The Boy King's Tale: As Told By Geoffrey Chaucer (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780998566337)

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The true adventure of young King Edward III. In The Boy King's Tale, two entwined love stories, young and old, lead to betrayal, murder and the near overthrow of a kingdom in this extraordinary tale of the early days of England's Edward III. Crowned at thirteen when his father was deposed and murdered by his mother and her lover, the young king must come of age in the dark and twisted labyrinth of medieval politics, with the future in the balance on one fateful night when rescue or death was held on the turn of a confession to a faceless monk. Told by English court poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, as one of his tales, on the day death bells toll from the steeples of Westminster.

Young Edward is kept separated from his father by his mother Queen Isabella, daughter of the King of France, who now hates her husband because he has abandoned her bed for a series of male "favorites". Roger Mortimer, a charismatic Lord of England who has declared himself to be the Earl of March, guarding the border with Wales, is being held in the Tower of London and scheduled to lose his head. Isabella, secretly in love with him, helps him escape to France where they raise an army, cross the channel and defeat her husband, having him murdered in his prison cell, and putting her teenage son on the throne so they can jointly rule by a council they control.

When the boy king leads an army to war, he meets teenage Philippa of Hainaut, who will be the love of his life against the forces fighting against him, and he must outwit his enemies to make it so, but his temper and will leads him deeper into the traps set for him when his uncle's execution is engineered. In jealousy and blame, he believes his mother's lies that Philippa has been unfaithful, leading to one fateful night, on the eve of his turning 18, when Parliament is on the verge of granting him full rights. Mortimer plans to murder him, the same as his father, and his young wife as well to put their infant son on the throne and rule as a dictator. Edward discovers the plot, but can he save his bride Philippa and himself locked without friends in Nottingham Castle, facing a knife's edge moment that will change England forever? A celebration of young love and a boy seeking a father, who takes one as a friend who would betray his trust, and must realize the truth before his fate is sealed.

*Contains some mild sexual situations, Medieval execution descriptions, and warfare violence.