Almodis: The Peaceweaver is a story of love, adventure and scandal, based on the real life of the eleventh-century countess Almodis de la Marche. Through her marriages to three important historical figures, Almodis founds a maternal dynasty that rules southern France and northern Spain during the height of the Occitan culture. It is a time of troubadours, of cathedral and castle building, and the shaping of Europe after Charlemagne. A time in which Occitan noblewomen hold equal power with their husbands under the vestiges of Roman and Visigothic law. But Almodis path to power and happiness is fraught with drama. Her first husband scandalises her contemporaries by rejecting her, she is excommunicated by the Pope and her third husband kidnaps her from her second miserable marriage. Covert journeys across the Pyrenees, escapes from incarceration and murder punctuate this extraordinary story, vividly bringing to life Almodis early medieval world.
