Lise Favre, woman of the centuries

Published on November 16, 2024 at 2:38 p.m. / Modified on November 16, 2024 at 2:39 p.m.

She places a huge book on the living room table. Which is around 1000 pages. Title: New History of the Middle Ages. Its author, who surrounded himself with the best French medievalists, is Florian Mazel, professor at the University of Rennes and a great specialist in feudal society. “This allowed me to correct anachronisms,” she says. Lise Favre has just published The dove and the hawka historical novel set in the 12th century. “For example, I used the word pocket. Error, at that time, pockets did not yet exist. We used chaplains or bundles. I read that in a chapter on clothing,” she explains. The author can rest assured: her story, written very carefully, even elegantly, is completely of the period. And Lise Favre, to her credit, avoids the cookie-cutter expressions declaimed in medieval festivals such as “Hear oyez good people, young ladies and gentlemen”. “It’s a fundamentally modern story around a historical figure,” she summarizes.

The plot is enticing: Aélis de Cambremont, foster sister of Eleanor of Aquitaine (future wife of King Louis VII), gives birth to a boy. The whole house is joyful. Alas, a second newborn is expelled, female. Disaster because at that time, according to belief, a twin pregnancy was considered adultery. “Obviously, a wife giving birth to twins had been impregnated by two different men,” explains Lise Favre. The mother can then be repudiated and the family dishonored. The decision was then made to hide the existence of the second infant. Especially since the first, a boy named Enguerrand, has a bright future due to his parentage.

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