BOOKISHGAL

Well, the fairest love story in my own reading history, anyway.

Forget Romeo & Juliet, Aragorn & Arwen, and all those others. For me, there is no more dramatic, intense, and moving love story than that of Francis Crawford and Philippa Sommerville.

I’ve already written about The Game of Kings , the first book of Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles, featuring my favourite literary character of all time, Francis Crawford. And yes, Francis is as scintillating and brilliant and dashing and hilarious as I described. But by the end of the series, there would have been no Francis at all, without Philippa. She complemented and completed him as no other being on earth could have done. I think from now on, when someone asks who my favourite character is from a book, I will more accurately say “Francis-and-Philippa.” I love them both that much, and they are that vital to each other.

[Warning! Spoilers ahead! But I hope if you read the rest of the post, and haven’t read the series yet, I might whet your appetite.]

You hardly knew it was happening. Philippa was only 11 in the first book, ten years younger than Francis, when he essentially took her hostage to acquire information from her father that would clear his name. Then she wasn’t even in the second book, Queen’s Play, and was still mostly a younger pest who retained a resentment against “Mr. Crawford” in book three, The Disorderly Knights. We did learn that she was a staunchly loyal and intelligent girl who was, above all other things, endowed with a deep reservoir of plain common sense. But there wasn’t much hint of things to come.

And then came book four, Pawn in Frankincense, and everything changed. It was astonishing, watching Philippa mature and grow, travelling across Europe and gathering education and information — and poetry and music and poise and beauty — in conjunction with Francis’s own adventures. It was like she had been in a cocoon and now began to emerge as a butterfly every bit as brilliant and scintillating as Francis himself. In, of course, the most common sense way possible.

Two scenes always stick out for me: a brilliant, and hilarious, improvisation in a huge warehouse full of the French court’s masquerade props and costumes, with Philippa matching Francis, verbal thrust for verbal thrust;  and a wild run across the rooftops in a small town in France, with Philippa crying, “Francis! Francis! This is what you should be!” The two moments when first Francis, and then Philippa, recognize what they are to each other.

Gives me goosebumps, just thinking of it. Golden Francis with the cornflower blue eyes, and the “brown-haired girl,” Philippa, with her sensible brown eyes.

But this is, alas, where I must pull the curtain and not say any more. Because if I were to do so, it really would spoil everything. Suffice to say that there’s sufficient grief and tragedy to last a lifetime. But at the end — glory.

If you like historical fiction, and would enjoy a long swashbuckling tale interwoven with poetry and music and history and hilarity and, yes, down-to-earth common sense, I think you might enjoy this couple and their complex tale. For me, there are no characters more multi-layered and fascinating — or whose story is more gripping and wonderful — than Francis Crawford and Philippa Sommerville.

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