{"product_id":"queen-emma-and-the-vikings-book-harriet-o-brien-9780747574897","title":"Queen Emma and the Vikings","description":"Emma was one of England's most remarkable queens: a determined, manipulative and forceful woman who made her mark on a Europe beset by Vikings. Her story is one of power, politics, love, greed and scandal a thousand years ago.  By birth a Norman, she married and outlived two kings of England. One was an incompetent monarch some twenty years her senior; the other was a Viking warrior ten years her junior. When she died at the age of nearly seventy she had also witnessed the coronations of two of her sons: Harthcnut the Viking and Edward the Confessor. From child-bride and international pawn, she became an unscrupulous political player and was diversely regarded as a generous Christian patron, the admired co-regent of the nation, and a Machiavellian mother. She was, above all, a survivor: her life was punctuated by dramatic falls, all of which she overcame.  In tracing Emma's story the England that became her home emerges: far from being benighted, it was a rich nation with strong Christian and cultural traditions that are the root of Englishness, the Anglo-Saxon stock. Yet Emma herself was the formidable catalyst for the country's immutable change into a Norman state. In 1066, fourteen years after she died, her Norman family invaded England. Emma's story also tells us why this happened.  Harriet O'Brien gives us a vivid picture of England after the Dark Ages - from its food, clothes and herbal remedies for infertility to Viking boat building and laws against over-eating. Richly detailed and beautifully written, Queen Emma is history at its most compelling.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49511824228625,"sku":"GOR002283000","price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49666498789649,"sku":"GOR006408774","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50438926958865,"sku":"GOR010757260","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52604291776785,"sku":"GOR014559634","price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0747574898.jpg?v=1751436271","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/products\/queen-emma-and-the-vikings-book-harriet-o-brien-9780747574897","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}