The Lion in Winter

by James Goldman

“I've snapped and plotted all my life. There's no other way to be a king, alive and fifty all at the same time.”

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.

Also present is Philip, young king of France, there to press his claims and exploit the fractures in this royal family. Over the course of one winter’s day, bedrooms and corridors become battlegrounds: brothers turn on brothers, parents maneuver against their own children, spouses fence with old loves and older grudges. In this lion’s den, will any bond truly hold?

“…as if the way one fell down mattered.”

“When the fall is all there is, it matters.”