Sharon Kay Penman Quotes

A pity you were not born a woman in this life, Little King of Lesser Land, for you seek only to please and to be admired by all.

All he wanted was enough time to consider all his options without being dragged into his household’s petty squabbles or being nagged by his wife about that damnable pilgrimage. Was that so much to ask...

And if Harry spun webs to make a spider proud, Eleanor could entangle archangels in her snares.

And it is not in any of our interests to have the balance of power turned on its head like this. An overly mighty French king is no improvement over an overly mighty English one.

As they lay entwined together afterwards, they both were sure their future was blessed, and it would never have occurred to them that Henry and Eleanor had once believed that, too.

Barbed banter was the coin of their realm and heartfelt admissions of affection were rejected out of hand as counterfeit.

Between the two of us, we’ve got a family tree rooted in Hell!

Brother Euddogwy did not know how to respond to that, for only the Angevins would see a rebellion as an opportunity for brotherly bonding.

Eleanor would have been indifferent to the immorality of her adultery, but would never have forgiven the stupidity of it.

Get some sleep. Our troubles will still be there on the morrow

Hal and Richard show all the good will of Cain and Abel.

He believed that his superior intellect mattered more than his physical defects and saw no reason why he must defer to these fortunate young men with handsome faces and healthy bodies and empty heads.

He was dying as he’d lived, and that made it so much harder for those who loved him. But then she remembered what she’d been told about his father’s wretched last hours. After learning that John had b...

He would never be able to emulate Richard's last gesture of defiance--gallant, glorious, and quite mad.

Hell and furies! Eleanor had begun to pace, her skirts swirling about her ankles. What was he thinking?When does he ever think? Richard straddled a chair and accepted a wine cup from Raoul. If he were...

I once came upon a definition of history as ‘the process by which complex truths are transformed into simplified falsehoods’. That is particularly true in the case of Richard III, where the normal med...

I suppose I should just be thankful that since you are so much given to treachery, you’re so reassuringly inept at it.

It puzzled Maud that her male relatives could not see this. Was it that men could not believe a woman might share their ambitions, their need for power? Eleanor saw herself as more than Henry’s queen,...

Mayhap not, but a king ought to be far-sighted enough to realize that if reforms are inevitable, better he be the one to carry them out.

Removing his helmet, Edward knelt by the stream called Swillgate, a name that effectively quenched any desire to drink from its depths.