The life of the medieval queens of England was eventful - love, intrigue, betrayal, adultery and wars. But the details of their biographies, after many centuries of silence, were erased from historical memory, and what really happened in the interpretation of biographers of subsequent centuries was overgrown with legendary details. Acclaimed master of the biographical genre, Alison Ware, uses the most reliable sources to separate the true lives of several of these remarkable women from the centuries-old veneer of romantic legend and restore them to their rightful place in history. This monumental royal saga spans the years from the Norman Conquest of 1066 to 1154. when Henry II ascended the throne and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine became the first queen of the Plantagenet dynasty. Other heroines of this documentary epic: the wife of William the Conqueror, Matilda of Flanders, Matilda of Scotland, revered as “the mother of all Englishmen,” and Empress Maud, the first female ruler of England, whose son, King Henry II, later founded the Plantagenet dynasty.