Christina Giscombe

Heart's Dear Brothers Christina Giscombe

It is May 1563. Set in Sweden, Finland and Livonia, nobleman Klaus Fleming is a twenty-something admiral on the brink of his career. He is in a relationship and has two young children, Karl and Olof, but can never marry their mother, as she is not a noble. King Erik XIV, not yet thirty, has been on the throne for three years. He feels undermined by his younger brother, Duke John, and retribution is swift, severe and murderous. The youngest brother, Prince Kaarle, is twelve. John was to write of Erik, 'My brother is my fiercest foe'. Queen Dowager Catherina, widow of King Gustav, twenty-eight, and stepmother to Princesses, Anna, eighteen, Sophia, sixteen, and Elizabeth, fourteen, emerges as a strong female figure of her time, befriending Erik's and John's cast-off concubines, Agda and Karin and their children. Erik is determined to marry a commoner, Karin Månsdotter, and clip the wings of the nobles and his brothers. Klaus Fleming, Catherina, the nobles and the King's brothers fight back and plot a Nobles' Uprising against 'Peasant King' Erik. The Livonian Wars are raging and the Northern Seven Year War is imminent against Denmark, Lübeck, Russia and Poland. The author has researched historical archives to bring this astonishing story of treason, betrayal and revenge to light.