All Things Are Lights

by Robert Shea

First published 1986

Amazon

4.0(305)

Roland de Vency, a troubadour and dispossessed knight of Languedoc, returns to the besieged Cathar refuge of Montségur hoping to rescue Diane de Combret, the woman he once intended to marry. Diane has taken the consolamentum and joined the Cathar perfecti, while Roland is also drawn to Nicolette, the spirited wife of his enemy Count Amalric de Gobignon. Their intertwined loyalties connect courtly love, religious persecution and the final destruction of a community already broken by the Albigensian Crusade.

Roland’s service to Louis IX carries the conflict from France to the Seventh Crusade in Egypt. Damietta, al-Mansurah and the king’s captivity place the fictional lovers beside Louis, Margaret of Provence, Robert of Artois and the rising Mamluk commander Baibars. Shea combines documented events with Templar and mystical traditions, using competing faiths and secret brotherhoods to ask whether love, political power or religious certainty can justify violence.