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No, I did not read this book, first in a series of seven, because the saga has been one of the sources for the Game of Thrones, about which, both in its book and filmed versions I know little more than this. No, I read it because I am interested in the end of the Capetians and the beginning of the Valois dynasty.

In this novel we are presented with a few episodes at the end of the life of the King of France Philippe IV (1268-1314), le Bel. As his epithet indicates, he was a man considered of great beauty, if of a cold and inexorable beauty. Like his implacable and stony personality.

His reign was relatively successful and he achieved many of the aims he set himself. As a close contemporary of Dante Alighieri (1268-1321), he also shared with the poet a deep enmity with the Pope Boniface VIII (pope during 1295-1303).




Dante put the Pope in one of the circles of his Inferno, and Philippe put the Pope in his place. That is, the French King would not accept any spiritual authority over his own, and much before Henry VIII did so in England, Philippe assumed both the holy and terrestrial powers over his land. The by product of this conflict is that the Papacy was also extracted out of Rome and placed in the South of France, in Avignon.

Philippe certainly had an ability to deal with his problems in a surgical manner. If not his beauty, his coldness could be put to merciless use. As a solution to his financial problems he expelled the Jews--again much before Queen Isabel and King Fernando did the same in Castile and Aragón-- while also expropriating them.



But this novel does not really deal with the above, though, since it starts later. Maurice Druon begins his saga of The Cursed Kings with another one of Philippe’s deeds: his definitive eradication of the Templars. This brutal undertaking provided him with a similar financial windfall to that obtained from the Jews. We also see him attempting another of these profitable measures for a third time. The last to be shorn of their wealth were the Lombard bankers. But death for the beautiful king before he could succeed in this.



To the end of the Templars Druon intertwines another episode in this novel which provides plenty of dramatic feed: the scandal of the Nesle Tower.



If Philippe had the envied luck of any medieval king, for he had three sons all eligible to succeed him as heir, he had been less lucky with the three women his numerous male progeny married. All three women, two of them sisters, and the third a cousin. All three, Marguerite, Jeanne and Blanche were not too happy with their respective royal husbands and found solace elsewhere - in the Nestle Tower. They were found out and locked up. To add to the already dense intrigue, the sneak had been the sister in law, the Queen of England, Isabelle, mother of Edward III.



And so we get closer to the beginning of the Hundred Years War, and I pick up the second volume.




I have decided to write about the style and the writing in a future review of a subsequent volume.