Alison Weir - Captive Queen

Writers familiar with my Tudor books may have noticed that I have “borrowed” from that period with my paraphrasing of Sir Thomas Wyatt’s verse. “If all the world were mine,” the song sung by the German minnesinger, was one of a collection of medieval goliardic songs adapted by Carl Orff for Carmina Burana , his collection of secular songs for orchestra, soloists, and chorus, which was first performed in 1937.

Those with an eye for detail might wonder why the jacket illustration for a book about Eleanor’s years as Queen of England shows her wearing a blue gown patterned with fleurs-de-lis, the French royal arms. Although the fleur-de-lis symbol was used by her first husband, Louis VII, and had been associated with Frankish kings back to the Dark Ages, it was not used exclusively in France, and does not appear there as a royal heraldic symbol until 1211. In fact, it may not even represent a lily; there has been some debate as to whether it is meant to be a broom flower, the planta genista that gave Henry II’s dynasty its name. As heraldry was in its infancy in the twelfth century, and the fleur-de-lis was a popular symbol with several European dynasties at that time, it is credible that Eleanor of Aquitaine might have worn such a gown.

Readers may also notice that I have incorporated descriptions of the reinterpreted rooms at the Great Tower in Dover Castle where the jacket photographs were taken.

When I was researching my biography of Eleanor, and first conceived the idea of writing a novel, it was Eleanor whom I really wanted to write about. For obvious reasons I couldn’t do so at that time, and therefore I opted to write about Lady Jane Grey instead. That was in 1998, more than a decade ago, and I am delighted that I have at last been able to fulfill my original ambition. The wheel has come full circle!

It was a deliberate decision not to write a fictional account of the whole of Eleanor’s life. Again, one of my chief inspirations was that incomparable film The Lion in Winter , and what I really wanted to explore in this novel was the marriage between Eleanor and Henry II—not just their dynamic interaction over one explosive Christmas, but the whole course of their relationship over a period of thirty-seven years. In doing so, I feel I have been able to achieve insights into what might have gone wrong between them, and to explain what drove them to act as they did. That has been the real challenge.

I should like to extend my warm thanks and deep appreciation to my brilliant editors, Anthony Whittome, Kate Elton, and Caroline Gascoigne at Hutchinson and Arrow, and to Susanna Porter at Ballantine in New York, for the tremendous support they have all given me during the preparation of this book; to my agent, Julian Alexander, who is always marvelously kind and encouraging; to Sarah Eastall and Garry Newing for permitting us to shoot the jacket photograph in the Great Tower of Dover Castle, and for making us so welcome; and to all my family and friends, for putting up with a frantic maniac who is seemingly on an endless mission to meet deadlines! Lastly, thank you, Rankin, my dear husband. I’ve said it many times, but it’s the plain truth: I couldn’t do it without you!

ALISON WEIR is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Innocent Traitor and The Lady Elizabeth and several historical biographies, including The Lady in the Tower, Mistress of the Monarchy, Queen Isabella, Henry VIII, Eleanor of Aquitaine , and The Six Lives of Henry VIII . She lives in Surrey, England, with her husband and two children.