Judging from multiple book lists I've seen, November is the month of memoirs. Something about Pilgrims and turkey dressing seems to inspire long nonfiction lists of reading about people writing about their lives. I went the nonfiction route, but not with memoirs. This month is all about some recent history nonfiction for me. The first book: Queens of the Conquest.
Indefatigable chronicler of English monarchy, Alison Weir turns her attention to the earliest medieval queens of the country. William the Conqueror's wife Matilda of Flanders, Matilda of Scotland, Adeliza of Louvain, Matilda of Boulogne, and the powerhouse Empress Maud are all given their due here. I have a soft spot for Maud, hated as she was in England. This was a woman who demanded her due and played with the boys, though unfortunately her personality and inability to navigate politics led to her being infamous rather than legendary. The irony is that Stephen, the king she ended up in a stalemate with, was just as politically blundering in different ways. It took his more politically astute wife Matilda of Boulogne working in his name to ever get anything accomplished. The fact remains that most of these women were formidable in their own right, though operating in a different set of gender rules and often dealing with some brutal men. Maud in particular took a beating by chronologists for her arrogant and masculine way of doing things, yet had she been a man she probably would have been judged no differently than many of the other implacable male rulers of the time. The truth often needs to be pried out of historical texts to understand these women, but Weir, as always, is up to the task.
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AuthorA librarian who likes to travel and experience life. CategoriesArchives
June 2022
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