The Royal Succession - Maurice Druon

 The Royal Succession is the midpoint of The Accursed Kings sequence (The Strangled Queen, the second installment, is also reviewed on this blog, but my reading of The Iron King predates it).  Louis X, the strangler of queens, is dead, poisoned by his brother's mother-in-law, the giantess Mahaut, Countess of Artois.  Louis's second queen, Clemence of Hungary, is five months pregnant.  The late Louis already had a daughter by his first wife.  If a healthy son is born, the succession is clear.  If there's a second girl ... what then?

In the interim, someone must take charge.  The someone who succeeds is Louis's senior sibling, Philippe, Count of Poitiers.  Philippe is twenty-three; he has the political skills of his father and namesake, the Iron King, but not the military.  Philippe the younger is known as the Myope - he is acutely short-sighted.  On the plus side, he has the backing of his murderous mother-in-law.  By bricking up the cardinal electors in a cathedral, he is also able to secure the backing of the new pope, John XXII, formerly Cardinal Jacques Dueze - a pontiff so notorious that it was over 600 years before Rome dared allow John XXIII.

Most of Philippe's enemies are within the royal family, and therefore controllable.  Most are simply buyable.  But there are others, like Robert of Artois, whose lands have been appropriated for Mahaut and who is not even permitted to be in his nominal county.  Robert is the anarchic backbone of The Accursed Kings and his appearance always livens up proceedings.

Druon is the absolute master of historical background.  His knowledge of political wrangling through the ages is second to none.  His subject matter is so dark, so twisted and amoral, that it is only the rock-solid foundation in fact that makes it credible.  Frankly, it's no wonder that Druon was the literary hero of Republican France.  Not to everyone's taste, then, but certainly to mine.  My only reservation - I'm not entirely sure about the translation by Humphrey Hare.  It's a bit old-fashioned.  I wonder, are there are other translations?

The Strangled Queen - Maurice Druon

Book Two of what is said to have been a series which had enormous effect on George R R Martin. You can see why. Bloodshed, intrigue, adultery, and inbreeding between great royal and ducal houses, all of them closely related. Droun has either the advantage or disadvantage of it all being more or less historical fact.

Droun wrote The Accursed Kings (Les Rois maudits) between 1955 and 1977. The starting point is the destruction of the Knights Templar by Philip IV of France and his tame pope. The Order was accused of blasphemy but really the king and the pope just wanted their wealth. The Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, is burned at the stake. With his dying breath he curses the royal family - hence the title.

Inside a year Philip IV (the 'Iron King' of the first novel) is dead and his useless son Louis the Hutin (the 'hesitant') is on the throne. Louis and his younger brothers have all been married off to cousins who have all betrayed them with servants and attendants. Two of the sisters are still imprisoned at Richard the Lionheart's ironically-named Castle Galliard.  One of these, Marguerite, is now technically queen. But Louis is more than capable to embarrassing himself without her assistance. He wants the marriage annulled, and to achieve that he needs a pope. His great minister, Enguerrand de Marigny, naturally claims he can fix the problem. He had better, because King Louis's uncle, Charles of Valois, is after Marigny's head, and has the support of the giant Robert of Artois, friend and cousin of absolutely every member of the dynasty.

That is essentially the plotline of The Strangled Queen - in as near a nutshell as the tangled affairs of the House of Capet circa 1320 allow. The thing that makes Druon special among historical novelists is not merely than he can handle so much information, it is the lightness and ease of handling. Standard novelists would need 600 pages (we can only imagine how many massive volumes George R R Martin himself would require) bur Druon uses less than 300. To read him is a joy, and we should be grateful to Humphrey Hare for the expert translation. I have The Iron King here somewhere. I'm definitely going to re-read it.