Mmmmm...trashy
For a novel whose avowed purpose is to describe Simon de Montfort as some sort of a sex god, The Dragon and the Jewel is not too bad (nobody has raped anybody, and for a large chunk of the book the protagonists are happily married to each other) even if historical accuracy in the book is not the strongest.
But my main interest lay in trying to see how the author would deal with the ending. Romance novels are known for their 'happy endings at all costs' approach but I could not imagine how even the most optimistic writer could turn "and then Simon and some of his and Eleanor's sons were killed in battle of Evesham and his body was chopped up to bits to be sent as gifts to barons who helped defeat the rebel against the Crown. Oh, and Eleanor became a nun after his death" into a "and then they lived happily ever after."
Well - she avoided that very simply - she did not deal with that at all. She basically ends the book once Simon calls the first Parliament. She doesn't even mention his death in her afterword. Ahahahahahahha. He gets killed two years after her book ends but you would never know it from her novel.
Bwahahahahah!
That is a brilliant idea, actually. I can see a whole series of happy romance novels if you just do a little surgical removal of the historical ending. Maybe someone should write about the great romance of Isabella, wife of Edward II and Roger de Mortimer, an escaped rebel baron. It would all be mushy and awesome and end with their triumphal return to England together to defeat Edward II and take power. The author will just have to omit all the gruesome medieval punishments they inflicted on their enemies (including EII) and the little fact that as soon as Isabella and Edward II's son came of age he had his mother's lover put to death in a gruesome medieval way as well. (Isabella only forgave him after he got her some grandkids. Must have been an interesting Christmas dinner). Or how about a triumphant novel about Harold Godwinson, the powerful Saxon earl. Read all about him being crowned King of England and his sexytimes with his mistress Edith the Swan-necked. We'll just forget the pesky battle of Hastings.
I'd write such masterpieces myself but, alas, I am busy reading another one of "Dragon/Jewel" author's creations - the one where a Georgian lady drops through a time portal into when Romans ruled Britannia ans gets some really good times with a hunky Roman general. I am reading it for a deep deep plot.
ETA: Now I am going crazy trying to locate my copy of Falls the Shadow, i.e. the good novel about de Montfort but I have no idea where it went off to. I found every other Sharon Kay Penman book I own, including my favorite, The Sunne In Splendour about Richard III (I have never cried at the end of a book the way I bawled with Sunne) but no Falls the Shadow. Argh.
But my main interest lay in trying to see how the author would deal with the ending. Romance novels are known for their 'happy endings at all costs' approach but I could not imagine how even the most optimistic writer could turn "and then Simon and some of his and Eleanor's sons were killed in battle of Evesham and his body was chopped up to bits to be sent as gifts to barons who helped defeat the rebel against the Crown. Oh, and Eleanor became a nun after his death" into a "and then they lived happily ever after."
Well - she avoided that very simply - she did not deal with that at all. She basically ends the book once Simon calls the first Parliament. She doesn't even mention his death in her afterword. Ahahahahahahha. He gets killed two years after her book ends but you would never know it from her novel.
Bwahahahahah!
That is a brilliant idea, actually. I can see a whole series of happy romance novels if you just do a little surgical removal of the historical ending. Maybe someone should write about the great romance of Isabella, wife of Edward II and Roger de Mortimer, an escaped rebel baron. It would all be mushy and awesome and end with their triumphal return to England together to defeat Edward II and take power. The author will just have to omit all the gruesome medieval punishments they inflicted on their enemies (including EII) and the little fact that as soon as Isabella and Edward II's son came of age he had his mother's lover put to death in a gruesome medieval way as well. (Isabella only forgave him after he got her some grandkids. Must have been an interesting Christmas dinner). Or how about a triumphant novel about Harold Godwinson, the powerful Saxon earl. Read all about him being crowned King of England and his sexytimes with his mistress Edith the Swan-necked. We'll just forget the pesky battle of Hastings.
I'd write such masterpieces myself but, alas, I am busy reading another one of "Dragon/Jewel" author's creations - the one where a Georgian lady drops through a time portal into when Romans ruled Britannia ans gets some really good times with a hunky Roman general. I am reading it for a deep deep plot.
ETA: Now I am going crazy trying to locate my copy of Falls the Shadow, i.e. the good novel about de Montfort but I have no idea where it went off to. I found every other Sharon Kay Penman book I own, including my favorite, The Sunne In Splendour about Richard III (I have never cried at the end of a book the way I bawled with Sunne) but no Falls the Shadow. Argh.