Cover Image: Two Houses, Two Kingdoms

Two Houses, Two Kingdoms

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Member Reviews

What a fabulous concept for a book. A joint biography of the ruling houses of England and France from the time shortly after the Norman Conquest to the reign of Edward II. Catherine Hanley considers both the political and personal relationships of the two royal houses, demonstrating how they intertwined to create a love-hate relationship that directed the course of European politics for two centuries.
A riveting read, Two Houses, Two Kingdoms is impossible to put down. While presented with the best academic rigour applied, the narrative flows freely and comfortably, making it a book that can be read simply for pleasure but also used for research. Catherine Hanley's own exemplary research skills means this is a book that can be trusted with accuracy and truth.
This is a book that should be on the shelf of anyone interested in the histories of France or England - or both!
I would give it 10 stars if I could.
Highly recommended!

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This is probably one of the best books on the subject I have read in a very long time.

Two hundred years of Anglo-French relations through the intricate relationships between a myriad of persons closely connected and orbiting around the English and French thrones. A towering work of scholarship that offers the reader a detailed account of the complicated relations between the Plantagenets and the Capetians between 1100 and 1300, and a sweeping narrative that enthralled me from start to finish. Never a dull moment except a feeling of sadness at the end because I wanted more.

I can only hope today that Ms Hanley will eventually offer us very very soon the same masterful study for the period stretching between 1300 and 1500.

What a remarkable book!

Many thanks to Yale University Press and Netgalley for this magnificent ARC

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Two Houses, Two Kingdoms is a history of England and France in the 12th and 13th century. Most history books focus only on one or the other of the two Kingdoms (mostly English history), but this is a new treatment which focuses on the royal dynasties of the respective Kingdoms as families. Dysfunctional families, but families, nonetheless. Through this, the author helps unfold a story of how the two nations and their fates & fortunes often interconnected.

I really enjoyed the parts relating to French history and the 12th century Kings of France, as I know a lot of the English history from that time, but not so much about what was going on in France. I do feel the book lost a bit of momentum towards the end, and the parts covering the later 13th century felt a bit rushed, but otherwise I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Catherine Hanley has been one of my favourite authors covering the 12th century since I read her biography of the Empress Matilda. In fact, I once met her in person, and she has a way of writing about political events which could otherwise be dry and boring in an engaging style. They gradually unfold, in a style almost like that of a novel, allowing the reader to get the feel of what these events might have been like for the people who lived them.

I read an ARC of this title via Netgalley, which did not in any way influence my review. All opinions expressed are my own.

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3 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you so much to Yale University Press and NetGalley for an e-arc of this book.

I liked quite a few things about this book, but did have a few issues as well.

I thought the prose was good, it was very readable and accessible.

It became quite repetitive when it was always, as we will see later, in the next chapter etc etc. This type of statement and way of sharing information was definitely overused.

As this is focussing on the relationship between the two counties over a long period it naturally omits or glosses over a lot, therefore I would recommend it to those with an understanding of the time and events/people already.

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For three hundred years the royal families of England and France were so closely intertwined that their histories are almost impossible to separate. In this book Hanley has tried to look at the political machinations in the context of family relationships and the impact on the two kingdoms. This is an endlessly fascinating book which suffers from the confusions over multiple people with the same name (sometimes even in the same nuclear family). However the writing is spritely and laced with a strong streak of humour which means that it is more than a list of dates and titles.

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Thank you to NetGallery for the advance copy of this book. Catherine Hanley has delivered a detailed history of the two families that ruled England and France. I used the scholarship from this book when teaching about Eleanor of Aquitaine for the first time. The maps and detailed family information was really helpful and would be especially useful to those not familiar with the period. This was definitely not light reading as it did get confusing at times but I would definitely recommend for those looking to gain more insight and improve their subject knowledge.

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I’m sure this will be of great interest to scholars in this area but as a regular reader I found the amount of detail very confusing and the number of names to remember.

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I first came across Catherine Hanley when she was speaking about Louis VIII at Gloucester History Festival in 2020 when everything was online. I enjoyed it so much that I went on to listen to her excellent book about Empress Matilda and read the first of her novels set in the period covered by this book. That she has written non-fiction and fiction is clear – Two Houses, Two Kingdoms hits a sweet spot of proper scholarly history and ripsnorting narrative.
It’s common for history books not to try to be exhaustive but the scope is made especially clear here – only the events pertinent to the interaction of the two royal houses of England and France are covered (I also found it refreshing to have a note at the beginning to address different types of reader and reading). Even given that stricture, it’s still no mean feat to make a history of this period easy to understand, given the separate duchies and counties of what is now largely France and the preponderance of repeated names and intermarriage. The maps and family information at the beginning of the book are really helpful so it’s definitely a book to read in hard copy (which I didn’t but them’s the breaks if you get to read a digital advance proof copy). If the premise sounds a little dry for your taste, fear not – this is eminently readable, even the relatively short passages about military engagements, not something that can be said about some history writing.
I had previously read a little about some of the people involved but it was really interesting to find out more about, for example, Richard I. All too often painted simply in positive contrast to his brother bad King John and as a heroic Crusader, here we learn more about his less palatable side: massacring prisoners of war and apparent indifference to his wife Berengaria of Navarre. Hanley has made a valiant effort to provide more information about the women in the picture but the sources are unhelpful. For example, we are not privy to the thoughts of Isabella of Angoulême. Was she callous to leave her recently crowned 9-year-old son Henry III in England when she returned home to Poitou or finally making her own decisions having been set free from a life she had not chosen by the death of John? I would happily read a whole book about her and Blanche of Castille but I suspect the sources are lacking. Maybe it’s time to read the next of Catherine Hanley’s Mediaeval Mysteries.

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