Devil's Brood
Sharon Penman
 Devil's Brood continues the story of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine that began in When Christ and His Saints Slept and continued in Time and Chance. Devil's Brood opens with the conflict between Henry II, his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, and their four sons, which escalates into a decade of warfare and rebellion pitting the sons against the father and the brothers against each other while the mother spends the period imprisoned by her husband. The novel opens in 1172 when Henry and Eleanor have been married for decades and have four grown sons: Hal, Richard, Geoffrey and John. During the final 18 years of Henry's life conflict builds with Eleanor, beginning with her desire to choose her successor for Aquitaine. Henry has her imprisoned, first in France and then in England, while he goes to war against France. The four sons each want to rule a piece of territory and war breaks out among the sons as they plot with their mother and enter into a rebellion against Henry, in the process aligning themselves with King Louis VII of France—England's enemy. The consequences of Henry's sons' rebellion weakens the Angevin empire. At the end, Henry dies with only his household knights at his bedside.