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Edward Charles Novels in History |
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Daughters of the Doge |
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Daughters of the Doge is the second in a planned series of five books following the life of Richard Stocker and as such, a sequel to In the Shadow of Lady Jane.
Venice 1556, a wealthy, bustling, multi-cultural city, with a standard of living four times that of anywhere else in Europe.
Into that exciting environment comes twenty year old Richard Stocker, holding tightly to the Protestantism he has learned from his three years with Lady Jane Grey, and escaping from the persecutions of Catholic England under Mary Tudor.
Soon Richard finds himself caught up in the close and interwoven life of La Serenissima, and especially its women; Faustina Contarini, a nun, imprisoned in a convent by her noble family as a child and desperate to escape its abuses, Yasmeen Ahmed, Muslim clerk and book-keeper to the artist Tintoretto, and Veronica Franco, artists’ model, honest courtesan and poet, who, alone, seems able to rise above the subtle complexities of this close-knit society and to understand it.
Each of these women has her own story to tell, but they have one thing in common; they are all Daughters of the Doge, held captive by the seemingly contradictory laws and regulations of this teeming, yet artificial city.
Feeling his way forward in this difficult and often troubled society, Richard develops a relationship with each of these women. With plague and famine in England, and Queen Mary’s persecution of the Protestants appearing to get worse, Richard is forced to choose between these women as he tries to find a future for himself in a foreign land.
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Daughters of the Doge was published in hardback by Macmillan New Writing on 5th May 2007
The paperback version is published by Pan in May 2008
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