Thoroughly enjoyed. I previously was not very knowledgeable about this period in French history or about the murder. I learned a lot and would highly recommend to anyone who likes history. ( )

On the surface, this is a good (but not great) history book with some true crime thrown in. Jager tells a good story in a very readable way, with just enough historical and character detail to make scenes interesting. You get a sense of late medieval Paris and of France at the time, and I enjoyed seeing how petty corruption can lead to world-shaking events. I learned some things about a part of history I didn’t know much about, which is always good.

However, I wanted a whole lot more than I got, and it became clear in the first chapter that I was going to have to read this with a lot of salt. Jager’s definitely writing to a lay audience, and assuming said audience wants juicy details and scandal much more than thorough and precise history. There are assumptions, or at least lacks of clarification, throughout the book, often relying on and playing into what everyone Knows™ about the Middle Ages. Things like everyone living in fear, nobles being power-hungry bastards, and the commonness of torture and belief in witches, to name a few.

Which, as I said in commentary elsewhere, isn’t exactly wrong, but it’s not right either, the way I understand the period. There’s a lot of nuance that Jager’s lacking, and so what might be true of a lot of people is equally untrue of a lot of people as well. He might have researched a lot for this book, but he’s also presenting a history without as much balance and context as he could be.

And that lack of context carries over into the story itself. Jager himself talks about how cool it is to get a real sense of the people of medieval Paris in the eyewitness testimonies, but you really don’t get a whole lot, just their reactions to witnessing a murder and its aftermath. I was hoping for more detail about their daily lives and professions, which I know was probably asking a bit much, but all Jager really gives in that direction is a bit of general gloss. “This man was a baker, so he was probably doing X,” for instance, and “this barber was working after curfew,” without mention of why or how common that might have been.

The case itself is cooler for its context—who the players were, what the motive was, how it felt out in political tension—than what the book’s ostensibly built around, which is the actual solving of the mystery, and that context is what takes up most of the book, so that’s all right. The detective work is pretty by the books by modern standards, notable only in the era in which it was happening (but again, Jager makes it out like the “detective” was inventing a new method of solving crimes rather than building on other thinkers and precedent, which is what he was surely doing). There’s a little bit of a “trial” afterwards, where Jager puts emotions into the detective’s head, but then the feud and politics start up and the story I’d following for half the book was just gone.

In short, this reads a lot like other American pop history books I’ve read, with a lot of assumptions about the intelligence of the audience, a loose-ish approach to history, and a bit of sensationalism for good measure. It was interesting and entertaining, but I don’t feel like I learned much from it that I can seriously trust, beyond the general story arc, and it’s not a book I can really recommend.
6/10

Contains: Medieval stereotypes. A pretty brutal and gory murder. Rape mentions. ( )

Interesting tidbit of French history, but just not enough to keep my attention right now. Reading a little more like a textbook for my preference, but certainly not badly written by any means. Maybe I'll try to pick it up later.

Blood Royal is that most rare thing, a medieval history full of personality and color. It's not often we get to hear the quoted words of a medieval peasant from the early 1400s, or minute by minute action scenes playing out in detail. Unlike Name of the Rose the author didn't make it up, the events were written down by a criminal investigator at the time, and recreated in this wonderful book. And unlike Martin Guerre about 150 years later, this crime had much larger importance and helps to put the complex Hundred Years' War in a little more context. Not just politically, but the mood of the age, how people acted and reacted. Hope to read this again sometime as it makes for a great portal to the late Middle Ages. ( )

Very engrossing and well written. However, It is not actually a murder mystery, as the cover description and beginning of the book led me to expect. As an exploration of human nature, description of the persistent unfairness of life, and exposition of history it is very good. It is even "true crime," but "detection" is a stretch. ( )