Books: The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily
Exclusive interview with author Nancy Goldstone and a review of her new novel about Joanna I, Queen of Naples
Rating: 4 stars
“Joanna’s story was so compelling and romantic I knew instantly that I wanted to know more about her,” says The Lady Queen author Nancy Goldstone. “I got the idea for The Lady Queen while writing an earlier book, Four Queens. Joanna I was Beatrice’s great-great-granddaughter. I stumbled across her while researching Beatrice’s life.” Beatrice was one of the four queens in Goldstone’s Four Queens, about a family of four Thirteenth-Century sisters who all became queens.
Goldstone expertly handles the labyrinth that was 14th Century politics, as well as the intricate family wrangling within Joanna’s family. Ruling from 1326 to 1382, Queen Joanna I of Naples had a lot to deal with. The pope interfered in the running of her country. There were financial problems. Then her husband Andrew was murdered. Due to her Hungarian mother-in-law’s interference, Joanna was put on trial for his murder in a papal court. She was just 22 years old.
The Lady Queen pulls you into Joanna’s life with Goldstone’s effortless prose. The soap opera that was Joanna’s life is deftly woven together. As not much has been written about her, there is much to learn.
“There hasn’t been a biography of Joanna in over a hundred years,” says Goldstone. “Many of the primary source records detailing her reign were destroyed by the Germans in World War II. Luckily, a French graduate student at the University of Paris in the 1930s wrote his dissertation about Joanna and had access to all of the documents that were later destroyed.”
“In his thesis, he quoted quite liberally from letters, chronicler’s reports, accounts, proclamations, laws…even in many cases including the entire document,” says Goldstone. “It’s all in French and Latin, but it’s there. A copy of his dissertation is available at the library at Yale University, which is one of the great advantages of living in Connecticut if you happen to be interested in the Middle Ages, like I am.”
To aid in her research Goldstone also visited Naples and Provence to see the places where Joanna and the other prominent historical figures of the time lived.
Goldstone’s agent is Michael Carlisle at InkWell Management. “We were recommended to each other,” says Goldstone. Her editor is George Gibson at Walker Press.
Goldstone is currently working on her next book, The Maid and the Queen: The Secret History of Joan of Arc. That will be published by Viking in 2012, the 600th anniversary of Joan’s birth.
Goldstone lives in Westport, Connecticut. She was born in Chicago, Illinois. Her website is www.nancygoldstone.com.
The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily by Nancy Goldstone. Trade paperback, 384 pages, Publisher: Walker & Company, (2010) : English ISBN-10: 09780802777706.
