*Editorial Book Review*
Leonor
Publisher: Histria Books
Page Length: 354
Genre: Historical Fiction / Late Medieval Fiction
A crown can tell us a woman’s place in history without telling us very much about the woman who wore it. In ‘Leonor’, the second book in Catherine Mathis’s Queens of Portugal Trilogy, we meet a woman whose desire to escape an unhappy marriage becomes entangled with the future of a kingdom. Mathis takes us into fourteenth-century Portugal, but it is Leonor herself, with her grievances, her intelligence and her increasingly ruthless determination, who gives the novel its force.
When we first meet her, Leonor has very little control over her own life. Her mother-in-law rules the household and sees no reason to consider the wishes of her son’s young wife. Her husband does little to ease her unhappiness, and Leonor is left longing for companionship and something beyond the narrow existence expected of her. I found these early chapters particularly effective because her frustration is so understandable. She wants to matter to someone, and there is nothing especially unreasonable about that.
What becomes more difficult is the way she pursues that desire. Leonor knows how it feels to be dismissed, but that knowledge does not make her particularly considerate of others. There are moments when the woman who once wanted someone to listen to her becomes remarkably unwilling to listen herself. I thought Mathis handled this very well. Leonor’s unhappiness remains part of her story, but it is never allowed to become an excuse for everything she chooses to do.
Leonor is proud, observant and capable of considerable ruthlessness, but what I found particularly unsettling was how readily she could justify herself. She notices other people’s faults with remarkable clarity while being considerably less interested in acknowledging her own. An objection can become a slight, and a disagreement can raise questions about loyalty. Mathis lets us follow the reasoning behind her decisions, and there were times when I understood exactly how she had reached a conclusion while still finding it appalling.
Her relationship with Ferdinand is equally complicated. He has the authority of a king, but his personal wishes do not always sit comfortably alongside the responsibilities of his position. Mathis presents him as a man whose attachments and ambitions influence his judgement, sometimes with consequences that reach far beyond his household. At the same time, Leonor is far from a passive presence beside him. She watches, considers and learns how best to make herself heard.
I particularly enjoyed the conversations between them. Leonor understands that the moment she chooses to speak can matter as much as the words themselves, and there is something fascinating about watching affection and persuasion work alongside one another. Their relationship gives the political events a personal dimension. Decisions that affect the kingdom can begin with a private conversation, shaped by the mood of the king and the wishes of the woman beside him.
Avis brings another perspective to the royal family. He has concerns and loyalties of his own, and his relationship with Leonor adds to the uncertainty surrounding the court. I appreciated that the people around Ferdinand are given interests beyond simply agreeing with him or opposing his wife. Family ties matter enormously here, but they do not make trust straightforward. These characters understand one another well enough to recognise weaknesses, which can be a rather dangerous sort of intimacy.
The Portuguese setting is vividly connected to the lives of the characters. Marriages carry political expectations, children bring questions of inheritance, and relations between kingdoms enter the royal household through apparently personal arrangements. I thought Mathis did a particularly good job of showing what those arrangements demand of the people involved. Someone may be discussing an alliance, but someone else is being asked to live within it.
I also appreciated the attention given to people beyond the court. Royal ambitions require money, and the people expected to provide it have worries that cannot be settled by another marriage or another promise. Their grievances remind us that Portugal has needs beyond those of its ruling family. These passages give the decisions made at court greater weight, because we can see something of what they mean elsewhere.
Mathis draws on recorded events while imagining the motives, conversations and private experiences that history cannot fully recover. I appreciated the way she explains those choices in her Author’s Note, particularly with a figure such as Leonor, whose reputation inevitably influences how we approach her. It is useful to know where the historical record ends and the novelist’s interpretation begins, especially when so much of the story depends upon what these people may have thought or intended.
‘Leonor’ is an absorbing work of historical fiction. Mathis gives us a woman whose early unhappiness evokes sympathy, but whose behaviour makes that sympathy increasingly difficult to sustain. I did not always agree with her choices, and there were times when I found her quite dreadful, but I always wanted to know what she would do next. That interest lasted long after my willingness to excuse her had disappeared.
Review by Mary Anne Yarde
The Coffee Pot Book Club
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