Genre Fiction
![Natasha Siegel - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B0B728QFZJ.jpg)
Solomon's Crown: A Novel
"Absolutely captivating and wonderfully romantic . . . I didn't want to put this book down, even when it had ended."-Rainbow Rowell, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Simon Snow Trilogy
"These two kings will wreck your heart."-Heather Walter, author of Malice
Two destined rivals fall desperately in love-but the fate of medieval Europe hangs in the balance.
Twelfth-century Europe. Newly crowned King Philip of France is determined to restore his nation to its former empire and bring glory to his name. But when his greatest enemy, King Henry of England, threatens to end his reign before it can even begin, Philip is forced to make a precarious alliance with Henry's volatile son-risking both his throne, and his heart.
Richard, Duke of Aquitaine, never thought he would be king. But when an unexpected tragedy makes him heir to England's royal seat, he finally has an opportunity to overthrow the father he despises. At first, Philip is a useful tool in his quest for vengeance . . . until passion and politics collide, and Richard begins to question whether the crown is worth the cost.
When Philip and Richard find themselves staring down an impending war, they must choose between their desire for each other and their grand ambitions. Will their love prevail if it calls to them from across the battlefield? Teeming with royal intrigue and betrayal, this epic romance reimagines two real-life kings ensnared by an impossible choice: Follow their hearts, or earn their place in history.
"These two kings will wreck your heart."-Heather Walter, author of Malice
Two destined rivals fall desperately in love-but the fate of medieval Europe hangs in the balance.
Twelfth-century Europe. Newly crowned King Philip of France is determined to restore his nation to its former empire and bring glory to his name. But when his greatest enemy, King Henry of England, threatens to end his reign before it can even begin, Philip is forced to make a precarious alliance with Henry's volatile son-risking both his throne, and his heart.
Richard, Duke of Aquitaine, never thought he would be king. But when an unexpected tragedy makes him heir to England's royal seat, he finally has an opportunity to overthrow the father he despises. At first, Philip is a useful tool in his quest for vengeance . . . until passion and politics collide, and Richard begins to question whether the crown is worth the cost.
When Philip and Richard find themselves staring down an impending war, they must choose between their desire for each other and their grand ambitions. Will their love prevail if it calls to them from across the battlefield? Teeming with royal intrigue and betrayal, this epic romance reimagines two real-life kings ensnared by an impossible choice: Follow their hearts, or earn their place in history.
Editorial Reviews
"An utterly delightful reimagining of medieval Europe, where a romance between two kings unfolds across enemy lines. Natasha Siegel's sweeping tale full of heart and historical optimism will make you believe the impossible."-C. S. Pacat, New York Times bestselling author of Dark Rise
"Riveting, haunting-two powerful rulers in a battle for love and respect."-Tamora Pierce
"I savored every page. These two kings will wreck your heart, and you'll ask them to do it again. Natasha Siegel's is a voice I craved in historical fiction."-Heather Walter, author of Malice
"A breathtakingly intimate love story set against a sweeping historical backdrop, Solomon's Crown is an unforgettable delight."-S. T. Gibson, author of A Dowry of Blood
"Solomon's Crown has the mixture of sweeping scope and lush sensory detail that makes for the best historical fiction. I turned the last page and immediately itched to read it again, more slowly, so that I could roll around in the aching romance and assured prose. This is a joyful debut from a remarkable talent."-Freya Marske, author of A Marvellous Light
"Glorious, heart-wrenching, and, above all, hopeful. Solomon's Crown is a meditative, startlingly lovely examination of love, rivalry, and what makes a legacy, and Natasha Siegel has crafted a triumph of a debut."-Grace D. Li, New York Times bestselling author of Portrait of a Thief
"Romeo and Juliet meets Oscar Wilde in twelfth-century Europe. Solomon's Crown is a work of supreme imagination, wit, and forbidden love that feels timeless, and Natasha Siegel's lyrical language sings. This is truly a unique work and one to be savored."-Margaret George, New York Times be...
