What a fantastic cover this edition has! That stained glass window is beautiful. The people this book describes, however... are not. That is, many of them are supposed to be very physically attractive - Eleanor herself was supposed to be the great looker of her time - but my goodness she and Henry II spawned some shitty people. The sons in particular are all awful. I'm aware that royal children of the time were often separated from their mum and dad for the period of their raising, and Eleanor certainly spends a lot of time separated from her 10 kids, but given that all her sons, bar the one who died in infancy, were such terrible people... the parents have to take some responsibility, is all I'm saying. The people of England and France were in dire need of a guillotine. It's amazing any of them survived the constant warfare their greedy, vicious, supremely selfish and untrustworthy leaders inflicted on them.

Eleanor herself is a fascinating character. I'd known practically nothing about her before reading this book, but Weir puts together a very well-researched and well-written book, so I'm feeling a bit less ignorant. Given that Eleanor lived so long ago, there are a number of gaps in the record, but Weir makes the best of what she has to work with. Her approach is relatively sympathetic to Eleanor herself and mostly objective towards the rest, but I'm so disgusted at the actions of the entire dreadful family that I could have done with a bit more judgement, to be honest.