The Dark Queens
The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
National Bestseller
"A well-researched and well-told epic history. The Dark Queens brings these courageous, flawed, and ruthless rulers and their distant times back to life."--Margot Lee Shetterly, New York Times-bestselling author of Hidden Figures
The remarkable, little-known story of two trailblazing women in the Early Middle Ages who wielded immense power, only to be vilified for daring to rule.
Brunhild was a foreign princess, raised to be married off for the sake of alliance-building. Her sister-in-law Fredegund started out as a lowly palace slave. And yet-in sixth-century Merovingian France, where women were excluded from noble succession and royal politics was a blood sport-these two iron-willed strategists reigned over vast realms, changing the face of Europe.
The two queens commanded armies and negotiated with kings and popes. They formed coalitions and broke them, mothered children and lost them. They fought a decades-long civil war-against each other. With ingenuity and skill, they battled to stay alive in the game of statecraft, and in the process laid the foundations of what would one day be Charlemagne's empire. Yet after the queens' deaths-one gentle, the other horrific-their stories were rewritten, their names consigned to slander and legend.
In The Dark Queens, award-winning writer Shelley Puhak sets the record straight. She resurrects two very real women in all their complexity, painting a richly detailed portrait of an unfamiliar time and striking at the roots of some of our culture's stubbornest myths about female power. The Dark Queens offers proof that the relationships between women can transform the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poet Puhak (Guinevere in Baltimore) delivers a lyrical and astute assessment of the political maneuvers, battlefield strategies, and resilience of medieval queens and rivals Fredegund and Brunhild. Members of the Merovingian dynasty, noble-born Brunhild and her sister-in-law Fredegund, a former slave, fought vigorously as active queen consorts and then regents to enlarge their respective shares of Francia (modern-day Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and parts of Germany and Switzerland) in the sixth century. Brunhild sought to improve her realm with infrastructure projects and political alliances and exhibited her negotiating skills in the Treaty of Andelot, which allowed her, her daughter, and daughter-in-law to avoid being forced into a convent and stripped of their extensive lands in the event of widowhood. Meanwhile, Fredegund chillingly orchestrated at least a dozen assassinations, including murdering a bishop during Easter Mass and sending two enslaved boys with poisoned daggers to murder Brunhild's husband. Puhak skillfully draws on contemporaneous sources, including letters, poems, and a vividly told yet obviously biased account by Brunhild's devoted ally, Bishop Gregory of Tours, to create her thrilling history. The resulting is deeply fascinating portrait of the early Middle Ages that vigorously reclaims two powerhouse women from obscurity.
