Lionessheart
The Life and Times of Joanna Plantagenet

Thank you History Press UK for the eARC in Exchange for my honest review! Not much is known about Joanna because most historians or chroniclers of the time didn’t care about women, even the Royal ones 🙃 Hanley does what she can with the primary sources available to paint a full picture of what Joanna......more

This is an interesting and well-researched look at a British Princess I was barely familiar with. While this does focus on Joanna, it also gives a lot of detail about the other players during this time period. Joanna, while central to the narrative, is at times over-shadowed by plethora of informatio......more

This was my sort of accompanying audiobook as I read Joan de Valence: The Life and Influence of a Thirteenth-Century Noblewoman; as I mentioned in my review of that book, the two have a lot in common, both being biographies of often overlooked medieval women. In this case, our protagonist (and I use......more

Hanley is quick to point out the lack and biases in the historical record, but she still manages to find quite a lot of the life of Joanna, princess of England, Queen of Sicily, and Duchess of Toulouse. Hanley contends that Joanna was just as much of a lion as the rest of her family, and shows how s......more

Catherine Hanley's biography of Joanna, based on primary sources, unfolds a fascinating life that shines a light on the life of a medieval princess with its arranged marriages and other trials. Joanna's adventures are many and varied and Hanley describes them well. A noble woman's experience is illu......more