.