Queen Emma and the Vikings : Power, Love, and Greed in 11th Century England
Book Tracking
Sign up to add this book to your recommneded, reading, or planned reading list.
Book Cover
Hardcover
Book Details
Written by Harriet O'Brien.
Buy this on Amazon
($24.95)
Editorial Review (from Amazon.com)
Emma, one of England's most remarkable queens, made her mark on a nation beset by Viking raiders at the end of the Dark Ages, a period often neglected by conventional history. At the center of a triangle of Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, and Normans all jostling for control of England, Emma was a political pawn who became a power broker and an unscrupulous manipulator. By birth a Norman, Emma spent the majority of her life on English soil. She was married to two kings of England and outlived both; she was twice driven into exile; while mourning the untimely loss of one son, she was devastated by the murder of another; she saw two of her sons crowned; she was stripped of her powers when her eldest son became king; and she eventually retired from public life as a dowager queen whose land and wealth had been restored. Regarded by her contemporaries as a generous Christian patron, a regent admired by her subjects, and a Machiavellian mother, Emma was, above all, a survivor: hers was a life marked by dramatic reversals of fortune.
User Reviews (1) Login or create an account to write a review.
Fence thinks this book is Worth Reading.
This is the story of Queen Emma, by birth a Norman, who married two kings of England. Her first marriage was as peacemaker between her family and England. Her second came about because Cnut defeated her first husband and came to power. She was, in effect, the spoils.
But Emma was not a woman to be taken lightly, nor was she one to sit back and let events unfold. This book attempts to show her as an active, manipulating Queen, one who held power in her own right.
The problem of course is that there really isn’t all that much evidence left to us today about the people of the 11th century. And what does remain may not be strictly true. Emma herself commissioned a book to be written about the times she lived through. But this cannot be believed as it is not merely a recording of events, but a piece of political propaganda. Despite the lack of evidence, O’Brien has created an interesting, readable book. I’m too sure if her method of interspersing speculation and motivation of character really ever worked for me. But overall it is an interesting account of a woman I’d never heard of before.