Rosamund Clifford

Rosamund Clifford, later celebrated in legend as Fair Rosamund, was a daughter of Walter de Clifford and became the mistress of Henry II of England. The surviving evidence for her life is limited, but her relationship with the king was well known enough for later chroniclers and writers to make her one of the most famous royal mistresses of medieval England.

She was associated with Godstow Abbey near Oxford and was buried there after her death, probably in the 1170s. Later stories transformed her life dramatically, especially the tale that Eleanor of Aquitaine murdered her with poison in a labyrinth. There is no contemporary evidence for that story, which belongs to the growth of the Fair Rosamund legend rather than established biography.

In Ariana Franklin’s The Serpent’s Tale, Rosamund’s poisoning is the murder that brings Adelia Aguilar back into Henry II’s service. The novel deliberately uses the later legend of Eleanor’s jealousy as a politically explosive suspicion while turning the circumstances of Rosamund’s death into a fictional forensic mystery.