Book Review: Queens’ Play by Dorothy Dunnett

There’s a point in every Dorothy Dunnett historical novel where the plot kicks into an extra high gear and you can hardly put the book down from that point on. For me, this is sometimes also the point where I do put the book down, for long stretches, because the drama and excitement is so high I’m not sure my nerves will handle it.

Queens’ Play, the second book in the Lymond Chronicles, is no exception to this general rule. In this book we see Francis Crawford, not long after the restoration of his good name in the first book, taking on a new task: to insinuate himself into the French court where it appears someone is plotting to murder the seven-year old Scottish queen, Mary, before she can officially marry the Dauphin of France.

Francis agrees to the task, even knowing that Mary’s mother, the Queen Dowager and a member of a powerful French family, sees this job as a means of binding him permanently to her, so she can use him to further her own power in Scotland. Indeed, throughout the story he is courted both by queens and would-be queens, as he tries to save young Mary and still remain his own man.

This book, like The Game of Kings that came before it, can stand pretty much on its own, even though there are occasional references to events in the first book. And for much of the story, you’re involved in a complete romp. Because the means by which Francis gets himself into the court environment, and what he does there, provide much hilarity. His occasional lapses of abandoned behaviour in the first book are magnified here, where he has fewer restraints and can allow himself to let go.

Yet there is a serious plot here as well, and Francis never loses sight of his real task. And even in this stand-alone book, we begin to get a few hints of the themes and preoccupations that will drive this brilliant young man to tragic action through the rest of the series. And even here in France, where he is supposedly free, as has happened before and will happen again, there are casualties he cannot prevent and which will haunt him for years.

I view this book as a sort of last burst of mindless fun mixed with adventure before, in book three, we get down to some Very Serious Business that will occupy the last four books of the series. There is a race involving all the young French courtiers that I eagerly wait for each time I read Queens’ Play. It takes place across the rooftops of the town of Blois, where participants will be disqualified if their feet touch the ground. I’ve read somewhere that Ms. Dunnett went to Blois as part of her research, and that if you go there too, you can walk along the route of the race and literally still follow its course across the rooftops of the actual buildings in the book. I get goosebumps just thinking of it.

Naturally you know I recommend this book very highly, as I recommend the entire series. It reveals one more facet of a person I consider the most fascinating character in any fictional world. And Ms. Dunnett, as always, brings both the character and the 16th century French court vividly to life.