KATHERINE SWYNFORD Paperback – International Edition, August 7, 2008

How do you write the biography of a woman who died six hundred years ago, has no extant letters or even a will, and is only mentioned briefly in official documents and occasionally and mostly negatively in contemporary accounts? It might seem an impossible task, but the well regarded historian Alison Weir has accomplished it, and successfully, in this account of the life of Katherine Swynford, Duchess of Lancaster in the reigns of Kings Richard II and Henry IV of England.Katherine has had a bad press through the centuries. Although widely praised for her beauty and charm, she was regarded as a courtesan and practically a prostitute because she was the mistress of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and son of King Edward III, for many years, bearing him four children before finally marrying him in middle age. After her death she became a target for political opponents of the Lancastrian Kings and of her own Beaufort descendants, many of whom felt ashamed of her. Nevertheless, Katherine is a distant grandmother of every British monarch since 1461, of at least six US Presidents, and of countless other people (including me, I'm proud to say).Alison Weir accomplished her herculean task by amassing an enormous amount of data. This yielded much material, such as where Katherine must have been living, when her children were most likely born, what she was wearing, and what her emotions were at different times. Of necessity Weir includes many "must have beens" and "perhaps she felts" and "possiblys" in her reconstruction of Katherine's life. Fortunately Katherine lived her life in the well documented English court as companion of John of Gaunt, one of the most important men in at least two kingdoms for much of his life, so there's a lot of information available. I was pleased to read that Katherine was well liked by many people and that she was indisputably as intelligent and shrewd as she was beautiful. I also enjoyed Weir's appendix discussing Anya Seton's novel Katherine, which I read many years ago but have never forgotten.Mistress of the Monarchy will appeal to students of English and women's history. Its another worthy production by Alison Weir, who I hope will continue to chronicle English medieval history for many years to come.

Alison Weir has the talent of dissecting any historical event and then translate them into a comprehensive and fascinating book.This one is no exception. It is an engrossing and complete description of the life of Katherine Sywinford, John of Gaunt an all the events that took place in 14th century England.I own several of Alison Weir's books and this one is one of my favorite.Strongly recommend it!

Alison Weir's new biography of Katherine Swynford (1350-1403) is compelling and almost novelistic in detail, fleshed out with information about the people around Katherine, including the English royals and Geoffrey Chaucer (her brother-in-law).Weir paints a nicely detailed picture of the late fourteenth century (including feudalism, the plague, the Church, capitalism, national and international politics, and social mores)--and an impressionistic portrait of Katherine and even her character emerges. (This is a pleasant contrast to Jeannette Lucraft's continual complaints about the paucity of information about Katherine and her character in another recent, but much less enjoyable, book on Katherine.) Weir weaves in details of the royals' financial records to good effect, for instance, drawing out patterns associated to the births of Katherine's illegitimate children. Weir also speculates candidly and sometimes persuasively on details that can't be ascertained from the sources.Katherine was born into the knightly family of Roet in Hainault (a historical county in what is now Belgium and France). The Roets probably had connections to the ruling family of Hainault, and Katherine traveled to England as a young girl in the train of Philippa, daughter of the Count of Hainault and future queen of Edward III. Thus Katherine had the best upbringing possible in the 14th century--one in the royal court--and that she was able to rise to such an important position from relatively humble birth.In her late teens, Katherine also married a knight in the royal circle, Hugh Swynford, who had a little property and by whom she had three or four children. Around this time Katherine became attached to the household of Blanche, heiress to the Lancastrian duchy and cousin to the King. In 1359, Blanche married John of Gaunt (1340-1399), the third son of Edward III and Philippa. Much like the marriage of the King and Queen, theirs was a love match as well as a dynastic one--Blanche had seven children, including the future Henry IV. The material aspect of their marriage was soon fulfilled when Blanche's father and sister died and John inherited the Lancastrian lands in his wife's right; soon after, the king created him Duke of Lancaster in 1362.Unfortunately for John, Blanche died shortly after giving birth in 1369. Hugh Swynford died several years later, leaving Katherine a widow just when John of Gaunt was arranging his political marriage to Constance of Castile, who had a claim to that throne through her father. This marriage was not a happy one--Katherine became the governess of the Duke's children and his mistress within months of his wedding. (This was after Swynford's death, Weir persuasively argues.)During the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, John's London palace was destroyed, and understanding this as God's judgement on his immoral private life, he pubicly renounced Katherine. Arguing against the Lucraft's claim that the affair resumed quietly when the furor died down, Weir makes a convincing argument that John and Katherine resisted temptation and did not become lovers again until their marriage more than a decade later. She cites in particular the fact that Katherine had no more children by John--she'd borne four Beauforts in the nine years of their affair, and she was still young enough to bear more.After Constance's death, John obtained a papal dispensation, married Katherine in 1396 (the obstacle was that he had stood godfather to one of her Swynford sons), and legitimated their Beaufort children. Her marriage to the most powerful man in England put Katherine in a very select society--only a few other mistresses who married their royal lovers spring to mind: Anne Boleyn, Madame de Maintenon (Louis XIV's second wife), and the current Duchess of Cornwall. Richard II had always liked Katherine, and the nobility gradually accepted her.After John of Gaunt's death in 1399, Katherine retired to the country, probably due to ill health (maybe the venereal disease that probably killed the Duke), and kept out of the political turmoil that followed. Her children were quite involved, but on the side of Henry IV (at least privately). She died in 1403, the mother of rich and powerful children (one was almost elected Pope) who would have illustrious descendants of their own. Her granddaughter Joan Beaufort married James I of Scotland; another granddaughter, Cecily Neville, married Richard, Duke of York, and was the mother of two kings; her great-great-grandson Henry Tudor ended the Wars of the Roses in 1485 and founded the Tudor Dynasty. Several American presidents are descended from Katherine.Two things mar this otherwise enjoyable book: an annoying occurence of wrongly placed hyphens (perhaps from a previous typesetting), and overly precise modern equivalents of ancient monetary amounts (e.g., on page 41, she has 4000 pounds back then being equivalent to 1,075,396 pounds now--surely the uncertainty of the conversion factor is large enough that saying "about 1 million pounds" would be better).Notwithstanding those small criticisms, Weir should be applauded for elucidating the life of an unfamiliar but important figure in English history. I would recommend this book to fans of Weir's books and Anya Seton's Katherine--and to anyone interested in medieval society.

