{"id":13877,"date":"2014-08-11T16:27:24","date_gmt":"2014-08-11T20:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=13877"},"modified":"2014-08-11T16:28:39","modified_gmt":"2014-08-11T20:28:39","slug":"emma-campion-a-triple-knot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2014\/08\/11\/emma-campion-a-triple-knot\/","title":{"rendered":"Emma Campion: A Triple Knot<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

A\u00a0 Triple Knot<\/em> (2014), by Emma Campion, is a historical novel based on the tumultuous and true life of a fourteenth-century Englishwoman who, as cousin to the king, was a member of the royal court. Campion\u2019s novel follows Joan, The Fair Maid of Kent, over a sweep of 23 years,\u00a0from 1338 to 1361. It gives nothing away to say that Joan marries a knight in secret at the age of twelve, then is married off, as the property of the king, to another royal. After ten years, Joan and her loyal knight win an annulment from the pope, and they are reunited. The knight dies after the couple has had five children, and the beautiful Joan is then snatched up to become the wife and future queen of The Black Prince. Thus, the triple knot of the title: Joan has not only two husbands at once, but in the background, there is always the lure of the Black Prince.<\/p>\n

\"Review
Review copy courtesy of Broadway Books.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Emma Campion is the pseudonym of Candace Robb, the American Ph.D and author of thirteen mysteries set in fourteenth century England. When Robb published The King\u2019s Mistress<\/em>, her publisher advised a pseudonym, so that readers used to her mysteries would accept the new, broader ambition of the book. Robb has a loyal following for her mysteries, books in which her main character is able to interact with all walks of life, something which is less possible in a book whose main character is a member of the royal court.<\/p>\n

In \u201cA Writer\u2019s Retreat\u201d (here<\/a>) Candace Robb and her alter ego, Emma Campion, maintain a fascinating blog on the writer\u2019s life. I found this blog as interesting as the novel. Robb\/Campion writes lucidly and at length about the process of creating historical fiction.<\/p>\n

A Triple Knot<\/em> has a specific audience: medieval history buffs who like historical fiction, women who want to imagine the constrained lives of women in earlier times, people looking for a summer read, and enthusiasts such as the re-enactors who make up the Society for Creative Anachronism.<\/p>\n

The novel ends just as Joan\u2019s marriage to the Black Prince begins. She bears him two children. Although Edward dies before his father and Joan never becomes Queen, she does enjoy the privileges of being the mother of the next king, Richard II.<\/p>\n

Murder, betrayal, secrets, and spies abound. Around the time Joan was born, Edward II was deposed by, among others, his wife, and died in prison. Joan\u2019s father took the wrong side in the aftermath, and he was executed by the Queen and her lover. Said Queen\u2019s lover was later murdered by the Crown Prince (the Black Prince) when the prince was only sixteen. Not only did Joan grow up in the shadow of her father\u2019s violent death, her secret husband\u2019s father was also the victim of a royal feud. With such a backdrop, it is not hard to imagine that Joan and her knight might be soul mates — reckless soul mates. The entirety of A Triple Knot<\/em> has the fever of Hamlet<\/em>, with all its scheming and many deaths. Indeed, Campion’s\u00a0epigraph hearkens to Hamlet<\/em> as it is from Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead<\/em>: \u201cThere must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said — no. But somehow we missed it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This imagined life of the Fair Maid of Kent tells her story from several perspectives: Joan herself; Joan\u2019s mother, Queen Philippa; Katerina, the wife of a very rich Antwerp merchant; Efa, the Welsh healer; and Lucienne, Joan\u2019s rival, Lucienne being the knight\u2019s lover. As such, the book is a survey of the situations and options faced by a woman in the royal court. Campion takes her women seriously, but the recklessness which typifies Joan underlies the entire book; the thesis appears to be that when murder and intrigue are the court\u2019s bread and butter, you\u2019d better be pretty quick on your feet.<\/p>\n

One of the pleasures of the book is that it is a saga:\u00a0 it covers a span of almost forty years, and it details the progress of several families. Campion keeps the plot grounded in the details of time and place, and she brings it all to life with costume, battle and plague. She emphasizes a character\u2019s narrow point of view: in this society, there\u2019s always a Judas lurking in the crowd, and the gossip is not idle. Dismemberment, kidnapping, imprisonment, and death are part of everyday court life in 1350. As such, it is an entertaining read.<\/p>\n

But having to cover so much historical and social ground, I found the novel\u2019s characters’ psychological authenticity to be thin or even unbelievable, especially as children and adolescents. And what would prompt a 24-year-old man to marry a twelve-year-old girl is insufficiently explored.<\/p>\n

The language is somewhat stilted. There\u2019s many a thrice, and twelve-year-old Joan says things like, \u201cI dreamed of Ned in battle with the bloodlust upon him.\u201d Nevertheless, the novel is a different world, and often what we require of entertainment is that it take us to a different place. This it does.<\/p>\n

My husband is both a professional historian and an amateur buff of medieval English history. We are taking a trip to Sussex in September, in search of castles and kings, and we will do a jaunt\u00a0this month\u00a0to see what the Society for Creative Anachronism has on view in Groton, Massachusetts. So I enjoyed the lively preview offered by A Triple Knot<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Betsy reviews Emma Campion’s historical novel, A Triple Knot<\/em>, which centers on court intrigue in fourteenth-century England. Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13878,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[651],"tags":[],"coauthors":[504],"class_list":["post-13877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-emma-campion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/A-Triple-Knot.jpg?fit=324%2C500&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-3BP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13877"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13911,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13877\/revisions\/13911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13877"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=13877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}