Plantagenet Princesses immediately drew my attention because I love reading about women in history.
Unfortunately, I was quite disappointed with the execution.

My first problem was inconsistency. The style vacillated between very chatty and extremely dry.
There were some spelling and grammatical problems - these may be fixed in the final copy - but it had me itching to get out my red pen. There were also a number of instances of repetition within the text.

The author also seemed to lack focus. This is supposed to be a book about Plantagenet princesses, specifically the daughters of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II. The first fifth of the book is about Eleanor, who was not a Plantagenet princess at all. Even so, the narrative doesn't really focus on her. It meanders off into general history (such as pages about Thomas Becket, for example) that were not really necessary. The rest of the book talks about various Plantagenet princesses over the course of about 100 years - granddaughters of Eleanor and Henry II, or daughters-in-law, which were completely outside the promised scope of the book.

There was also a tendency to gloss over things, leaving me confused; or to list events, leaving me bored. An early example (and I am paraphrasing) goes something like: Henry went here, Eleanor went there, Christmas Court was here, then Easter Court was there.

My final disappointment was the inclusion of sensationalist stories and rumours, such as the one about Eleanor of Aquitaine and her ladies riding bare-breasted on Crusade. One, I didn't see how it was relevant to the narrative. Two, it was presented as fact, where there are no concrete accounts of it ever actually happening.

Unfortunately, I can't really recommend this book to anyone.

The role of women in history has often been hard to decipher. Since much of what we know of the women comes from the brief snatches of history that we get from their menfolk, fleshing out these powerful women in their own right has never been easy.
Eleanor of Aquitaine is probably one of the best recorded, as she was very active in her role as Countess and Queen. The fact that she queen of France, who then divorced her husband and then married Henry, going on to become the queen of England raised some scandal - and a lot of documentation on her. When she rebelled against her husband with her four sons later on, that alone would have secured her role in history. But she was more than just a trophy - she was active, issuing charters in her own right.

The women portrayed in this book bring a new life to many of these women to have been mere footnotes in history before. This was a great book and one that I really enjoyed reading.

There are a lot of names and places. It is easy to get confused. Grab a piece of paper and make notes - you are going to need them!

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.