The Confession of Piers Gaveston

Piers Gaveston was a soldier, a champion jouster, and a witty conversationalist. According to his own fictional account in this novel by Brandy Purdy, he was also a pagan and a male prostitute who viewed his long-standing affair with King Edward II as merely another means to make a living.

The Confession of Piers Gaveston is a skillfully written debut novel which reveals some very ugly aspects of the British monarchy in the fourteenth century. I am not speaking of King Edward’s gay love affair with the narrator, Piers Gaveston, but of Edward’s obsessive and histrionic personality. He was certainly not the first or the last ruler to allow his lusts to cloud his judgment, but he may have been one of the most disinterested and show more incompetent kings in England’s history. Some of the scenes in the novel seem almost unbelievably melodramatic – such as Edward abandoning his bride on their wedding day for his male lover’s company and actually giving him the jewelry that had been a wedding gift from the queen’s father – but these are all documented historical facts! Brandy Purdy’s depiction of them is probably accurate, outrageous though it may seem that a king would behave that way.

Piers Gaveston makes a lively and personable narrator for this tale, and Purdy has given him a lyrical, compelling, and sometimes playful voice. She has created in Piers a believable man of many talents who nonetheless is only credited with one – his ability to seduce almost anyone with his good looks and wit. During the novel, Piers bitterly reflects on how his prowess on the battlefield and intelligence in statecraft go unappreciated by his detractors and his friends alike, as he is considered merely a pretty bauble to be used to sate the king’s lust. Meanwhile, the man on the throne of England clearly is incapable of the job he has inherited. As Piers so aptly puts it: “Edward is the King of England and if he cannot find one misplaced shoe which he knows is somewhere in a single locked room then no wonder his subjects have no confidence in him!”

It is inevitable that this book will be compared to Susan Higginbotham’s novel, The Traitor’s Wife, which also depicts Edward’s reign. Brandy Purdy’s novel focuses on a narrower time period, includes a smaller cast, but still provides a chilling glimpse of the events which follow Piers Gaveston’s death. All in all, I wish I had read The Confessions of Piers Gaveston first, because this novel clearly introduces and explains the King’s three most serious adversaries: Pembroke, Lancaster, and Warwick, whom I confused in the other, longer novel. However, both books are very worth reading for anyone interested in this dark era of England’s history and a king who makes King Henry VIII seem temperate and reasonable by comparison! show less