De Como Un Rey Perdió Francia (2006) - Plot & Excerpts
WARNING: REVIEW FULL OF SPOILERS(view spoiler)[Après la malédiction des trépas rapides, la malédiction de la médiocrité. “After the curse of the sudden deaths, the curse of mediocrity…” This poignant observation sums up the book’s plotline, and is told by the narrator, Cardinal Talleyrand-Périgord, a Frenchman with sharp wits, a sharper tongue and a temperament that’d have made him more comfortable in the military orders of the likes of the Templars than as the Papal legate in charge of witnessing—and trying unsuccessfully to prevent—the disintegration of the kingdom he loves, courtesy of the latest of the long line of rois maudits to come into power since the passing away of ruthless yet efficient King Philip the Fair.It’s in the last days of the rule of the latter’s Valois grand-nephew, Jean II, that the narrative starts, with the elderly but still energetic and lucid Cardinal en route to fulfilling his latest mission on behalf of the Church, and in-between cursing the atrocious country roads and the numerous ailments of age, he recounts to his secretary and nephew the events of the past years since the waning years of the reign of Philippe VI de Valois, nearabouts the time of the shocking defeat at Crécy, when the now widowed king is refused by the courts the funds he demanded to counter the humiliation striking back at the English. The Cardinal, at this point, mostly wanders in circles offering his musings on politics, ruling, and expounds on the history and state of affairs in France, England, and gives more details than necessary about the ecclesiastical affairs in Rome and Avignon, which can tire the reader whether familiar with the time period or not, for it reads like historical infodump and is uninteresting. And, as he’s not a direct witness, the accounts he gives are second-hand and very tedious, and they’re peppered with an “I wasn’t there but I’m told that…” which made me long for the third person omniscient point of view that had been employed in the other six books. It’s also easy for the reader to be taken out of the mood and kicked out of submersion into the story by the abrupt changes of tone when the Cardinal interrupts his recounting with addresses to his secretary and nephew, or pauses to describe something that catches his eye on the road. That is the worst aspect of the book, and makes one wonder why Monsieur Druon would decide to experiment with such a different and, to me, distressingly different style that doesn’t work for this series. This is somewhat alleviated by the tidbits of court gossip that the ecclesiastic includes to make it more amenable, scandalous enough to be entertaining but never verging on the salacious. He tells about the last six months of Philippe VI, when the monarch scandalises the Court and the whole of Christendom by taking for himself the betrothed meant for his son and heir, little Blanche of Navarre, nubile and very beautiful, who excites in him such a passion that he goes to hilarious extents to improve his manly potency, killing himself out of exhaustion in half a year, leaving her a lusty widow and his Dauphin an embittered man who convinces himself that he loves the woman, but never takes her. Because, as kings never learn a thing from the missteps of fellow crowned heads, Jean II de Valois can only love men… and reenacts the unfortunate attachment of Edward II to Gaveston and Despenser. And, as with his English counterpart, this favourite will bring upon the royal head the wrath of the powerful barons when an honour too many is bestowed on him by the starry-eyed monarch. There’s no She-Wolf of France to light the fires of rebellion, but instead the grandson of the woman whose right of inheritance to the throne was overstepped: the king of Navarre and Count of Evreux, Charles the Bad. By now, the Cardinal is more involved in the unfolding events, being present at some and an active participant in others, so his narration has more of the first-hand eyewitness feel, though the second-hand information never disappears, thus the slowness of the start is compensated by the onslaught of chapters dealing with court intrigue, royal blunders, baronial squabbles, politicking, poverty and war to which we’d grown used in this series. And not only in France, for the Cardinal is well-acquainted with the English side of things, having been a legate to the London court as well, with whose king Edward III he’s used to clash almost as soon as they met each time, because one wants a “French France” and the Church’s right to meddle into earthly matters, and the other wants an “English France” and would be glad if the Church limited themselves to spiritual matters. Yet, despite these disagreements, the Cardinal feels a grudging respect for the English ruler and his son, the Prince of Wales, and laments that the “true Capetian” would’ve had to be born on the wrong side of the Channel whereas poor France has to suffer this king that’s as different from Philip the Fair as… as… as a tomato shrub from a majestic oak, with messieurs et mesdames’ permission to give my deep-seated antipathy free rein here.The tomato shrub manages to hop from one mistake to the next in personal and political matters. He first names Charles de la Cerda—“Monseigneur d’Espagne”—to the vital post of Condestable of France without any other qualifications