“You seem to forget, Dickon, that we are dealing with the Spider King. Louis realized, just as you have, that it would take more to mate dog to cat than a shared lust for the English crown.”

“You might as well face it. You're not going to be able to fight for the crown. You'll just have to grit your teeth and let us hand it over to you at the bargaining table.”

“I am not going to let him win, Guillaume. Not this time. I could not keep him from making my mother pay the price for our failed rebellion. Fifteen years she has been his prisoner, fifteen years! And she is his prisoner, for all that she no longer wants for a queen’s comforts. I have had to submit to his demands and subject myself to his whims and endure the indignity of having him brandish the crown before me as he would tease a dog with a bone. But no more. I will not let him rob me of my birthright, and I will not let him keep me from honoring my vow to defend the Holy Land. I do think he is behind that very opportune rebellion in my duchy, and I would not put it past him to be conniving with the Count of Toulouse, either. And if by chance he did not, it is only because he did not think of it. No, a reckoning is long overdue, and we will have it at Bonsmoulins.”

“John, watching in dismay, saw his great chance slipping through his fingers, and he swung around to demand of his father, “Papa, does this mean Richard has bested you and Aquitaine is lost?” Eleanor winced, Geoffrey rolled his eyes, and Henry gave his youngest a look John had never gotten from him before. “My life would have been much more peaceful if I’d had only daughters,” he snapped. “As for Aquitaine, it is yours if you can take it.”

“Forget the threat of Hell's infernal flames. The true torture would condemn a man to wait and wait and wait - for an eternity”

“More than men had died at Lincoln. It seemed to Stephen that reality was a casualty, too, for nothing made sense anymore. What was he doing here in the solar of Lincoln Castle, bleeding all over the Earl of Chester’s wife?”

“We tend to forget at times that it is the little ones, the children, who do suffer the greatest hurt. If we cannot comprehend why certain sorrows are visited upon us, how on earth can they?”