This remarkable recreation of the action-packed century that saw the murder of Thomas Becket and the signing of the Magna Carta covers the lives and reigns of the first five Plantagenet queens, who ruled England and France throughout the bloody 1200s, a particularly dramatic and violent period of European history. Wars, crusades, treachery, murder, passion, and the interplay between rival monarchs of Britain and France provide a surprising picture of these five ambitious women and their struggle for power. The queens covered in the book are Eleanor of Aquitaine, Berengaria of Navarre, Isabella of Angouleme, Alienor of Provence and Eleanor of Castile. One of these queens became legendary when, accompanying her husband on crusade, she saved his life by sucking the blood from his poisoned-arrow wound. Equally intriguing are the descriptions of their marriages, including one that was extremely tempestuous, and one that was a love match turned sour when the jealous husband discovered his queen's infidelity and retaliated by killing her lovers and hanging their bodies from the canopy of her bed. This second volume of historian Alison Weir's critically acclaimed Medieval Queens series brings these unfamiliar, fascinating royals to life, demonstrating how very much they resemble self-determining women of our own time.