A disappointment
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Since I moved to Aix-en-Provence, I have come across various bits and pieces of the history of the four daughters of Raimond Bérenger, all of whom became queens. A history book that simultaneously provided the biographies of these four women sounded like a good read. Unfortunately, it was not. First, the tone is irritating. One thing is popular history, another is being patronising towards the reader and sentimental towards the characters. Second, the author lacks a good understanding of the historical period - and it is this understanding that makes a good biography. Third, errors are frequent -incorrect dates, a child of Beatrice is mentioned in the text that does not appear in the genealogical tree (the kind of thing that the editor should have spotted), .... A disappointment that has put me off reading any other book by the author.
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Promises not fulfilled - NOT a must-have -read book
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This book promised to tell the story of four queens, four sisters who married to kings and ruled Europe. At least the title claims that.
First one has to recognize that these sisters were married to kings indeed - the Kings of France, England, of the Romans (Germany) and of Sicily, but they were Queen Consorts not sovereigns. So it was their husbands which ruled not them. Their influence on their husbands was different and varied over time. One - Sanchia, the Queen of the Romans - definitely had no influence over her husband. While their maternal uncles of Savoy gained much influence through their nieces and became most important councillors to the kings, the queens themselves were part of this network. However, there is no evidence that these four sisters joined forces and jointly ruled over Europe. Very often, their realms were fighting each other or their husbands (two in France, two in England) were at odds with each other. Not denying that the Queens had of course influence, but I can not see that they jointly ruled Europe. So the title is quite sensational but the book's content does not match this.
I agree with the previous reviewer that there is a quite casual approach by the author and a sort of very popular language. On top I feel that she does not really understand European history. F.e. her description of the Holy Roman Empire seems to be rather bizarre.
Nevertheless, I feel that one nevertheless can learn quite a bit about the time, the personalities of the four couples and the politics of that period. I read to the end and I suppose I regard it slightly better than the previous reviewer but it is definitely not a must-have-read book.
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A very sloppily written and bad book
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This is an extremely sloppily written and bad book. It is written in the childish style that some popular historians seem to find it necessary to adopt because they think their audience is too stupid to understand anything else - usually an underestimation of said audience. Moreover, the author has clearly not bothered to do any form of basic research to get her facts right. To take but a few examples: In chapter 7, we are told about Richard of Cornwall's crusade in 1240. He is said to have met Emperor Baldwin II of Constantinople "who had lost his empire" (p74). Actually, the Latin Empire of Constantinople (Baldwin's empire) was around until 1261, which is when he lost it. Three pages later, we are told that "The French, too, had sent an army to retake Jerusalem only the year before," in other words in 1239. Retake from whom? Jerusalem was in Christian hands from 1227 to 1244. She also seems to have no idea of the relative importance of the Kingdom of Sicily within the domains of the Holy Roman Emperor. At this stage, less than a third through the book, I gave up, rather than waste any more time on such rubbish. Zero stars would be a better rating.
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