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jaceyElizabeth Chadwick - Daughters of the Grail
I’ve been hooked on Elizabeth Chadwick’s historicals ever since someone left one at our house last year. They are definitely romances, but the background is very accurate and often real historical personages are woven into the thread of the plot (as main or supporting characters).
This book is slightly more speculative, though written about the Albigensian Crusade when a force from northern France systematically wiped out the Cathars in the name of the Catholic church and just so happened to acquire the lands and property of the southern lords who had sheltered them.
Though the fact of the crusade is absolute (though minor details may be less so) the first book in the bibliography is ‘Holy Blood, Holy Grail’ and Daughters of the Grail is about the women who carry the bloodline of the Madonna and the Magdalene. Published a full ten years before The DaVinci Code, this is a historical version of the Catholic Church’s deadly search of the heretic women who not only claim to be descended from the family of the Christ, but also have powers of healing (amongst other things).
It begins in 1207 when Bridget’s mother dies from injuries received whilst being tortured for her heresy, leaving Bridget at the only surviving descendant of the bloodline with a duty to continue it. Raoul de Montvallant is a young southern lord, newly wed and, though Catholic, his family has always sheltered Cathars. Called to join the crusade against the Cathars by Simon de Montfort (the elder) he agrees at first – seeing it as the only way to keep his land out of the northerner’s clutches, but the Inquisition’s savage intolerance eventually causes Raoul to rebel, and to take Bridget and her Cathar compatriots to freedom. Bridget’s imperative to reproduce leads her briefly into Raoul’s arms, resulting in the birth of Magda, the next inheritor of the bloodline and the power. At the same time, Raoul’s wife, the long-suffering Claire, is forced to surrender Montvallant to the Crusaders when they come looking for Raoul. She is raped by de Monfort and taken captive, bearing him a son, Dominic. Raoul joins forces with the rebelling Southern lords and de Montfort (elder) is killed by a direct strike by a missile from a stone throwing machine (true) fired by a woman (also true) though history neglects to tell us it’s Claire.
It’s the children of Raoul and Claire who take over the main storyline in the latter third of this book as Raoul, Bridget and Claire perish in the Cathar’s last stand at Montsegur. The Cathars can’t win and hundreds of them are burned alive, dying for their beliefs, but Dominic and Magda eventually escape to England with the aid of Simon de Montfort the younger, Dom’s half-brother and new lord of Leicester.
I’ve been hooked on Elizabeth Chadwick’s historicals ever since someone left one at our house last year. They are definitely romances, but the background is very accurate and often real historical personages are woven into the thread of the plot (as main or supporting characters).
This book is slightly more speculative, though written about the Albigensian Crusade when a force from northern France systematically wiped out the Cathars in the name of the Catholic church and just so happened to acquire the lands and property of the southern lords who had sheltered them.
Though the fact of the crusade is absolute (though minor details may be less so) the first book in the bibliography is ‘Holy Blood, Holy Grail’ and Daughters of the Grail is about the women who carry the bloodline of the Madonna and the Magdalene. Published a full ten years before The DaVinci Code, this is a historical version of the Catholic Church’s deadly search of the heretic women who not only claim to be descended from the family of the Christ, but also have powers of healing (amongst other things).
It begins in 1207 when Bridget’s mother dies from injuries received whilst being tortured for her heresy, leaving Bridget at the only surviving descendant of the bloodline with a duty to continue it. Raoul de Montvallant is a young southern lord, newly wed and, though Catholic, his family has always sheltered Cathars. Called to join the crusade against the Cathars by Simon de Montfort (the elder) he agrees at first – seeing it as the only way to keep his land out of the northerner’s clutches, but the Inquisition’s savage intolerance eventually causes Raoul to rebel, and to take Bridget and her Cathar compatriots to freedom. Bridget’s imperative to reproduce leads her briefly into Raoul’s arms, resulting in the birth of Magda, the next inheritor of the bloodline and the power. At the same time, Raoul’s wife, the long-suffering Claire, is forced to surrender Montvallant to the Crusaders when they come looking for Raoul. She is raped by de Monfort and taken captive, bearing him a son, Dominic. Raoul joins forces with the rebelling Southern lords and de Montfort (elder) is killed by a direct strike by a missile from a stone throwing machine (true) fired by a woman (also true) though history neglects to tell us it’s Claire.
It’s the children of Raoul and Claire who take over the main storyline in the latter third of this book as Raoul, Bridget and Claire perish in the Cathar’s last stand at Montsegur. The Cathars can’t win and hundreds of them are burned alive, dying for their beliefs, but Dominic and Magda eventually escape to England with the aid of Simon de Montfort the younger, Dom’s half-brother and new lord of Leicester.
