Description: An engaging history of royal and imperial families and dynastic power, enriched by a body of surprising and memorable source material.
Brief description: Robert Bartlett, CBE, FBA, is Professor Emeritus at the University of St Andrews. His books include The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950-1350 (1993), which won the Wolfson Literary Prize for History in 1994, and Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? (2015). He is well-known as the writer and presenter of several BBC documentary series including 'Inside the Medieval Mind' (2008), 'The Normans' (2010), and 'The Plantagenets' (2014).
Review Quotes: 'Blood Royal is a magisterial, comprehensive and imaginative exploration of dynastic principles and practices in medieval Europe, including the risks and perils of dynastic succession...Quite frankly, in terms of originality, there is no other book I know to rival it on any aspect of dynastic history.' William Chester Jordan, author of The Apple of His Eye: Converts from Islam in the Reign of Louis IX