Anne and Louis: Rulers and Lovers - A Review

I received a free ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

Title: Anne and Louis: Rulers and Lovers
Series: Anne of Brittany, book 3
Author: Rozsa Gaston
Rating: 2/5

I intended to have this read and reviewed much earlier in the year. Unfortunately everything that's happened in the last few months, coupled with school and work has put me very behind in reading and reviewing.

This book, like its predecessors Anne and Charles and Anne and Louis: Passion and Politics in Early Renaissance France: The First Years of Anne of Brittany's Marriage to Louis XII, follows the life of Anne of Brittany, the last fully independent Duke of Brittany. Rulers and Lovers begins in 1501, with the proceedings for the engagement of Claude of France and Charles of Luxembourg and ends, leaving us in suspense, with Anne pregnant in January 1508. It focuses on Anne's marriage to Louis XII of France, their daughter Claude, and Anne's struggles to secure the independence of her people of Brittany.

This book frustrated me a great deal. It has a great deal of potential, and there were several parts I enjoyed-- Anne's tour of her duchy was done well and I especially liked the conversation between her and Philippe de Montauban about the bond between father and daughter-- what she is frustrated with, Claude's adoration of her father, is the same thing she had for her own father Francis. I also liked the acknowledgement of the heartbreak of loss- Anne losing so many babies and Louis seeing his men die in combat. Louis seeing the similarities and differences of the two was moving-- it made me think how both have to suffer and see people they love be lost for them to do their duties. Little Claude was adorable and I accept her as my queen already. If I were a romance fan (kind of the target audience, people who like historical romance), I probably would have enjoyed Anne and Louis's relationship.
Despite these strengths, there was a great deal in it that disappointed me and prevents me from rating it higher-- which I really wanted to do. I had two main issues with this book.

First, the exposition. Exposition is admittedly difficult to avoid when writing historical fiction, and in fact impossible when writing historical fiction that covers long periods of time. The first few chapters were strong from a narrative standpoint and I hoped that would continue throughout the book, and it did intermittently, but so much of it was expository, especially Louis's campaigns in Italy. I got the feeling that I was reading an essay on the war, not a novel (or I was having quarantine-induced flashbacks to when I taught history, that may also be a possibility). My mind wandered frequently during these sections, and I would have enjoyed more of them had there been actual scenes of the wars-- battles, Louis planning, anything more than just telling me where the troops moved. However, these parts are, as far as I know, accurate. I confess I don't know a lot about Louis XII, I know far more about his father, but nothing seemed hugely amiss. This holds true for the whole book, and the ones before it. Gaston studied history and she does a great job of getting the facts down, which is far more than I can say for most historical novels I've read. As I'm a historian by trade, I read a lot of nonfictional treatments of things like these, and I would have enjoyed a break from that and had more story to go with the history.

The other issue, and probably the most serious, was Anne herself. I found myself several times asking myself "Why do I like Anne again?" which is a terrifying question. Gaston is kind to Anne, and one of the overarching themes of her writing is, as her biography says, is "women getting what they want out of life." Anne had a very rough life, and to her credit Gaston does not make it worse, and she seeks to find happy moments for the queen. However, while she's portrayed positively, I didn't enjoy Anne as a character. The narration tells us that she's feisty and smart, but most of that comes out just with her arguing with Louis. She rarely actually works with Louis, since the central issues are his campaigns in Italy (which she thinks are stupid) and the question of Claude's betrothal to Charles of Luxembourg or Francis the Dauphin, on which they disagree to say the least. I think this missed out on what makes them an interesting paring historically-- they worked well together, despite their disagreements about Claude's future, and I had looked forward to seeing that in story form. Anne also never seems to take any part in ruling, all she does is order works of art made, make matches for her cordelières, and try to make babies. Historically she served as regent for Louis twice when he was away at war or sick, but that never comes into the story. She also doesn't do any administrative work for Brittany, except fight against Claude being married into France. I forgot what it was that made Anne such a fascinating figure and was sorely disappointed with that part.

There were parts I enjoyed, as I say above, and Gaston has a strong footing in the history of the era, which as a historian I greatly appreciate. You can also tell she very much cares about Anne and wants to tell her story, which is also very important in historical fiction. This book is perhaps best suited to readers who just want an overview of the era without having to read a 700 page nonfiction book, and readers looking for a light romance with a historical setting. My impressions of Anne in this book will probably be completely different than those of the next person to read it. I hope Gaston continues to write about this era, each successive book in the series has improved on the last. This book as a whole just didn't work for me.

The Persnickety Historian Vs. The History Channel

Ah yes, our old friend. The "History Channel."

At one point, I seem to remember them doing stuff on history. I also remember TLC doing educational programming. Television is a vast wasteland of entertainment and education-- call it edutainment-- and . The most infamous example of this, at least in the States, is History Channel. At one point it seemed so saturated with WWII it was jokingly called "The Hitler Channel" and today it's the home of the 100% most incredibly accurate and trustworthy show on television, Ancient Aliens. So it's unsurprising that there is a serious lack of credibility and accountability in anything they say at this point. I just didn't expect to find it in an article about one of my favorite historical figures.
A recent interest (more accurately, obsession) of mine is the 15th century French poet Charles d'Orleans, who briefly appears in Henry V and was far more interesting than Shakespeare let on. He was the nephew of Charles VI, King of France, and became duke at 13 when his father was brutally murdered. He was 21 at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 and was captured and taken to England, where he was held for 25 years. In his copious amounts of free time, Charles learned English and wrote poetry in it as well as French. His life was fraught with heartache, including the deaths of his father in 1407 and mother in 1408, the death in childbirth of his first wife, being part of a civil war, separation from his daughter, everything possible went wrong for him, but I'll talk more about his life as a whole in the rest of this article.

