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1648: The women behind the beloved fairytale Rapunzel
Bitter Greens
What you need to know before your trail
Charlotte-Rose de la Force, exiled from the court of the Sun King Louis XIV, has always been a great teller of tales.
Selena Leonelli, once the exquisite muse of the great Venetian artist Titian, is terrified by the passing of time.
Margherita, sold by her parents for a handful of bitter greens, is trapped in a doorless tower and burdened by tangles of her red-gold hair. She must find a way to escape.
Bitter Greens is a dark, beautifully written retelling of Rapunzel, interwoven with the story of one of the tale’s first tellers.
Travel Guide
France
The author says:
Chateau de Cazeneuve in Gascony
Charlotte-Rose was born at the Chateau de Cazeneuve in Gascony, and I was lucky enough to be given a private tour by its owner, the Comte de Sabran-Pontevès, who is descended from her elder sister. Originally a medieval castle owned by the kings of Navarre, built on a crag of stone above the wild Ciron River, the chateau has two tall stone towers with only two small windows, which look very much how I’ve always imagined Rapunzel’s tower.
Paris
We also went to the Louvre and to Versailles, where Charlotte-Rose lived at the Sun King’s opulent and corrupt court for most of her adult life.
One of the saddest places on our schedule was the Église Saint-Sulpice, the grand and gloomy church in Paris where Charlotte-Rose finally married her lover, Charles de Briou, a few weeks after he reached his majority at the age of twenty-five.
Guyenne
Charlotte was born here
Guyenne or Guienne was an old French province which corresponded roughly to the Roman province of Aquitania Secunda and the Catholic archdiocese of Bordeaux.
Booktrailer Review
What a remarkable book! Very immersive and quite complex but like the plaits of Rapunzel’s hair, the three strands which make up this story are woven with such care that separate and together, they weave a magical tale.
It’s the trueish story of the woman who wrote Rapunzel, and how the story came to be. I was mesmerised by her and the other women in the book for it was like watching a magical fairylike play unfold. The sights, sounds and smells that came out of this book into my mind were something else. Told in the style of an old fashioned fairytale, the novel was awash with darkness, grim woods, a young helpless maiden, women thought to be witches and the dark deeds of men. There are quite dark and violent moments in the book – so at times Grimm as in Brothers Grimm – but overall, the book is real, raw and utterly compelling
Very exciting to have been there at the moment when the famous fairytale was written!
BookTrail Boarding Pass: Bitter Greens
Destination/location: France, Paris Author/guide: Kate Forsyth Departure Time: 1654
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