Four Queens
The Provençal Sisters Who Ruled Europe

I think I read this somewhere before. At least the story seems familiar. You know the one I mean. The one about four beautiful princesses living in a medieval castle under the bluest sky deep in the South of France. Where four handsome noblemen arrive to marry them and sooner or later turn all the p......more

The flow of the narrative made this book very readable, and feel almost like reading a novel in places. While sometimes the book revolved more around the sisters' husbands than themselves, this can be attributed to the nature of the available historical sources. By taking the sisters as her subject,......more

4,25 stars- English Ebook Marguerite, Eleanor, Sanchia, and Beatrice of Provence were the daughters of Count Raymond Berenger of Provence and his wife Beatrice of Savoy. Their homeland occupied a strategic corner of southern Europe and was known for its wealth and high culture, making them highly de......more

Very well done and a good use of primary sources, but I think it suffers from the same problem a lot of books about female rulers do, namely that the author refuses to admit that the subject (in this case, Eleanor/wife of Henry III of England) was a bad ruler. Eleanor was smart, powerful, and comman......more

This book is about the four daughters of the Count of Provence (Raymond Berenger V, 1195-1245), all of whom became queens of various kingdoms throughout Europe. It's my first foray into the thirteenth century, making this book a good follow-up to Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life, which ends a few years......more