![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I finished reading The Lady Queen by Nancy Goldstone, a biography of Joanna I Queen of Naples. It covers the period of Italian history from her great-great-grand father's conquests in the 1200s to her death in 1382. Most relatable to those like me unfamiliar with medieval Italy, the book includes the beginning of the schism in the Catholic Church between the rival popes in Avignon and Rome and its immediate causes.
The book was difficult for me to read, not because of any problem with the writing, but because the subject matter was almost unrelentingly disturbing. I had to put the book aside after every dozen pages or so to take a breather. I've never read the Game of Thrones book nor seen any of that TV series. I read somewhere that that was loosely patterned after the Wars of the Roses. I've read several books covering the reign of Richard II and the Wars of the Roses, and (even though some of the victims of those English events were direct ancestors of mine) I never found that period of English history as unsettling as Queen Joanna's lifetime in Italy (which has nothing to do with my biological past).
Joanna's grandfather intended her to be the sole ruler of Naples and the rest of his wide holdings after his death. The fact that she mostly succeeded in being that for nearly 40 years is amazing considering the atmosphere of greed, bribery, betrayal, murder and outright war she lived in.
I have to applaud the author Goldstone for being able to follow all of the switching of loyalties through the period and making some sense of it for us. It's a good book for understanding how difficult it was for anyone to rule one of the medieval states of Italy. It's a good book for learning about one of the nearly forgotten important women in European history. It's not an easy book to digest, but it is a good lesson of what can happen if greed and power-madness become the center of a society.
The book was difficult for me to read, not because of any problem with the writing, but because the subject matter was almost unrelentingly disturbing. I had to put the book aside after every dozen pages or so to take a breather. I've never read the Game of Thrones book nor seen any of that TV series. I read somewhere that that was loosely patterned after the Wars of the Roses. I've read several books covering the reign of Richard II and the Wars of the Roses, and (even though some of the victims of those English events were direct ancestors of mine) I never found that period of English history as unsettling as Queen Joanna's lifetime in Italy (which has nothing to do with my biological past).
Joanna's grandfather intended her to be the sole ruler of Naples and the rest of his wide holdings after his death. The fact that she mostly succeeded in being that for nearly 40 years is amazing considering the atmosphere of greed, bribery, betrayal, murder and outright war she lived in.
I have to applaud the author Goldstone for being able to follow all of the switching of loyalties through the period and making some sense of it for us. It's a good book for understanding how difficult it was for anyone to rule one of the medieval states of Italy. It's a good book for learning about one of the nearly forgotten important women in European history. It's not an easy book to digest, but it is a good lesson of what can happen if greed and power-madness become the center of a society.