The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World

By Shelley Puhak

Book Overview

"A well-researched and well-told epic history. The Dark Queens brings these courageous, flawed, and ruthless rulers and their distant times back to life."--Margot Lee Shetterly, New York Times-bestselling author of Hidden Figures

The remarkable, little-known story of two trailblazing women in the Early Middle Ages who wielded immense power, only to be vilified for daring to rule.

Brunhild was a foreign princess, raised to be married off for the sake of alliance-building. Her sister-in-law Fredegund started out as a lowly palace slave. And yet-in sixth-century Merovingian France, where women were excluded from noble succession and royal politics was a blood sport-these two iron-willed strategists reigned over vast realms, changing the face of Europe.

The two queens commanded armies and negotiated with kings and popes. They formed coalitions and broke them, mothered children and lost them. They fought a decades-long civil war-against each other. With ingenuity and skill, they battled to stay alive in the game of statecraft, and in the process laid the foundations of what would one day be Charlemagne's empire. Yet after the queens' deaths-one gentle, the other horrific-their stories were rewritten, their names consigned to slander and legend.

In The Dark Queens, award-winning writer Shelley Puhak sets the record straight. She resurrects two very real women in all their complexity, painting a richly detailed portrait of an unfamiliar time and striking at the roots of some of our culture's stubbornest myths about female power. The Dark Queens offers proof that the relationships between women can transform the world.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1635574919
• ISBN13: 9781635574913
• Release Date: February 2022
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.6" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Better than Game of Thrones

Shelley Puhak did a fantastic job breating life into Fredegund and Brunhild, and I hope she keeps writing more nonfiction like this. Originally a poet, her prose is both vivid yet approachable. She infuses a narrative quality into her subjects as she tries to imagine what they might have thought or felt. Some might think this is taking too much liberty because we have no record of how someone would have felt, but I really appreciate this approach. While I know that everything should be taken with a grain of salt, I find the infusion of humanity really helps me understand the subject. Compared to a book like Weir's Eleanor biography, which I found dull at times and distant, this book is so poignant.

lives of these queens will interest everyone, not just historians

Extremely well written, engaging trip through a little-known era