![]() ![]() Rutherfurd finds room in his canvas for all the big players: St. That pretty much sets the tone of Irish domestic and foreign relations for the rest of the volume, which offers a rich feast of the squabbles, betrayals, usurpations, conquests, rebellions, massacres, and petty slights (real and imagined) that have been as much a staple of Irish life as the potato. Fearful of offending the High King (and thus bringing his wrath down upon her father) by refusing his hand, she’s nevertheless prompted to run away and elope with Conall after meeting the High King’s first Queen, who solemnly promises to kill Dierdre if she marries her husband. ![]() Dierdre, the daughter of Fergus the Chieftain (and great-granddaughter of the famous Fergus the Warrior) has been betrothed to the elderly High King of Ireland, even though she’s in love with the aspiring Druid priest Conall. The author goes back pretty far, starting near the end of the pagan period in a.d. Rutherfurd ( The Forest, 2000, etc.) takes on Ireland in his latest historical doorstopper, covering (in this first of two volumes) roughly a thousand years-from the tribal period antedating Christianity to the Tudor conquest under Henry VIII. ![]()
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