Katherine Kindle Edition

I initially read this book while in my late teens. It was one of the first books to move me to tears because it was a true story. Granted, the author filled in a lot of background with her own imagination but the facts of the relationship between Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt are based on historical fact. What is truly sad is that so little is known about this woman who impacted the history of the British monarchy.

I read, reread, and read again this book about an extraordinary women and her enduring love. I take solace in the fact that love does seem to conquer all!

Book arrive ed in almost perfect condition!

I am obsessed with this book! It is one of the best novels that I have read in many, many years and I cannot get KAtherine and her cohorts out of my mind. I am an avid reader, I read all the time, and have since I was a child; I am now an old woman, a great grandmother, so I have read a lot of books! It is not the first novel that I have read that was written by Anya Seton, and I have loved her other books, also. "Green Darkness" is as good as "Katherine" but is not based on real people that can be traced back to the English Royal family of modern day, all the characters in "Green Darkness" are fictional, whereas they are/were real people that Anya wrote about in "Katherine." It is a fascinating story, and tells you better than anything that I have ever read that the royal family came from very ordinary human beings, just like the rest of us commom folks. Though they were royals, their morals were not any better than the present lot of royalty as we know it today. I mean, how can Charles have high morals and treat Diana like he did, sneaking around with Camilla Parker Bowles? Both were married to other people at the time and blatantly commited adultery! There was also gallantry and great bravery in the ranks of the royals then, as now. Prince Harry has proven that not all royals are pampered namby-pambys. But the story of Katherine Swynford and John o' Gault is a real love story, between two honorable human beings. It is so interesting to me that their children are the parents and grandparents, etc., in other words, the ancestors of the ruling family that is still in power over the British empire today. Also interesting is the fact that a lot of their ancestors were illegitimate, and sprang from Katherine and John. When you read this book, you are going to be spending a lot of time on the Internet researching the characters, and you will find that Ms. Seton is fairly accurate on all of her facts. Historically speaking, it is like an encyclopedia on life in the 14th Century. Though I finished reding the book a few weeks ago, I am still on the Internet looking up different characters from the story and am learning more details about all of them. Almost every character in the book can be authenticated through Google. A few characteristics have been changed but does not effect the realism of the book. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in history, but even if you are not all that intent on finding out about life in Mediaeval England, it is still a great and wonderful love story. And while enjoying the love story, you can learn a small bit of history as well.

Beautiful story

I picked up this book after falling in love with Anya Seton's work via "The Winthrop Woman." I think I still like that book best (the feistiness of the protagonist is more pronounced), but "Katherine" did not disappoint. It took me almost a year to get through it, as it does take some mental focus to digest the compounded archaic language of both Seton's and Katherine's time.That being said, my romantic sensibilities were thrilled with the seredipitous origins of Katherine and John's relationship, from his rescue of her in the garden to his attendance at her wedding to his second rescue of her and her baby at Kettlethorpe. Despite frequently finding herself a damsel in distress, Katherine was by no means weak or helpless, but was merely a victim to the often powerless roles that women had in her time. While her arranged marriage to a man who repulsed her is nothing novel in historical fiction, I was nonethess impressed by her fortitude through her early years at Kettlethorpe alone in the cold and damp with no friends but the servants and her babies.As for some other reviewers' assessment of her and John's relationship as somewhat one-sided and unromantic, I found that the relationship had to be taken in the context of the day. When nobility and royalty used and threw away mistresses like so much garbage, for John to take such a persevering interest in Katherine was in itself romantic. I would agree that I found John's withholding of his personal demons and political affairs from her to be unromantic treatment of his mate, but again I tried to consider the time period, when women were never consulted for such things. In any case that came to an end when the Princess Joan summoned Katherine to soothe John during his changeling persecution. That was the turning point in their relationship for me, when they evolved from lovers to partners and from which time I believed John considered Katherine to be his wife in terms of a partnership, which to me is romantic.The agonizing gap in their relationship after the fall of the Savoy just further developed Katherine as a determined and independent woman in her time. As with all Seton's fiction, what made the whole novel so much more fascinating was my underlying faith in Seton's research and her fidelty to truth as best as it may be known 600 years later.