The Founding
The Morland Dynasty, Book 1
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4.4 • 14 Ratings
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- £0.99
Publisher Description
"Brilliant, a definite page turner. They combine real historical events with fascinating fictional characters.
The twenty-three volumes of the Morland Dynasty series has been completely repackaged in the most elegant style, using contemporaneous artwork for each period.
This wonderful series opens with the back drop of the Wars of the Roses with the marriage between Eleanor Morland and a scion of the influential house of Beaufort. It is a union which establishes the powerful Morland dynasty and in the succeeding volumes of this rich tapestry of English life, we follow their fortunes through war and peace, political upheaval and social revolution, times of pestilence and periods of plenty, and through the vicissitudes which afflict every family - love and passion, envy and betrayal, birth and death, great fortune and miserable penury...
The Morland Dynasty is entertainment of the most addictive kind.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Originally published in 1980, the powerful first entry in the Morland Dynasty series introduces 15th-century matriarch Eleanor Morland. As a young woman and ward of the powerful Beaufort family, Eleanor was married off to wealthy Yorkshire commoner Robert Morland, despite her carrying a torch for the charismatic duke of York, Richard. As Eleanor grows comfortable in her marriage and her family expands, she resolves to keep her allegiance to Richard, something that threatens to destroy her family as civil war rips England apart. Readers familiar with the struggles of the War of the Roses will find this a refreshing take on the period and will be drawn to Eleanor, sometimes in spite of themselves. While keeping track of the whole Morland clan can be difficult, fans of historicals will be enthralled, eager to see how the staunchly Yorkist Morlands will survive the Tudor years.
Customer Reviews
Super book combining history with a great story
So glad to have found this author and look forward to reading the whole series
The Founding
This fabulous start to a riveting series - oh how I wish my history teacher at school could have made the past so interesting. You just have to follow the story thread of the Morland family through time, and the research and writing style bring the social and political history to life in a very readable and entertaining way. I started and had to finish the whole series of thirty plus books, and then I read them all over again. They make you angry, make you laugh and make you cry. Descriptions of the way people worked and suffered over the years are graphic and moving and make you want to go back in time and bang heads together! Other parts of the series cause you to develop deep respect for human achievement and suffering. Starting to sound as if it's all a bit too serious? Yes, the books are based on reality which is serious, but the fictional family make individual books and the whole series a stunningly entertaining read.
Thank you Cynthia for making me interested in the past again; only forty years after achieving eleven percent in my last history exam!
The Founding
Decent read but almost impossible to keep track of so many characters, more so with many having the same name.