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A review by penandswordinn
The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World by Shelley Puhak
4.0
This book took me quite a while to finish, mainly because nonfiction books are hard for me to consume outside of an audiobook format. I found the story of these two queens, two women who history tried it's best to erase, very interesting. Here we have two women who ruled their land, a land not of their birth, and under the name of the men in their lives.
First we have Brunhild. When looking for an image, history has made her the horned helmet princess with two long blonde braids. She was a princess from birth and went on to marry a King. Her life was tragic, losing husbands and children along the way. She had to gain power in order to keep her status and hold on the country around her.
Next we have Fredegund, rumored to be a slave girl who rose the ranks, this Queen is often painted in a bad image by history. She used tactics such as assassination, poison, and lies to hold onto a crown she thought to be rightly hers. Though these two women never met, their legacy and life would be intertwined forever.
This story could almost be fictional, if given into dramatization and scandal. Even from a historical standpoint I can see where many fantasy stories get their inspiration from. I will say that the names here are so similar that I lost track of who exactly we were talking about. This is not an author problem but a royal problem of recycling the same names over and over again.
If you are looking to learn about historical women in a time when women were often pushed to the side, this is the book for you.
First we have Brunhild. When looking for an image, history has made her the horned helmet princess with two long blonde braids. She was a princess from birth and went on to marry a King. Her life was tragic, losing husbands and children along the way. She had to gain power in order to keep her status and hold on the country around her.
Next we have Fredegund, rumored to be a slave girl who rose the ranks, this Queen is often painted in a bad image by history. She used tactics such as assassination, poison, and lies to hold onto a crown she thought to be rightly hers. Though these two women never met, their legacy and life would be intertwined forever.
This story could almost be fictional, if given into dramatization and scandal. Even from a historical standpoint I can see where many fantasy stories get their inspiration from. I will say that the names here are so similar that I lost track of who exactly we were talking about. This is not an author problem but a royal problem of recycling the same names over and over again.
If you are looking to learn about historical women in a time when women were often pushed to the side, this is the book for you.