Brunhild was a Visigothic princess, raised to be married off for the sake of alliance-building. Her sister-in-law Fredegund started out as a lowly palace slave.
And yet – in sixth-century Merovingian France, where women were excluded from noble succession and royal politics was a blood sport – these two iron-willed strategists reigned over vast realms for decades, changing the face of Europe.
The two queens commanded armies, developed taxation policies, established infrastructure and negotiated with emperors and popes, all the time fighting a gruelling forty-year civil war with each other.
Yet after Brunhild and Fredegund’s deaths, their stories were rewritten, their names consigned to slander and legend.
From the tangled primary evidence of Merovingian sources – the works of the chronicler Gregory of Tours and the Latin poet Venantius Fortunatus – award-winning writer Shelley Puhak weaves a gripping and intricate tale, its characters driven by ambition, lust and jealousy to acts of treachery and murderous violence.
The Dark Queens resurrects these two women in all their complexity, painting a richly detailed portrait of a shadowy era and dispelling some of the stubbornest myths about female power.
The Dark Queens by Shelley Puhak is published on 3 March, 2022.
Shelley is writing a feature about the two remarkable queens for Historia.
If you like the look of this book, you may enjoy reading Annie Whitehead‘s feature Anglo-Saxon women with power and influence and Magna Carta’s inspirational women by Sharon Bennett Connolly.
