Jadwiga, who became a cripple. Izabela, tirelessly fighting for power. Zofia, married to an old woman. Anna that nobody wanted. And finally Catherine, imprisoned and humiliated. The lives of five queens proves that women played the most important role in the history of men.
Regina is a simple peasant for whom Krakow is a promise of a better life and income. The girl is accepted into the service of master Bartholomew, a renowned malt maker, who, as it turns out, expects devotion and obedience not only in the kitchen ... Soon a "monster" is born - Regina cannot think otherwise about her daughter karlica. And yet it is Dosia who ends up at the royal court. It is her eyes - a real figure who actually walked around the royal cloisters, a guardian, a witness of events, feasts, weddings, conspiracies and rapes - we observe the everyday life of the Jagiellonian kings:Jadwiga, Izabela, Zofia, Anna and Katarzyna.
Anna Brzezińska, a respected writer and medievalist, returns with a new surprising book. On over eight hundred pages, he describes the lives of women in the times of the last Jagiellons. Its protagonists are not only the privileged - as it might seem - daughters of King Sigismund I the Old from marriages with Barbara Zápolya and Bona Sforza, but also bastards, townswomen, women from commoners employed as servants and treated as slaves.
The latest book by Anna Brzezińska, "Daughters of Wawel" (Wydawnictwo Literackie 2017), is a story about Jagiellonian Poland through the eyes of women. They played the biggest role in the history of men.
Daughters of Wawel ... they amaze with their panache and meticulousness, at the same time they attract with their colorful plot and vivid descriptions. Brzezińska, as a seasoned historian and expert of the epoch, cares about details, cites sources, and as a writer, she tells a story so interestingly that her book can be read both as a historical work and as an engaging novel. This is where the story unfolded:between the rooms, in the streets, in the pantries and in the dark alleys of Krakow. It was often influenced by seemingly insignificant events, which Brzezińska confirms in the documents. Only where sources are lacking, does the writer use her imagination.
In a word, it is a total book, which has never existed in Polish historical literature. Something like this has never happened before. A story about Renaissance Poland, Wawel and Jagiellonian princesses - from a female point of view. And the women can see more because they can see both the kitchen and the bedroom, and the treasury and the stable. They hear whispers in the lobby, smell the writing with their noses. It's all in this book, I read with bated breath . - Wojciech Orliński, "Gazeta Wyborcza".
An unusual story about the Jagiellonian princesses raised at the foot of Wawel:
