Best Historical Novels About Joan II of Navarre

Joan II of Navarre

1311–1349

Joan II of Navarre was queen of Navarre and daughter of Louis X of France. Excluded from the French succession, she retained her claim to Navarre and became important in the dynastic settlement after the end of the direct Capetian line.

Joan II of Navarre also held the offices or ranks of count, King of Navarre, and sovereign of Navarre. Joan II of Navarre belonged to the Capetian dynasty and operated within Kingdom of France; Kingdom of Navarre. Joan II of Navarre was born in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine and died in France.

Maurice Druon’s The Royal Succession places the young Joan at the centre of the crisis created by Louis X’s death. Her disputed paternity and the interests of powerful male relatives are used to exclude her from the French crown, while the same dynastic argument ultimately leaves her inheritance in Navarre intact; Druon uses her case to dramatise the political reasoning that hardens into the later doctrine of male succession in France.

Historical novels and book series featuring Joan II of Navarre (1 series)

The Accursed Kings in Order

by Maurice Druon 7 books 4.2(8,269)

The Accursed Kings follows the French and English monarchies from the final year of Philip IV's reign in 1314 to the capture of John II at Poitiers and the political crisis of the late 1350s. Across seven novels, the direct Capetian line fails, the Valois dynasty takes the…