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Historical person
1494–1547
Francis I ruled France from 1515 to 1547 and became one of the defining monarchs of the European Renaissance. He won early fame at Marignano, competed with Emperor Charles V for influence in Italy and was captured at Pavia in 1525.
Francis sponsored artists and scholars, expanded royal building and strengthened central authority, while his rivalry with the Habsburgs led him to alliances that crossed conventional religious boundaries. Francis I of France was born in Cognac and died in Rambouillet.
Alison Weir’s Mary Boleyn examines the disputed evidence that Mary Boleyn was Francis I’s mistress during her years at the French court. Rozsa Gaston’s Anne and Louis: Forever Bound follows the succession problem that leaves Francis of Angoulême poised to inherit Louis XII, while Anne and Louis: Rulers and Lovers shows the court increasingly accepting him as both Claude’s husband and the future king. G. P. R. James’ Darnley; or, the Field of the Cloth of Gold presents Francis as Henry VIII’s magnificent rival during the diplomatic spectacle of 1520. Gaston’s Dreams of Gold revisits that meeting through Anne Boleyn, who can read the rivalry beneath the staged friendship of the two kings.
Series
Rozsa Gaston’s four-volume Anne of Brittany sequence follows the last independently ruling Duchess of Brittany from her contested inheritance to her final years as queen of France. The novels move through the French–Breton conflict, Anne’s compelled marriage to Charles VIII, her restoration to ducal authority after his death…
All books in this series
The Sir Roger Shallot Tudor Mysteries are presented as the recollections of an elderly rogue who once served Benjamin Daunbey, nephew of Cardinal Wolsey. During the early reign of Henry VIII, Roger and Benjamin are sent to investigate murders, stolen relics, espionage and threats to the Tudor dynasty.…
All books in this series
The Anne Boleyn Chronicles reconstruct Anne Boleyn’s formative continental years before her emergence at the English court. Beginning in 1513 in Margaret of Austria’s household at Mechelen, the sequence follows Anne through the courts of Louis XII, Claude of France and Francis I, where language, ceremony, patronage and…
All books in this series
Chronicles of the House of Valois follows Anne of Brittany and the royal women whose marriages, inheritances and children shaped the French crown at the turn of the sixteenth century. Beginning with Anne’s inheritance of Brittany in 1488, the sequence moves through war with France, her marriage to…
All books in this series
Standalone books
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
