Post
by Margaret » Wed March 4th, 2009, 4:39 am
Ludmilla and Annis mention Luigi, which reminds me how absolutely murderous the relationships of aristocratic brothers could be in certain past centuries. Gregory of Tours wrote about the sons of Clovis, who were always trying to kill each other off. The competition among sons to inherit a share of the kingdom was often deadly. Perhaps that's part of the reason why the French instituted the Salian laws, under which only the eldest son could inherit his father's estate. Clovis's sons divided up the kingdom among them, which sounds very fair, but was quite impractical, especially since each of the sons wanted the whole shebang. His wives and daughters were not exactly gentle souls either. One woman tried to kill her own daughter by banging the lid of a clothes chest down on her neck while the young woman was bent over it looking for something - or so Gregory reports. In comparison with these folks, Luigi doesn't sound quite so dreadful!
I hope you can find a copy, Leo. It's a big, richly textured novel about a fascinating period in Italian history that has been neglected by novelists (if not by Shakespeare).
Browse over 5000 historical novel listings (probably well over 5000 by now, but I haven't re-counted lately) and over 700 reviews at
www.HistoricalNovels.info