Having finished Daughter of York, a reading undertaken last week, I found the work entertaining, but there is another book that someone should pen, and that is what happened next. The disintegration of all that Charles the Bold (pictured) worked for, as empires do rise and fall, and how Margaret had to employ her considerable political skills to try and prevent the denouement - well, the following historical period could ask for someone to flesh out a good work of fiction for its explication.I will not attempt a book review here, and Smith had to stop somewhere, as Margaret's hero would in historical reality be married in a couple of years to someone else it was best to stop where she did.
Charles the Bold is portrayed very severely, and looking at his portrait, straight, simple and unadorned, I find it hard to picture him as the villain as he was in this book. He was probably very much a man of his times, and the sumptuousness of the Burgundian court required more conquest to perpetuate itself. (I suppose). He was, to me, a soldier no less strident than Henry V.
Margaret of Anjou was an enemy of Burgundy as a princess of France, and she never took her hatreds lightly. She has a small role in this novel, as she should. During the bulk of this time, having lost her husband and son, she was a ward, so to speak, of Louis XI, who allowed her space in his kingdom to fade out in poverty. Another 180 degree turn in the Wheel of Fortune.