but being his favourite, and he also gives him rich counties. The problem is, he gave the Spaniard the lands that had been that of Jeanne of Navarre, mother to Charles the Bad. Conceivably enraged, the offended Navarrese king arranges to ambush de la Cerda at an inn of a small town, where he, his brother Philippe d’Evreux and a small party stab the royal favourite to death. Far from serving as a wake-up call to Jean II to pay attention to his crumbling realm, this leaves him catatonic and wandering like a lost soul through the palace corridors, crying, which earns him the scorn of the Dauphin Charles. The murderers flee to England, where they ally themselves with Edward III, who forces the French to accept a damning treaty and be reconciled with Charles of Navarre, ceding him half of Normandy. This loses Jean the last shred of respect from his subjects, who grumble that “they killed his Condestable, he gave away half of Normandy. If they kill his brother or son, he’ll give away all of France.”The dynastic rift continues despite the apparent “reconciliation” and the marriage of Charles to Jean’s still nubile daughter; soon the king learns through the feeble-willed and sycophantic Jean d’Artois—son of my much-mourned Robert—that my lord of Navarre and a group of barons are plotting to overthrow and kill him to take the throne, with overseas backing, and decides to storm a banquet in Rouen held by the Dauphin, newly-anointed Duke of Normandy, in which he arrests The Bad and his weightier cronies, whom he’ll have beheaded in a lamentable show of executioner incompetence. Charles himself is saved from this fate by the pleading of the Dauphin and the higher-ranking court officials, the marshals of France, who argue that his death won’t deter the Navarrese rebels from continuing their hell-raising, as they’d be led by Philippe d’Evreux in his place, and also there are the brothers’ allies, the invading English troops of the Duke of Lancaster, to deal with. So Jean II consoles himself with subjecting Charles to a devious psychological torture designed to break his spirit and exact a petty vengeance for the murder of de la Cerda, at the castle where his grandmother was strangled by instigation of Jean’s grandfather de Valois. After the personal and political faux pas, the military ones follow. Jean II knows of warfare even less than about statesmanship, and it’s this ignorance what will ultimately doom him. He makes poor choices in his ravaging of the countryside, his pursuit of rebels and English, allows Lancaster to slip through his fingers by an astoundingly childish trick, has one enormous siege tower built only for it to be burnt on the first shock... And refuses the Church’s mediation before the Black Prince on the eve of the Battle of Poitiers, when at first it looks like there’ll be an agreement, he makes one unreasonable demand to which the English won’t agree: the surrender of the prince heir and a hundred noblemen. The exhausted Cardinal throws his hands up in despair and tells them all to go to hell with his blessing, not aware yet of how disastrous the fight will be for his king, his country and his only family. On the day of the battle, Jean II has 25,000 men, double than the Prince of Wales, and unable to forget his fear of repeating Crécy, makes an ironic choice of tactics: he forces the knights to dismount, cut their cavalry lances short and fight as infantry against the vastly outnumbered Welsh archers and English knights. Unfortunately for him, Edward of Woodstock decides on the opposite tactics of Crécy: he sends his knights to charge on horseback against the Frenchmen. Amidst the chaos and slaughter of the French nobility, the Dauphin, far from warrior-like and suffering from a painful hand deformity that discourages fighting, is forced to flee with his brothers, his uncle, and leaves his father to fight alone. Alone? Not really, his 14-year-old youngest son Philippe stays to fight side by side with Jean II till the end, being more of a nuisance than a help, though courageous for his age and inexperience. Courage is what also redeems the French king, who refuses to flee and fights like someone possessed whilst outnumbered by the English round him, and is made a prisoner. And there the tale ends, and the curtain falls as Cardinal Talleyrand-Périgord laments the defeat and offers some final thoughts on the fate of realms with kings like this one.If this review reads like I’m telling you the whole plot as likely is in the history books, it’s because the plot follows a line as straightforward as if it were for the history books. There’s the same dryness, the same fact-telling, and the lack of the “fictionalisation” element that can make a HF novel enjoyable. There’s no fictional characters that provide a window into certain scenarios like the Tolomei bankers; no Robert d’Artois to move the plot—Charles of Navarre had that potential and could have been if not for the POV—no great villains like Mahaut or Charles de Valois that you can love to hate. There’s just the Cardinal telling us about a bunch whose most definable quality is to be mediocre and on whom you can’t waste your emotions because they’re just too inane. Not only that: the style is different, with the point of view in first person that is so limiting and restricts the narrative potentialities by filtering events through the eyes of a single