For background, Charles is attributed with writing the first Valentine poem, usually attributed to his years in captivity with his second wife, Bonne d'Armagnac as the recipient. It's pretty miserable as Valentines Day poetry goes.

I am already sick of love,
My very gentle Valentine,
Since for me you were born too late,
And I for you was born too soon.
God forgives him who has estranged
Me from you for the whole year.
I am already sick of love,
My very gentle Valentine. 

Well might I have suspected
That such a destiny,
Thus would have happened this day,
How much that Love would have commanded.
I am already sick of love,
My very gentle Valentine. (1)

Now that I've talked a little about Charles in general, what's this got to do with the History Channel? An article that somehow managed to get almost everything wrong. History.com, the website of History Channel ran an article this Valentine's Day about Charles and this poem. I honestly have no idea how you can pack so many mistakes into one article, it's simultaneously disappointing and impressive. Here we go.

[Link to article]

1. “As the nephew of King Charles VI of France, also known as Charles the Mad (who was believed to be schizophrenic), he was caught in the crossfire between his father, Louis I, who presided over the House of Orléans, and his uncle’s family, which oversaw the House of Burgundy, in their fight for control of France.” (2)

— Charles VI and Louis I were the nephews of Philip I of Burgundy (brother of their father Charles V). Philip’s son John the Fearless was Louis’s first cousin and therefore Charles d'Orleans’s first cousin once removed. The duchy of Burgundy was more like an independent state at that time, its ruling family being part of the Valois family (the dynasty then ruling France, so Charles VI was Charles of Valois) but not of the royal primogenitor line, rather a cousin branch, the House of Valois-Burgundy. For these reasons Charles VI had no control over Burgundy. However, the Duke of Burgundy John the Fearless (the king’s first cousin) was regent for the king during periods of his illness, during which time he and Louis jockeyed for power through control over the king.
Note also the use of "was believed to be schizophrenic," which is grammatically anachronistic. That indicates people thought that in his own time.

2. “Charles and his brothers vowed revenge on their first cousin John the Fearless, the Duke of Burgundy, whom they accused of murdering their father in a power grab, intensifying the family civil war.”

— The civil war began after Louis’s assassination in 1407 (the article does not state the year) and as stated above, John the Fearless was Charles’s first cousin once removed. They also didn't even have to make the accusation, as Burgundy confessed to ordering Louis's death soon after. Despite the confession and the brutal nature of the murder and the fact it was the King's brother who'd been killed, Charles and his family had to forgive Burgundy, who defended his actions as killing a tyrant.

3. “It also put the young duke in his father-in-law’s Armagnac camp in the years-long French civil war between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians.”

— The Orleanist party had no leader after Louis’s death, until Bernard VII took control after Charles and Bonne were married. The party was renamed after Armagnac, so in reality Armagnac technically joined Charles’s side.

 4. “As battle after battle dragged on between the rival factions, Charles was captured and imprisoned by the Burgundians in 1415. While held prisoner in the Tower of London, he penned a poem to his wife the same year that he was captured at the Battle of Agincourt.”

— Charles was not taken prisoner by the Burgundians, he was captured by the English at the Battle of Agincourt as stated, which is why he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. He was imprisoned and kept imprisoned for years by King Henry V, most likely since he would be seen as a major threat to Henry's already shaky claim to the French throne.

5. “Beyond the Valentine he sent to Isabella, Charles wrote hundreds of other poems while in prison—many about love and nobility.” 

 — The recipient was Bonne d'Armagnac, his second wife. In all, Charles would be married three times: first to Isabelle d'Valois, daughter of the King (therefore Charles's cousin) and widow of King Richard II of England; second to Bonne d'Armagnac, daughter of the new head of the party Bernard VII Armagnac; and finally to Marie de Cleves in part of the end of the Burgundian-Armagnac Civil War (interestingly, she was the grandaughter of Burgundy. Yes, that Burgundy.). He and Marie would have three children, including the future King Louis XII of France.

There are also multiple omissions of things that'd be good to note, like who Isabelle was first married to, Richard II; the years of some of these events, and most disappointingly that Charles's mother was named Valentine! The most annoying omission is any form of bibliography. There are no citations, no further reading. This undermines any credibility and leaves the reader stranded. All of this information can be found in the encyclopedia.

If you're interested in Charles and his times and want a well-researched historical novel to get lost in, check out Hella S. Haasse's In a Dark Wood Wandering. I highly recommend it.

(If anything is wrong here, please contact me so I can correct it).

1“A Farewell to Love,” Wikisource, last modified November 2, 2016, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:A_Farewell_to_Love.

2“Thad Morgan, History’s Oldest-Known Valentine Was Written in Prison,” History Channel, last modified February 14, 2018, https://www.history.com/news/historys-oldest-known-valentine-was-written-in-prison.