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La Dama de Europa
Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of England and France, travels to Castile in the company of her friend and confidant, the Druid Blédhri, who wants to leave a written record of the queen's eventful life. The journey is long and tedious, but nothing daunts the great queen, who has had to deal with all manner of difficulties and dangers in order to fulfil the mission that fate and her iron will have set her: to be the Lady of Europe. During her travels Eleanor looks back on her life: her marriage, her difficult relationship with and divorce from Louis VII of France; her marriage to the Plantagenet Henry II, the Second and Third Crusades, the lives of her children and stories from her life. Ara Antón introduces readers to the fascinating but harsh Middle Ages, its continuous struggles and political conflicts, in a land of deeply rooted customs.
La Dama de Europa is a semi-fictional account of the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine, who is a well-known and influential figure in British history. The book is based on her extraordinary life, which for a woman in the twelfth century was even more remarkable. She was one of the most powerful women of her time, born into the rich and sophisticated court of Aquitaine, where she was a Duchess in her own right.
Ara Antón is faced with quite a task of portraying in a fictional genre nearly a century of European history, which included many significant and complicated historical events, and one of the ways in which she successfully does this is by elaborating a personal story in the current day and using memories sparked by the journey and its events to provide insight into the time and switch backwards and forwards in the life of Eleanor.
(…) such a translation would be ideal for the British market, as Eleanor of Aquitaine is not only a fascinating historical figure and very relevant to English history; but it could be greatly enlightening to see it through a different perspective – both a feminist one and a Spanish one. In addition, given the present trend in British television for historical documentary series, this could be the perfect time for such a book to be published.
From the reader´s report by Suky Taylor