The Widow Queen does not begin with a widow, but rather a widower and the two children of his late wife. He has remarried for political reasons, but his heart belongs to the mother of his now-teenage son and daughter, Świętosława and Bolesław. He loves them fiercely as well, but that doesn’t mean he won’t use them to further his political aims, expanding his territory beyond his new Dukedom in all four directions. Bolesław, his son, he wishes to follow in his footsteps in rule and military conquest. But Świętosława, his most cherished daughter, he trusts to bring him even greater power: he wishes her to conquer peacefully, through marriage and manipulation, winning a throne and a people via her wits alone.
In this dense historical epic by Polish author Elzbieta Cherezińska, Świętosława is to be many times a queen. History has neglected the stories of women, but Cherezińska has taken this particular woman’s story and set it to rights, making Świętosława’s ferocious intelligence and bold strategising the central focus, brining her and Polish history to the fore.
Or…well, a central focus. The Widow Queen is very deeply concerned with the politics of Scandinavia in particular, detailing the lives of a number of Viking warriors, jarls, and kings in addition to the lives of the Polish siblings Świętosława and Bolesław. I was expecting this to be about Świętosława alone, or at least for there to be a heavier focus on the siblings as POV characters, but there are a number of historical figures who dictate the direction of the story. Their father Mieszko, various Norse kings, would-be kings, or other leaders, his daughters by other women, and so forth also get several chapters. Each become interesting in their own way, but the lack of stronger focal points makes the story feel a bit lacking in narrative authority, a history sometimes more than a novel, and certainly a historical fiction more than a fantasy.
The magic is very light and ambiguous. Vaguely prophetic feelings overtake many characters, and there are a few instances of more overt witchery, but overall this is a historical novel that takes its characters claims of magic seriously—just as it takes their religious convictions and personal desires seriously—rather than an overt fantasy. I admit I’m a bit surprised, given that this was published by Tor, but once I got over the expectation I enjoyed the novel much more on its own terms.
The many characters also share very similar voices. Cherezińska hasn’t made them sufficiently tonally distinct, and so it’s a bit of a struggle to suss out which disaffected son wants which throne or piece of empire. Their motivations and personalities diverge more concretely as the book goes on, but that very singular desire for a crown is a constant for all of them. That sort of motivation is moving in the singular, but a bit exhausting and one-note when all the characters express it. They want power as both means and end, and offer no further justification. I do not think power is a sufficiently universal motivation, or at the least, it is not sufficiently interesting to me when there is little to counterbalance it. Świętosława (and others) may also be spurred on by love, and by duty, but it all comes down to crowns in the end.
I do, however very much enjoy certain specific characters. Świętosława is a firebrand and a dangerously smart woman, and I only ever wanted more when her chapters were finished. She very quickly becomes queen of Sweden and establishes a strong power base through a mixture of cunning and ostentatious will. Her troubled, conflicted half-sister Astrid was also compelling, as was Olav, a complex and passionate warrior. I wished we could have seen more of Bolesław, whose feelings about growing up in his father’s shadow could have been teased out more; as it was, he fought so many of his battles “offscreen” as it were. I honestly wished for more about his first wife and her people—the brief glimpse we got hinted at dire intrigues and a very different way of life that could have made for a good contrast. Alas, the story looks to the North instead, and to several other characters.
The Widow Queen reminded me a bit of Guy Gavriel Kay’s books, especially Under Heaven, which I think is a gold standard to which Cherezińska is aspiring but still falling somewhat short of. The many POV characters, the political intrigue, the geopolitical stage: all of the elements are there, but the emotional resonance isn’t as deep, likely because the book does not ponder the deeper implications of power.
Cherezińska also lacks Kay’s sense of dramatic timing and knack for action. Battles are glossed over, and moments of betrayal or triumph are undercut by not going deeper into the characters’ psyches. As a result, characters feel more sketchily drawn, not fully realised people but also not fully realised archetypes, which could also have been fun. The relentless schemer, the hidden king, the dauntless princess, the secret sorceress—archetypes are just stories we like to hear over and over again, and Cherezińska could have pushed a little harder to embrace that. Instead we have an uneasy compromise between the two, tending toward the personal but not quite intimate enough at times.
I’m critical because I do like this book, quite a lot. I just don’t love it, even though I think I could have. There are truly great moments, scenes that need no further explanation than “the gift of the lynxes” or “the hostage-taking in Jomsborg.” Cherezińska has a gift for scenes, I think. She sets them up well, both the emotional backdrop and the physical settings. But she doesn’t always press her advantage and infuse the rest of the book with that heady sense of meaning, and sometimes there is a perfunctory feeling to the story hitting its beats, checking off historical moments instead of letting them shine.
The history is fascinating, though. The Polish roots of conflicts that cropped up as far away as England are not something I’d considered, and to shift the overall POV from Scandinavia to Eastern Europe is a boon. I’m more familiar with Norse history, and so to see the way it both springs from and feeds into larger conflicts on the European continent feels like an important way to introduce diversity of voice into an older conversation. English-language readers will often have a better grasp of Western European history than Eastern, and that’s a sore lack that this book does well to put to rights.
Since this is the first book in a planned multi-volume epic, I will say that I think the story is trending upward and will hopefully carry its momentum forward into other books. I look forward to further installments most especially to hear more of Świętosława, the Bold One of the series title, whom history has also called the Haughty for reasons we are still to explore.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
Elzbieta Cherezinska’s The Widow Queen is the epic story of a Polish queen whose life and name were all but forgotten until now.
The bold one, they call her—too bold for most.
To her father, the great duke of Poland, Swietoslawa and her two sisters represent three chances for an alliance. Three marriages on which to build his empire.
But Swietoslawa refuses to be simply a pawn in her father’s schemes; she seeks a throne of her own, with no husband by her side.
The gods may grant her wish, but crowns sit heavy, and power is a sword that cuts both ways.