"Riveting, haunting-two powerful rulers in a battle for love and respect."-Tamora Pierce
"I savored every page. These two kings will wreck your heart, and you'll ask them to do it again. Natasha Siegel's is a voice I craved in historical fiction."-Heather Walter, author of Malice
"A breathtakingly intimate love story set against a sweeping historical backdrop, Solomon's Crown is an unforgettable delight."-S. T. Gibson, author of A Dowry of Blood
"Solomon's Crown has the mixture of sweeping scope and lush sensory detail that makes for the best historical fiction. I turned the last page and immediately itched to read it again, more slowly, so that I could roll around in the aching romance and assured prose. This is a joyful debut from a remarkable talent."-Freya Marske, author of A Marvellous Light
"Glorious, heart-wrenching, and, above all, hopeful. Solomon's Crown is a meditative, startlingly lovely examination of love, rivalry, and what makes a legacy, and Natasha Siegel has crafted a triumph of a debut."-Grace D. Li, New York Times bestselling author of Portrait of a Thief
"Romeo and Juliet meets Oscar Wilde in twelfth-century Europe. Solomon's Crown is a work of supreme imagination, wit, and forbidden love that feels timeless, and Natasha Siegel's lyrical language sings. This is truly a unique work and one to be savored."-Margaret George, New York Times be...
Readers Top Reviews
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter One
Philip
At thirteen years old, I almost died.
I had gone riding with the court and ventured out too far. The forests outside of Paris are lovely in the spring, carpeted with bluebells, sunlight weaving between the oaks; but as night fell that day, and the clouds roiled, the trees became a labyrinth of clawing fingers. Stumbling between them, the flowers tugged at my feet, pulling me into the mud. I could do little but sit curled-up amongst the roots of a wizened beech, praying I would survive the storm. I remained lost in the darkness with only the torrential rain to keep me company; and when they found me in the morning I was coughing and shivering, clinging to consciousness.
I was only half formed at that age, and the sickness came quickly. I was laid out upon my bed, flushed and trembling, sprawled like a prisoner on the rack. I spent most of my childhood swaddled in luxuries-furs, tutors, vellum-but when I think of my youth, the first thing I remember is the tang of my sweat in the air, my mother digging her nails into my forearm as she chanted prayers, the bitter taste of herbs and the fog of fever.
I made the perfect picture of a martyr. Outside the wind shrieked and rattled at the windows in zealous accusation; the foundations of the castle groaned with me. Physicians came and went like visiting pilgrims. They bled me until my pallor became corpselike, and they argued incessantly over courses of treatment; they all wanted to be the one to save the life of a future king. One recommended my head be shaved; another thought I ought to be as warm as possible, to draw the fever out; and a third, hardly a doctor at all, loomed over me murmuring in funereal Latin. In my delirium, the layer of sweat on my skin became a horde of insects. I scratched and clawed at myself, scoring scarlet lines over my arms. I was slathered in a paste of stinking moss, which soon dried to a thick green crust. I must have looked like a leper.
My father never once came to my room to see me. Instead, he departed on a pilgrimage to beg God for my recovery. Of all places, he went to a shrine in England. He was aging and infirm, but still, he went. He was never the same when he came back, remaining silent for hours upon hours. I think the strain of the journey pushed his addled mind a step too far. And yet it worked; by the time he returned, I had improved. Whether by grace of God or blind luck, my fever broke. I awoke one morning frail, half starved, but blessedly alive.
It took another week before I could leave the bed. I had lost so much weight it was almost comical; when I walked, I wobbled awkwardly, like a dancing bear. I should have been relieved, but the world I returned to seemed dull and underwhelming. The experience left me bone-weary and afraid. It felt as if time distended around me, and I aged years in the weeks I had been away.
I went to visit my father soon after my bedrest ended. He had been taking private Mass ever since his homecoming. When I first saw him, I wondered if he had been eating nothing but communion bread; his wrists were even leaner than mine, his bones bursting from their skin. The fire in his chamber had been stoked to heaving, and the scent of the smoke mingled with incense. The dim light cast his cheekbones into disturbing relief. His breaths were so shallow they seemed entirely absent; only the languid, occasional movements of his eyelashes were proof of his living. I watched him from the doorway, unable to step into the room. But he soon noticed my presence, and he outstretched his hand to greet me, fingers trembling.
I knelt before him to receive his blessing.
"My son," he said, and I rose. He was sitting in his wooden chair, the one with wide, high arms that forced his shoulders beside his ears. He was clutching a cup of wine in his other hand, and I could see the liquid quivering in his grasp. I had to stoop to look him in the eye.
"Father," I said. "Are you well?"
"I am well," he replied, perhaps believing it, "and you are well also. Praise be to God."
"Praise be."
"My son-"
"Yes, father?" I asked.
