Queens of Conquest Books in Order

Anna Stuart's Queens of Conquest, published as Joanna Courtney, retells the struggle for England in 1066 from the women's side. Instead of keeping the focus on Harold, Harald Hardrada, and William of Normandy, the series turns toward the women closest to those battles for the crown. The main trilogy follows Edyth of Mercia in The Chosen Queen, Elizaveta of Kiev in The Constant Queen, and Mathilda of Flanders in The Conqueror's Queen. The novella The Christmas Court works as a prelude, taking readers back to King Edward's court in 1051.

This is conquest from the women's side.

That change in angle is what gives the series its life. Edyth's story brings in England and Wales, love, exile, and the complicated rise of Harold Godwinson. Elizaveta's book stretches much wider, from Kiev across the Viking world with Harald Hardrada, showing just how international the road to 1066 really was. Mathilda's story takes readers into Flanders and Normandy, where marriage, ambition, and the English succession become tangled together long before the ships sail.

The setting matters enormously. These are books of royal halls, river journeys, sea crossings, alliances, and shifting loyalties. Courtney makes the political world feel physical, muddy roads, crowded courts, cold coastlines, and the restless movement of people who know a throne can rise or fall on a marriage, a promise, or a battle. That keeps the history from feeling distant. The scale is large, but the pressure on the characters feels immediate.

Across the trilogy, the ongoing problem is simple to say and hard to solve, who will rule England after Edward the Confessor? But the books are not dry succession lessons. They are interested in how women survive inside that struggle, how they bargain, love, endure, advise, and sometimes help shape events that history later credits to men alone. Each heroine wants something deeply personal, but the path to getting it runs straight through national crisis.

In tone, the series is sweeping without losing sight of character. There is romance here, certainly, but also court politics, family strategy, and the sense that private choices can alter public history. Read in order, the books build a fuller picture of 1066 and the years around it. By the time you reach The Conqueror's Queen, you do not just know who fought for England, you know what that fight cost the women standing beside the claimants.