Tanzanite's Castle Full of Books

Following the death of his first wife in The Strangled Queen, Louis X of France welcomes a new wife – Clemence of Hungary-  in the third installment of Maurice Druon’s The Accursed Kings series.   From troubles in Flanders to the growing power of his Valois relatives, Louis spends his short (less than two years) reign fumbling through one crisis after another.  And then there is the problem of the succession.

Woven amongst Louis’s troubles is the continuing story of a Lombard banker and the noblewoman that he loves as well as Robert of Artois’s struggle to get his inheritance back from his aunt.  The problems plaguing France need a stronger king than it has in Louis who is described as “incapable of concentration, the gravest of all faults in the powerful.”  The book ends with Louis’s death at 26 amid speculation of poison and with Clemence pregnant, the stage is set for the next book in the series, The Royal Succession.

In keeping in the style of the previous books in the series, Druon’s narrative fills in the future from time to time, especially noting that before it’s all said and done, the crown of France will sit on the heads of both of Louis’s brothers as well as his nephew.  There is also plenty of overly dramatic commentary on the human condition and specifically, the plight of those who happen to be French.  Although I still think these asides are a little jarring, they summarize the larger political environment in which the events take place without having to spend pages explaining it within the context of the story itself.

This series is about a time period I know very little about and from that standpoint, I enjoy reading them.  But I always have a hard time deciding what I think about them and the Lombard plotline still has me confused, although I have been assured that it will make sense in the end…

In case the FTC asks:  Bought it used