Love, Honour and Royal Blood: Trilogy

Spanning decades, Love, Honour, and Royal Trilogy ( Katharine Swynford; John of Gaunt; Rose Red, Royal Blue Lancaster) tells the story of the intertwined lives of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt. The tale of the Duke and Duchess of Lancaster is not only one of the world’s great love stories – but also chronicles many of the greatest changes the world has known, including the birth of Parliamentary Democracy and the seeds of the Protestant Reformation. Intrigue, betrayal, and intimate connections with some of the greatest minds of not just their own times, but of all recorded history, was the fabric of John of Gaunt’s and Katherine Swynford’s daily lives. Imagine a life with three of the great men in history intimately entwined in your everyday world. Would your life be unexciting if your good friend was John Wycliffe; and Geoffrey Chaucer was your influential brother-in-law? If the most powerful man in the realm – John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster – was the love of your life? The girl, born as Katherine de Roët, in an unremarkable family, could certainly be termed a woman who lived a momentous life! Her first marriage, to Hugh Swynford, may not have been a memorable event in history, but the rest of Katherine Swynford’s life belongs in the ‘history is stranger than fiction’ category. Had Katherine Swynford not said ‘yes’ to love – and therefore her role in history – the Tudor dynasty would not have existed; George Washington would not have been there to fight for American independence; and Alfred Lord Tennyson would not have been born to write his famous poetry. This was the period of history when parliamentary democracy was being forged in the ‘Good Parliament’ against the Duke of Lancaster’s objections. The point in time when the ‘read the Bible’ philosophy that would give birth to the Protestant Reformation was being shaped by John Wycliffe, and spread under the sheltering influence of John of Gaunt’s arm. In John of Gaunt’s time, the Plantagenet family sowed the seeds for the future War of the Roses. And Katherine Swynford’s brother-in-law, Geoffrey Chaucer, painted the word-pictures of fourteenth century England that endure to this day. This was medieval England, where the Peasants’ Revolt expressed the novel idea that men could be and that the common man had worth! The world changed in momentous ways on that fateful day when John of Gaunt’s Savoy Palace – the quintessential symbol of luxury – was destroyed by unarmed peasants. If those momentous changes were not enough, John of Gaunt, as the powerful history changing Duke of Lancaster, would still be remembered as instrumental in creating an England where the English language would finally become the language used in the law courts – the language of Parliament – not to mention the language of England’s poetry! The isolated island now had the great benefit of the English language being accepted, used, and valued. In some senses it can be said that John of Gaunt’s hand was prominent in the creation of England’s identity, and therefore England’s place in world history. Love, Honour and Royal the Three Book Set is the multifaceted story of how John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford survived in this turbulent world of medieval England.