narrator. It wasn’t a good literary decision; it breaks the unity of the saga, and it comes at a too late stage for experimentations, serving mostly to make it look like a wholly different and standalone novel. The Accursed Kings had a natural ending in “The Lys and the Lion,” and this is like an epilogue that got out of hand. I’ve often wondered why Maurice Druon wrote this book that does such a disservice to his wonderful series, not finding one that could satisfy me. Until I had an idea earlier today that it could be symmetry. George R. R. Martin, a big fan of Druon, uses with regularity the technique of literary symmetry for the purposes of closing a cycle, introducing dramatic irony and paradox, coming full circle… And then my impression of “When a King Loses France” improved from disappointed grumbling to something like comprehension. The Accursed Kings may have ended in the 6th book, but the circle was still open and demanded closure. It had been Philip the Fair, the king who had practically made France by expanding it and empowering it, who’d brought about the curse upon his bloodline, so it had to be Jean II, who had to fulfil the curse through his predecessors’ and his own incompetence. One king made France, the other had to lose France. One king started the curse, the other had to complete it. Symmetry. Seen through that lens, the title is appropriate, the storyline makes sense, and the ending, though still abrupt, also makes sense.To conclude, this is more like a rescindable complement than a continuation of the series. Not to my personal liking, though surely it can be for others. (hide spoiler)]
Druon attempts to finish off (again) his 'The Accursed Kings' series with a novel that falls as flat as Jean II's attempt to flex his muscle across Western Europe. Before delving into the review, I must admit that without a proper English translation of the text, yet wanting to read the final act in this highly entertaining series, I was forced to push the text through an online translation page, leaving me with disjointed and somewhat literal translation of the text. It made for a sometimes horrific read, while I will discuss a little later on. Alas, the premise of this, the seventh book was to ressurect the sequence of events surrounding Jean II's desire to challenge Edward III and England's might in Western Europe. Told in a letter-type format, the novel follows some of France's key events that led to Jean II pushing his military might up against England and its allied kingdoms. Told from the perspective of Cardinal Périgord and eventually, as I could surmise, one or two of the actual popes, the novel shows the mounting intoxication that Jean II has and how the Church sought not only to mediate, but push itself from out of the control of France, moving away from Avignon and back to Rome. While the entire series has hinted at this drunken power of French kings, it is in this novel that the ultimate price is paid and Jean II leads his men into the trap that ultimately pushes them to the brink and leaves England as the European superpower, at least in its western kingdoms. So divorced from the rest of the series, readers need not invest time or energy (even if they read French, Spanish, or Russian; the three languages I have seen the text published in over the years).Druon's lament at the end of The Lily and the Lion should have been foreboding enough not to touch this book, but my desire to open my eyes and mind to the FULL collection got the better of me. How and why the novel's publication never made it into English should have been a sign, along with the lengthy time between the other six novels in the series and this piece of silliness. Druon should have woven this into a fully functional novel, using the recipe of success he so greatly presented before, but had to turn the tables on readers and historical fiction writing alike, producing this drivel simply to add another feather to his well-worn cap. Nothing can convince me that this novel stands proudly next to its others, as this was a true waste and nothing inspirational came from its pages. True, some will say that I used an amateur translation mechanism, but I could pick up enough of the gist to see how horrible an attempt to pair this novel up with the others ended up being. Shameful, in fact.I cannot leave this series without commenting on the seven (six, preferably) novels as a series. Druon was masterful as he wove the characters together and laid many a snare for his readers to find themselves in. While the novels are not monumental in length, their numerous characters over a time period make attentiveness truly important and the details all the more rewarding. Readers with a keen sense of history will surely enjoy how truth and fiction mate nicely on the page, leaving the historical record in tact, but still filling in some gaps with drama more interesting than might have been spun at the time. The series has all the keys to a great dramatic series with the great Jean I mystery left unresolved, at least within the confines of the novel's time period. The premise was first rate and the characters were superb. Now then, if only one could cleve that seventh novel from an otherwise stellar series.For shame, M. Druon, in this seventh novel. You have done little to further the cause of the novel or the series with this subpar piece of work.
