The Daughters of Hastings Trilogy

Carol McGrath’s Daughters of Hastings Trilogy follows the women of Harold Godwinson’s family as the Norman Conquest destroys one political world and forces them to build lives in another. The Handfasted Wife centres on Edith Swanneck after Hastings and during resistance to William the Conqueror; The Swan-Daughter follows her daughter Gunhild and the Breton lord Alan Rufus in post-Conquest England; The Betrothed Sister sends Gytha, another daughter of Harold, into exile and toward marriage in Kievan Rus’.

The trilogy broadens the familiar story of 1066 beyond the battlefield, tracing dispossession, family memory, dynastic marriage and adaptation across England and eastern Europe. Its perspective is firmly with women whose choices are constrained by conquest but whose decisions continue to shape their families’ futures.