The historical novel depicts the rise of states and passionate conflicts – between Henry II and his closest friend Thomas Becket, between Eleanor and Henry's fearsome mother Matilda, between father and his sons, as the king's offspring take up arms and rise against their father, and finally between Henry and Eleanor herself. It is the year 1152, and a beautiful thirty-year-old woman, accompanied by a small armed retinue, races through the territory of present-day France heading south. She leaves behind a crown, two small daughters, and a crumbling marriage to French King Louis VII, who resembled more of a monk than a secular ruler and was certainly not a very skilled lover. This woman is Eleanor of Aquitaine, and her sole aim is to return to her vast domains and to marry the man she loves – Henry Plantagenet, who is destined to become the famous English King Henry II. Their union is based on physical attraction, but it will enable the creation of a magnificent empire stretching from Scotland to the Pyrenees. From it will also arise the devil's lineage of the Plantagenets – including the kings Richard the Lionheart and John Lackland – and perhaps the most notoriously tumultuous marriage in...
