Alea iacta est!

Finished the trilogy. The Reckoning completes the Sharon Kay Penman saga of Wales and England. The conquering of Wales is a depressing story, so the book doesn't end on a happy note. The main characters (or at least the ones based on real people), their children, and their friends, all end up wasting away in English prisons, hung/drawn/quartered, or beheaded and their heads on pikes. There's also one death-in-childbirth chapter with one of the main characters. Two made-up characters survive to symbolize hope. But the rest is still a sad, tragic tale.

I knew I wouldn't like reading about the late-13th century. But Penman again does a good job of getting into the minds of characters who are also historical figures. Like Davydd, the last Prince of Wales, who festers in an English jail knowing he'll be hung, drawn, and quartered. She did a good job of writing defiant and despairing thoughts that seem logical for a man about to face that horrible fate. Her character depictions work well except with Edward I. (She had the same issue with King John, in the first book of the trilogy.) She tries valiantly to reconcile the loyal family member to the heartless butcher, but the only sentiments she can fall back on are politcal. Where she was okay with simply not resolving those contradictions in John (the whole point was that he's a big, evil mystery), with Edward she tries to throw in a King Arthur complex. But it doesn't emerge until the final chapters, this desire to conquer the entire island, and doesn't really explain away his earlier cruelties.

Though the third and final book ends with a lot of violence and misery, it's still better than the second, which pretty much had a death per chapter. This last book also featured a pirate kidnapping a royal bride, a notorious murder in an Italian church, foiled assassination plots, and of course, several Welsh rebellions. It all really happened, which I guess makes it both intriguing and sad.