The Importance of Pawns: Chronicles of the House of Valois
In 1514, Anne of Brittany, wife of Louis XII of France, is dying. Louise d’Angoulȇme, mother of the king’s cousin, François, maneuvers to marry her son to the King’s daughter Claude and so smooth his path to the throne. Soon after Anne’s death, the ailing king marries the much younger Marie, sister of Henry VIII, but the pregnancy Louise fears would displace her son does not materialize. The story is told through the eyes of Louise, Claude, and Michelle de Saubonne, governess to Claude’s younger sister, Renée, drawn as a lively and attractive character who probably deserves a novel to herself.
Morgan provides a list of dramatis personae and historical notes. She is particularly good on pageantry and ceremony (notably Anne’s funeral arrangements), and food so rich it made this reader feel bilious, let alone the frail Louis. The political machinations around dynastic allegiances, in which the women to be married are in effect pawns, are got across particularly well through convincing dialogue. There are some historical stumbles: Louise admires Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, though that painting seems never to have left Italian hands. Michelle de Saubonne, a Protestant, ponders her sins of omission and commission, evokes Our Lady, and kisses her rosary. And why does the cover design feature an image from a full century later when there are contemporary depictions of so many of the players in this novel? Morgan, however, writes as someone who is utterly fascinated by her subject.
