AshehougAgency

The King's Women

One spring day in 1615 Aona Nordfra and her daughter Erla go ashore on Zealand, Denmark’s largest island. Though the two women are among the poorest of the poor, they carry the king’s mark. Curiosity and lust for revenge pull them towards Christian IV’s magnificent castle Frederiksborg. But in their struggle to gain entrance, they find themselves taking many and long detours. Aona tries to make it big in Copenhagen, while Erla joins an adventurous trip round the Cape of Good Hope to Ceylon.

Meanwhile Christian IV is fighting the three greatest threats to his kingdom, the Swedes, the witches and the Catholics. His decision to enter the Thirty Years War turns out to be fateful. But the story increasingly centres on his complicated relationships to certain women – to his mother, to his wife Kirsten Munk, whom he has forced into marriage, and to those two out there, who still only exercise an indirect influence on his life.

The King’s Women is a colourful, epic and dramatic tale set in a time of upheaval in Danish and Norwegian history, an epoch marked by conflicts between faith and superstition, renaissance belief in magic and modern rationalism. Through his profound portraits of Christian IV and the women in his life, Erling Pedersen makes the past come alive.

The King’s Women is an independent sequel to The King’s Mark, and part two of a planned trilogy.

First published: Aschehoug, 2008
Erling Pedersen: Biography and bibliography

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