What do You think about De Como Un Rey Perdió Francia (2006)?
This book deals with the consequences of the events described in the previous six novels. For the most part it is a monologue delivered by Cardinal Talleyrand-Périgord as he travels hundreds of miles in his palanquin. This pompous and opinionated bore and vicious gossip relates the events since the start of the Hundred Years' War, and he rants about King John (Jean) II who is currently on the throne. His passengers do not only remain silent through his diatribes, but they also remain invisible to us in the sense that nothing is revealed about them. Their only purpose is as audience to the cardinal. (One cannot blame Dom Calvo for getting sick in a palanquin!)The characterisation of the cardinal is very good (allowing me to apply all the above adjectives). When the cardinal speaks of himself (modestly of course!), it is he who suitably intervenes, resolves problems, negotiates successfully and attempts to broker peace. Everyone one else in the novel is simply a product of the cardinal's opinion. As he criticises others, his own defects are revealed.The cardinal is however, in between gossip, able to clearly describe the horrendous devastation of the plague as well as the raids and pillaging by the Black Prince and Lancaster (John of Gaunt). As the cardinal rants, we are left in no doubt that King Jean, led by impulse rather than reason, made some bad errors of judgement. King John the Good by name, but not by action. This of course leads to the battle of Poitiers, which the cardinal as peace negotiator is able to describe in detail.If you're expecting dazzling dialogue, daring adventure and sizzling romance you'll probably be disappointed. In fact, unless you are very interested in the Hundred Years' War, you might find this final instalment of an excellent series boring. I am fascinated by the Hundred Years' War and I love Maurice Druon's writing, his subtle humour and irony, but I would not like to be a hapless passenger in the cardinal's palanquin and were I to be invited I might also be prone to sickness in palanquins. By the end of the journey one might have, like John of Artois "...a brain like mortar that has begun to set.".At first I dithered between rating this novel two or three stars; once I got to parts two and three I changed my mind.
—Marita
This final volume was very disappointing after reading all of the previous books in this series. It was written later, and in a totally different style. The entire story was narrated from the perspective of a cardinal on a journey telling his nephew about the recent past and the current political scene in France and Western Europe from a completely one-eyed and self-centred perspective. While the attitude shown was authentic, it did not make great reading. I do not believe that this volume is essential to the original series theme of the demise of the Capetian dynasty and the succession of the Valois.
—Tony Phillips
Creo que no le había puesto tanta atención cuando lo leí hace poco más de 6 años. Al inicio la lectura es cansada, ya que es contada a través del cardenal Talleyrand-Périgord, y se supone que se la está contando a su sobrino mientras va de camino. A veces el cardenal en su relato se pierde entre sus recuerdos, y esto hace que se vuelva aburrida en momentos. Todos los personajes que estaban en los 6 libros anteriores ya están muertos, y si se sintió simpatía por alguno de ellos, pues este libro no será de su agrado.Por otro lado, la historia contada por el cardenal es interesante, ya que va encadenando los acontecimientos que llevaron a Juan II de Valois a, literalmente, perder Francia en manos de los ingleses. Es lo valioso de esta serie de libros: el estilo narrativo no será el mejor, pero relaciona los hechos históricos de manera coherente.
—Diego
