Although it had the potential to be interesting, this book wandered in too many directions and tried to cover too many people and events to be successful.  Instead of focusing only on the more unique female members of the Plantagenet dynasty- those princesses who became successful queens, led armies, and improved their people’s lives- it tries to touch on every single Plantagenet Princess for over a century.  The result is a blending of characters with similar, if not identical, names and it became hard early on to separate who was who.  Long digressions  into the histories of various lands or topics made it easy to lose whatever thread there was, and the result was a book where the reader glazed over quickly.  At times written in too scholarly a manner for the casual reader, the writing style would then veer into a more casual form with plenty of repetitions of stories already told.  This book might work for people who already know everything about many of the major players, but for everyone else, give it a pass.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

<b>I WAS SO EXCITED FOR THIS - AND SO DISAPPOINTED</b>

3 years ago I wrote my masters thesis in history about English medieval queenship. Eleanor of Aquitaine is my favourite queen and played a large part in my thesis. Therefore I was so excited to read this about Eleanor's daughters with Henry II. Sadly, it did not live up to my expectations...

<b>👍 WHAT I LIKED 👍</b>

<u>Subject</u>: The daughters of Eleanor and Henry have gotten way too little attention (aside from Joan, anyway) so it was about time they got their own book.

<b>👎 WHAT I DISLIKED 👎</b>

<u>Chronological</u>: This book jumped back and forth in time to much it was a miracle, that I was able to keep things straight. If it hadn't been for all my knowledge on the subject, I would have given up on this instantly.

<u>Messy</u>: This moved down so many tangents that didn't really have anything to do with the subject at hand that the book ended up feeling messy and busy.

<u>Subject</u>: Yes, I liked the subject of this book. But I didn't not like how the subject was treated. I was looking forward to learning more about these women, their trials and tribulations, their victories and their impacts on history. However, all I got was a list of husbands and children. Really, these women were degraded to wives and mothers, nothing more. Not women with feelings, ambitions and fears. Just babymakers. That really bummed me out.

<u>Scope</u>: This might seem like a minor thing, but I was annoyed that this wasn't just about the daughters of Eleanor and Aquitaine - it also included granddaughters and daughters-in-law. If the author had just stayed within the promised scope, more space could have been devoted to creating a full representation of these remarkable women.