It is Christmas 1183 in a cold castle at Chinon, and Henry II is not ready to give up his crown.

His three sons—warrior Richard, calculating Geoffrey, and spoiled John—jockey for position as heir, each bargaining, lying, and betraying as needed. Summoned from her imprisonment for the holiday is Henry’s brilliant and dangerous queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who matches him in cunning, memory, and malice, and whose love for her children is inseparable from her thirst for power.