I spent a great deal of time with one in particular, a boy of my own years named Guy Dunois.

I was so often in Amboise that I had become friends with some of the neighborhood children. After Papa died, Maman added a governess to the household to look after me. We had a modest house in Amboise and several servants to see to our needs. My father, until his death six months earlier, followed the court from place to place, taking lodgings in nearby towns so that Maman could visit us whenever she was not in attendance on Queen Anne. My mother, Jeanne Popyncourt, for whom I was named, served as a lady-in-waiting to the queen of France.

Both the town and the château were called Amboise. This castle had been much restored by France's King Charles VIII, and his court spent a good part of every year in residence there. I lived in a pretty, rural town on the south bank of the Loire River, where a fortified château faced with white stone graced the hill above. I was a child of eight in April of the year of our Lord fourteen hundred and ninety-eight. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. Can she cultivate her beauty and her amorous wiles to guide her along a perilous path and bring her at last to happiness? But the Tudor court is filled with dangers as well as seductions, and there are mysteries surrounding Jane’s birth that have made her deadly enemies. Then a dashing French prisoner of war, cousin to the king of France, is brought to London, and Jane finds she cannot help giving some of her heart-and more-to a man she can never marry. But as she grows into a lovely young woman, she still receives flattering attention from the virile young men flocking to serve the handsome new king, Henry VIII, who has recently married Catherine of Aragon. With no money of her own, Jane could not hope for a powerful marriage, or perhaps even marriage at all. Jane Popyncourt was brought to the court as a child to be ward of the king and a companion to his daughters-the princesses Margaret and Mary. Basing her gripping tale on the life of the real Jane Popyncourt, gifted author Kate Emerson brings the Tudor monarchs, their family, and their courtiers to brilliant life in this vibrant novel.īeautiful.

The pleasure palace by kate emerson