Alison Weir's lucid writing creates a clear and exciting picture of the life of two of the most important characters in Medieval English History, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and Katherine Swynford, his children's governess, his mistress and later his wife. On September 1, 1396 Pope Boniface IX pronounced the powerful Duke's marriage to Katherine and their four bastard children legitimate. Soon King Richard II, John of Gaunt's nephew, gave English legal status to the marriage and their children. Their lives, loves, politics and intrigues set the stage that creates the genealogy of the current British Monarchy and beyond. This book is a MUST read for anyone wanting to understand Medieval power politics and its relationship to France, Spain, the Papacy, love, marriage, bastardy, war, taxes, rebellion and the families of the Kings and Queens of Medieval England and today.

I love my books so I'm finally trying kindle !I have many Allison books and she writes like I'm watching a play on the stage! I can get lost in them!

Worth reading if you like historical reading

The book is almost unavailable now.

La Weir riesce a costruire una biografia anche su pochi indizi e ci riporta nellìInghilterra della guerra delle Due Rose

The late Queen Mother is supposed to have said that titled and powerful men do not marry their mistresses. Well, we know that she was very wrong on this her brother-in-law did and her grandson too. But she had point as such men usually did or do not as like the late Sir James Goldsmith said that this "leaves a job vacancy".One of the few exceptions was Katherine Swynford: she made it from royal mistress to royal wife. She had been for more than 20 years the mistress of Prince John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster and titular King of Castile, before they were married and she became even for a very short period only - England's first lady. What caused scandal today was even more scandalous in the 14th century and this reputation sticked to Katherine. However, the reality of it all was quite different. Katherine was a well educated woman of her time, who managed her own destiny and estates, managed to hold the love and esteem of the royal duke, her children by him, the Beauforts, were not only legitimated but became well respected and highly intelligent members of England's ruling class and their off-springs became England's monarchs. On top she was held in high esteem by King Richard II and her step-son king Henry IV. This alone, is already quite an achievement.Alison Weir follows the destiny of Katherine in a brilliant way. She simply has indeed a unique talent to tell a story. Her reputation as one of the foremost popular historians is well justified. As there are limited sources available she put things into perspective, analyses the sources and the "agenda" of the writers. She re-creates the life of Katherine in an understandable way and is academically correct without being scholarly. All this helps to understands better life and times of Katherine Swynford.I appreciated very much the whole of the book: genealogical tables, the illustrations and the appendix on Anya Seton's novel "Katherine" made the book a great reading experience.I do not share the criticism other reviewers' on the maybes because Katherine Swynford left nothing behind, we have nothing written by her and nothing about what she thought or said. Well, this is not the 18th century when people tended to write long letters. We are in the 14th century and direct evidence is scare. We have to fill gaps by deduction. And here Mrs. Weir is honest by pointing out when she makes an informed guess. I find it usually more irritating when a guess is presented as a fact.I feel less happy that she portraits the Duke of Lancaster in a too favourable light. It is a bit of a whitewash. This applies as well to the relationship of Katherine and the Duke which was against the public morale of the time. Maybe she is a bit too one-sided.But this does devaluated this great book. I enjoyed to 100% and can only recommend it.