In Kings' Byways

Twelve tales of blood and ambition set in the treacherous France of 1600. Stanley John Weyman weaves through the aftermath of religious war, when Catholic and Protestant still eyed each other across city walls and the newly-crowned Henry IV tightened his grip on a fractured kingdom. Here are stories of the League's last conspirators, of Cardinal Mazarin's early machinations, of dukes and duchesses playing high stakes with crowns. Weyman understands what historical fiction does best: he strips the sheen from legend and shows the human calculation beneath. These are not nobles in silk, but people who scheme and betray and occasionally sacrifice everything for causes they believe in. The prose has period texture without feeling musty, and each story operates as its own clockwork mechanism of intrigue. For readers who crave the political chess games of George R.R. Martin but prefer their history real and their settings more immediate, these byways off the main road of French history offer something rarer than spectacle: they offer the texture of an era still burning with old grievances.