La Loi des mâles by Maurice Druon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Yikes—You, two, Philippe? La Loi des males (the law of men), the fourth novel in Les Rois Maudits (the Cursed Kings), continues Maurice Druon’s absorbing autopsy of the epic fall of France as a superpower in the early 14th century. After over 300 years of the blessed rule of eleven long-reigning kings, the Capetians are said now to be cursed, for eighteen months after the Iron King Philip the Fair died, his successor and son Louis X (the Quarrelsome) has died, presumed to have been poisoned (a dog expired after licking Louis’ bloody bandages). The situation at the start of this novel is fluid and flammable: Louis died leaving his second wife Clemence several months pregnant and a five-year-old daughter by his first wife Marguerite, whom he had killed in prison to enable him to marry a less adulterous and more pious woman, and now the girl’s uncle the Duke of Bourgogne is promoting her claim to succeed Louis, while Louis’ uncle Charles Valois is eager to become the Regent for the fetus inside Queen Clemence. Still more. Louis’ capable and ambitious younger brother Philippe is off in Lyon trying to get the Conclave of Cardinals to choose a France-friendly Pope and could return at any time to make his own play to become Regent. And let’s not forget the fractious Flemish, the starving populace, the dry treasury, and the long-running d’Artois family feud between the giantess Mahaut and her giant nephew Robert! Getting tangled up in that power politics plot is the doomed romance between the young Lombard money lender Guccio Baglioni and the poor country aristocrat girl Marie Cressy. And yes the world is run by the law of men, women largely being awfully treated, like the village women in d’Artois counties raped by Robert d’Artois and his men on their pillaging spree, or Queen Clemence being denied any role in serving as regent for her own baby son, or Blanche the wife of Louis’ younger brother Charles still going mad in a dungeon for having committed adultery, or Marie Cressy being forced to serve as wet nurse for the Queen and being denied access to her husband Guccio. The only woman somewhat free from the law of men seems to be Mahaut d’Artois, the formidable psychopath with a fondness for potions and poison. Twenty-five-year-old Philippe is a likeable, capable, cool, calculating, myopic (literally) guy who’s willing to bend rules, play hardball, intimidate, bribe, confine, or ally with enemies, accept regicide to get the power he believes (and is probably right) he is the most qualified to wield, and then to need a bit of comfort from his wife. Mahaut turns into an ever-scarier monster, while Robert is a larger-than-life, foul-mouthed, self-centered, shrewd, brutal, raping, scheming, bullying thug. I am glad he’s in the series, but I sure wish he’d get his comeuppance (as in finally being exiled from d’Artois). After recovering from her long debilitating illness and feeling that being good didn’t do her any good, Clemence undergoes a fascinating metamorphosis from a frugal, pious, modest Queen to an extravagant hedonist widow, throwing a fortune away on entertainment (with handsome young men) and rare gourmet foods, counting her jewels, and lolling about the palace in see-through-fabrics. Guccio and Marie are sweet, but we were told in the third novel when they parted that it was the last time they’d ever see each other again. Guccio’s uncle Tolomei does his best for the young couple (while keeping an eye out for the main business chance), but his usual shrewd eye deserts him when dealing with Clemence’s protector Bouville and his appallingly practical wife. The 72-year-old Cardinal Dueze gets barely three hours of sleep a night while researching theology, law, medicine, alchemy, corresponding with umpteen VIPs, reasoning in his private time that there probably isn’t any heaven or hell (or God), all while finding time to do some astrology to calculate the most propitious time to try to become Pope. I feel worst about what happens to Marie than to what happens to anyone in the first four books. Unlike the Templar Grandmaster, the squire lovers of Marguerite and Blanche, Enguerrand de Marigny, and Louis Hutin, et. al., Marie is harmless, innocent, and pure. She’s not physically tortured or burnt at the stake (yet), but jeeze. I’m upset by Druon’s treatment of her, and I’m hoping she’s a real historical figure, not a character he created to torment! By the way, one wonders how Druon came upon much of this history if it was such a secret and all! I imagine he read some historical rumors? Louis Hutin’s death, for instance, is said by Wikipedia (for what it’s worth) to have been due to illness and not to poison. Will Mahaut’s poisonous activities (according to Druon) ever be exposed, then? I’m itching to check online about it all but will refrain till I finish the last book. Like the first three novels in the series, this one features compelling characters, interesting historical details, riveting scenes (like a cool surrender, an appalling baptism, and a suspenseful coronation), great writing, and provocative foreshadowing bombs (like “The time of punishment [for Philippe] was just starting”) Also as in the first three novels, Druon is keen to demonstrate how our successes (especially those for which we have sacrificed a wee bit of our integrity) do not always bring unalloyed joy. I’m onto the fifth book, intrepidly but trepidatiously. View all my reviews
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Jefferson Peters
This blog is for book reviews. Please feel free to comment on any of the reviews! Categories
All
Archives
May 2024
Jefferson's books
by Sabaa Tahir
A Young Adult Epic Fantasy with Lots of Violence & Romance
Elias is an elite Martial soldier, Laia a naïve Scholar slave. As they alternate telling their stories (in trendy Young Adult first person, present tense narration), we soon rea...
"It must be due to some fault in ourselves"--
George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) is an anti-totalitarian-communist allegory in which the exploited animals of the Manor Farm kick Farmer Jones out and set about running the farm. At first...
by Lu Xun
Perfect Stories of Life in Early 20th Century China
Chinese Classic Stories (1998) by Xun Lu is an excellent collection of seven short stories by perhaps the most important 20th century Chinese writer of fiction. Lu Xun (1881-1936) stu...
Fine Writing, Great Characters, Immersive World
The Surgeon's Mate (1980) is the 7th novel in Patrick O'Brian's addicting series of age of sail novels about the lives, loves, and careers of the British navy captain Jack Aubrey and the ...
An Overwritten, Oddly Compelling Gothic Father
Matthew Lewis' notorious and influential Gothic novel The Monk (1796) takes place during the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition. Ambrosio, the monk/friar/abbot/idol of Madrid, is nicknamed ...
|
My Fukuoka University