Book Review: The Forsaken Monarch
The line of historical fiction is a very thin one. An author can land so deep in the fiction she commits malpractice against history, or she can meticulously report history to the point of losing all storylines and the attention of most readers. Historical fiction set in middle Medieval Europe, with knights and castles and princesses, mostly trend in the first category by way of Tennysonesque romanticism. By contrast, Amy Mantravadi’s series of books about the Empress Mathilda is historical fiction that manages to weave actual historic detail into a gripping story.
The Forsaken Monarch is the second installment of the Chronicles of Maud. The first book, The Girl Empress, released in late 2017, focused on the childhood of Mathilda, daughter of England’s Henry I, wife of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V. Mantravadi walks the child bride from her Norman English upbringing, to her early adolescent betrothal and subsequent coronation as Empress of the Holy Roman Emperor, into her own adulthood. As eventful as Maud’s early years, however, the pivotal moment of her life was the accidental death of her only full brother, her father’s only legitimate son. This lynchpin is where Mantravadi leaves her Girl Empress protagonist.
The Forsaken Monarch picks up where The Girl Empress left off. Maud faces her grief at the loss of her brother, and her mother, as she navigates the political landscape of the Holy Roman Empire, her own childlessness, and the implications of being her father’s only legitimate heir. Widowhood sends her back to the England she left as a child, and the political entanglements only increase. Empress Maud, married at twelve, and widowed in her twenties, has to find her place in the complexity and interplay of 12th-century European royalty.
This second book, like its Empress, is more mature. The Girl Empress is written in an older style and reads like the memoir it is styled to be. In The Forsaken Monarch, the story flows more organically. Childhood marriage and adolescent coronations were historic and accurate parts of Maud’s life, but the childless widow looking for love and identity is a Maud we can all identify with. Mantravadi weaves the true details of the Empress’ life into a compelling narrative driven by Maud, rather than the forces around her. It is in this novel that we see Empress Mathilda of Norman blood becoming the woman history remembers her to be.
History is truly front and center here. This is no Disney princess tale. Maud’s castles are cold, often unfinished, and violent places. Her personal knight, Drogo, is a soldier, a bodyguard, and a companion, but there is no mythical chivalric code or romanticized courtly connection. Mantravadi’s research extends from the political and religious controversies of the time to the details of streets and layout of various historic buildings. She quotes period-appropriate hymns, prayers, and phrases, and has endnotes to offer both appropriate translation and source material. Set in a time some call “the dark ages,” both books tell the period as it was, not as popular culture wants it to be.
Mathilda is known in history primarily for the last third of her life. It is this final act that will be featured in the anticipated final book of the series. Amy Mantravadi has given readers the chance to learn about the whole of Maud’s life and in doing so has honored not only a great woman of history but also an underrepresented and poorly understood period of English and European history. I hope Amy Mantravadi will receive the recognition her research and writing deserve.
