Anyone else has gone throught this wonderful series of books?
Written by french historian and former Minister of Culture Maurice Druon, The Accursed Kings is a novelized history series of 7 books (about 300-400 pages each) about the life in the french court of the XIV century and all the issues that sprang from the curse that supposedly threw at them the Gran Master of the Templar Order when the King of France sent him to the pyre.
Although it starts a bit slow, it quickly picks up pace and becomes an incredibly enthralling morass of intertwined stories, that give a really amazing view into just how complicated a time period was. The number of characters is staggering (although Druon takes his time to carefully detail every single one of them, with proper historical refferences, in the appendix found at the end of every tome. I would advice not reading it until finishing, however, as while a historical reccord, it does contains spoilers of an otherwise captivatingly twisting story). All this while throwing in all manners of very interesting facts about medieval life, in the masterfully detailed and well-documented style of the writter.
I fully reccommend these books to anyone. I cannot begin to say how many campaign ideas I've taken out of them.