Author Shelley Puhak’s new book, "The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry that Forged the Medieval World," tells the little-known story of two trailblazing women in the Early Middle Ages who wielded immense power, only to be vilified for daring to rule.
The two queens commanded armies and negotiated with kings and popes. They formed coalitions and broke them, mothered children and lost them. They fought a decades-long civil war—against each other. With ingenuity and skill, they battled to stay alive in the game of statecraft, and in the process laid the foundations of what would one day be Charlemagne’s empire. Yet after the queens’ deaths—one gentle, the other horrific—their stories were rewritten, their names consigned to slander and legend.
In "The Dark Queens," award-winning writer Shelley Puhak looks to set the record straight.