"You must give thanks, Philip. Give thanks to God."
"I shall," I replied. "I have."
As much as I wish it were different, this is what I remember most about my father: how desperately he clung to his saints and his epistles, like a hanged man scrabbling at the noose. Louis the Monk, some called him. I saw more of his back as he knelt to pray than I ever did the front of him. When I was very young, I idolized him, fancying him a someday-saint. As I spoke to him, I would imagine the relics his bones would make. That evening he whispered to me in the soft...
Philip
At thirteen years old, I almost died.
I had gone riding with the court and ventured out too far. The forests outside of Paris are lovely in the spring, carpeted with bluebells, sunlight weaving between the oaks; but as night fell that day, and the clouds roiled, the trees became a labyrinth of clawing fingers. Stumbling between them, the flowers tugged at my feet, pulling me into the mud. I could do little but sit curled-up amongst the roots of a wizened beech, praying I would survive the storm. I remained lost in the darkness with only the torrential rain to keep me company; and when they found me in the morning I was coughing and shivering, clinging to consciousness.
I was only half formed at that age, and the sickness came quickly. I was laid out upon my bed, flushed and trembling, sprawled like a prisoner on the rack. I spent most of my childhood swaddled in luxuries-furs, tutors, vellum-but when I think of my youth, the first thing I remember is the tang of my sweat in the air, my mother digging her nails into my forearm as she chanted prayers, the bitter taste of herbs and the fog of fever.
I made the perfect picture of a martyr. Outside the wind shrieked and rattled at the windows in zealous accusation; the foundations of the castle groaned with me. Physicians came and went like visiting pilgrims. They bled me until my pallor became corpselike, and they argued incessantly over courses of treatment; they all wanted to be the one to save the life of a future king. One recommended my head be shaved; another thought I ought to be as warm as possible, to draw the fever out; and a third, hardly a doctor at all, loomed over me murmuring in funereal Latin. In my delirium, the layer of sweat on my skin became a horde of insects. I scratched and clawed at myself, scoring scarlet lines over my arms. I was slathered in a paste of stinking moss, which soon dried to a thick green crust. I must have looked like a leper.
My father never once came to my room to see me. Instead, he departed on a pilgrimage to beg God for my recovery. Of all places, he went to a shrine in England. He was aging and infirm, but still, he went. He was never the same when he came back, remaining silent for hours upon hours. I think the strain of the journey pushed his addled mind a step too far. And yet it worked; by the time he returned, I had improved. Whether by grace of God or blind luck, my fever broke. I awoke one morning frail, half starved, but blessedly alive.
It took another week before I could leave the bed. I had lost so much weight it was almost comical; when I walked, I wobbled awkwardly, like a dancing bear. I should have been relieved, but the world I returned to seemed dull and underwhelming. The experience left me bone-weary and afraid. It felt as if time distended around me, and I aged years in the weeks I had been away.
I went to visit my father soon after my bedrest ended. He had been taking private Mass ever since his homecoming. When I first saw him, I wondered if he had been eating nothing but communion bread; his wrists were even leaner than mine, his bones bursting from their skin. The fire in his chamber had been stoked to heaving, and the scent of the smoke mingled with incense. The dim light cast his cheekbones into disturbing relief. His breaths were so shallow they seemed entirely absent; only the languid, occasional movements of his eyelashes were proof of his living. I watched him from the doorway, unable to step into the room. But he soon noticed my presence, and he outstretched his hand to greet me, fingers trembling.
I knelt before him to receive his blessing.
"My son," he said, and I rose. He was sitting in his wooden chair, the one with wide, high arms that forced his shoulders beside his ears. He was clutching a cup of wine in his other hand, and I could see the liquid quivering in his grasp. I had to stoop to look him in the eye.
"Father," I said. "Are you well?"
"I am well," he replied, perhaps believing it, "and you are well also. Praise be to God."
"Praise be."
"My son-"
"Yes, father?" I asked.
"You must give thanks, Philip. Give thanks to God."
"I shall," I replied. "I have."
As much as I wish it were different, this is what I remember most about my father: how desperately he clung to his saints and his epistles, like a hanged man scrabbling at the noose. Louis the Monk, some called him. I saw more of his back as he knelt to pray than I ever did the front of him. When I was very young, I idolized him, fancying him a someday-saint. As I spoke to him, I would imagine the relics his bones would make. That evening he whispered to me in the soft...
