The Captive Queen Book

It is the year 1152 and a beautiful woman of thirty attended by only a small armed escort is riding like the wind southwards through what is now France leaving behind her crown her two young daughters and a shattered marriage to Louis of France who had been more like a monk than a king and certainly not much of a lover. This woman is Eleanor Duchess of Aquitaine and her sole purpose now is to return to her vast duchy and marry the man she loves Henry Plantagenet a man destined for greatness as King of England. Theirs is a union founded on lust which will create a great empire stretching from the wilds of Scotland to the Pyrenees. It will also create the devil's brood of Plantagenets - including Richard Cuur de Lion and King John - and the most notoriously vicious marriage in history. "The Captive Queen" is a novel on the grand scale an epic subject for Alison Weir.It tells of the making of nations and of passionate conflicts: between Henry II and Thomas Becket his closest friend who is murdered in Canterbury Cathedral on his orders; between Eleanor and Henry's formidable mother Matilda; between father and sons as Henry's children take up arms against him; and finally between Henry and Eleanor herself.