A Court of Betrayal
England 1301. A marriage is arranged between two great houses: Mortimer and De Geneville. Roger Mortimer, eldest son of the Baron of Wigmore, and Johane de Geneville, heiress to vast estates in Ireland and England, join hands and lands in a marriage that was to last almost thirty years and be part of great events in English history.
This is the story of marriage, love (in that order), passion, ambition, lust, betrayal, self-sacrifice and ultimate forgiveness, all seen through the eyes of one incredible lady, almost forgotten by history but brought to life by a skilful author.
Everything is seen through the eyes of Johane. Therefore, most of the tremendous events of the period happen away from her. She relies on news from her husband on his brief, increasingly sparse visits, his messengers, royal envoys or even travelling traders to hear what is happening in the realm. His imprisonment in the Tower of London leads to her own incarceration, a hardship which she bears bravely and stoically.
One slight historical niggle – O’Brien conveys, in wonderful detail, where her (twelve) children are throughout the story. However, in the spring of 1326 she refers to when ‘Edmund is released from the Tower’. A few pages later she explains how Edmund is moved from his long-term incarceration in Windsor to the Tower on his father’s return to England in September 1326, so the earlier conversation is anachronistic, easily changed by substituting ‘Tower’ with ‘Windsor’.
This is an extremely well-written and well-researched novel which brings to life a little-known character in a realistic way. Johane is a powerful woman of her time and is portrayed in that light. How much truth there is in this characterisation we’ll never know, but it matters not one jot, as this is a fabulous story.
