Caroline's Reviews > Captive Queen: A Novel of Eleanor of Aquitaine

I'm going to say right off the bat that I have mixed feelings on Alison Weir. On the one hand, her biographies range from good to "Hold on, what." Her credentials are... debatable. I can't really judge, as she's done a lot of her research... But lacks the degree, and that troubles me whenever I'm reading one of her non-fiction books. On a scale of Retha Warnicke to Antonia Fraser, she's somewhere in between. The bias always shows through--oh, gee, I wonder if she favors Anne Boleyn or Catherine of Aragon--and she tends to cash in on scandalous rumors, as seen in her book about the fall of Queen Anne. However, she can write, and I enjoyed "The Lady Elizabeth" as a guilty pleasure. She knows about the period, and makes sure to play to that cardinal rule of giving an author's note that explains the authenticity of the information. So she dodges that pet peeve.

I don't know why "Captive Queen" was so difficult to enjoy. After reading "The Lady Elizabeth", I wasn't expecting incredible accuracy or revolutionary storytelling. But this... It read like a bodice-ripper so much of the time. Don't get me wrong; I'm not a book snob, and am very open to bodice-rippers. However, I dislike it when books hide behind one image when they're actually another, which is what "Captive Queen" is guilty of. Another problem is that Eleanor of Aquitaine really deserves better than to spend most of her book worrying about her husband and whether or not they're having sex. Yes, she had affairs, and yes, she was sexually voracious. If you know anything about Eleanor, you're aware of that. However, Weir knows that there is more to her and she doesn't show it. It's not incredibly offensive, as it was in "The Borgia Bride"--it's irritating.

What about Eleanor's strategy, her confidence? What about her control in the relationship, rather than Henry's? There was something around an eleven year age difference between the two, in Eleanor's advantage. Surely she lent wisdom and had something of a controlling factor at first. Henry wasn't nearly as motivated to take the throne until he hooked up with Eleanor. Why didn't Weir exploit that? What could have been a novel about a defiant and courageous woman turns Eleanor into a sexy battered wife. (She also suffers from historical fiction heroine syndrome, again: so beautiful, even when she's in her sixties in an age without cosmetics or anti-aging remedies.)

I also felt that, in a third-person, multi-perspective novel, Weir could have spent less time on Eleanor's more mundane thoughts and Henry's sexual adventuries, and more on the development of their sons. Where was Richard's conflict, for instance, over his sexuality? We don't know.

It's not that the book is terrible. It's just... not enough, and far less than what the author is capable of.