4. In chapter 9, Berengaria says of her aversion to the sight of blood, “One has to be bigger than one’s dislikes,” and Richard is struck by her “unilluminated courage.” Which other characters show this sort of courage in the face of things they dislike?
5. In chapter 12, we see a picture of Richard and Robin at liberty in a scene that goes from jovial banter to constructive debate to serious quarrelling and then finally to Robin’s banishment. How do Robin’s greatest strengths—his love for England, his candid nature, and his devotion to Richard—all play a part in his downfall?
6. How might England’s history have been different if Richard had listened to Robin’s counsel and not gone on his crusade, but stayed to rule and improve his country?
7. Berengaria gives Richard the nickname Couer de lion, the “lionhearted.” How does this name suit him? What are some events that take place in the book in which his lionheartedness is apparent? Does this prove to be a positive character trait or a negative one? Or both?
8. Both Eleanor and Richard believe “love necessarily include(s) understanding,” and both are hurt to learn that such is not always the case—Eleanor in her marriage to King Henry and Richard in his friendship with Robin. In what other relationships in the book is there evidence of an imbalance between love and understanding?
9. Even after being outlawed, Robin is never far from Richard’s thoughts. How is Robin still a guiding presence throughout the book, even through his conspicuous absence?
10. Richard says of ruling a country: “A man who can’t burden his conscience with occasional ruthlessness hasn’t the right to rule.” Taken in the context of our own time, do you agree or disagree with this statement? Why?
11. How does John’s position as the youngest and favorite son of Henry II, combined with his lack of an inheritance, form the motivations that impel him to seize power in Richard’s absence?
12. Who was the better ruler: Richard, who was always absent, but had good intentions for his country, or John, who did many things to improve the quality of life in England, but usually for the wrong reasons?
13. The Passionate Brood is the story of the establishment of a dynasty (the Plantagenets) and the birth of a nation (England). Barnes does much to show how the individual stories of each are intertwined to form one inextricable history. How might the Plantagenets be seen as the launching point for all of English history that would follow?
14. Margaret Campbell Barnes wrote The Passionate Brood during World War II and dedicated it to her son Michael, who was killed during the allied invasion of Normandy. Where in the story do we see both the often noble causes and the devastating losses of war?
Reading Group Guide written by Elizabeth R. Blaufox, great-granddaughter of Margaret Campbell Barnes
About the Author
Margaret Campbell Barnes lived from 1891 to 1962. She was the youngest of ten children born into a happy, loving family in Victorian England. She grew up in the Sussex countryside and was educated at small private schools in London and Paris.
Margaret was already a published writer when she married Peter, a furniture salesman, in 1917. Over the next twenty years, a steady stream of short stories and verse appeared under her name (and several noms de plume) in leading English periodicals of the time, including Windsor, London, Quiver, and others. Later, Margaret’s agents, Curtis Brown Ltd., encouraged her to try her hand at historical novels. Between 1944 and 1962, Margaret wrote ten historical novels. Many of these were bestsellers, book club selections, and translated into foreign editions.
Between World Wars I and II, Margaret and Peter brought up two sons, Michael and John. In August 1944, Michael, a lieutenant in the Royal Armoured Corps, was killed in his tank in the Allied advance from Caen to Falaise in Normandy. Margaret and Peter grieved terribly the rest of their lives. Glimpses of Michael shine through in each of Margaret’s later novels.
In 1945 Margaret bought a small thatched cottage on the Isle of Wight, off England’s south coast. It had at one time been a smuggler’s cottage, but to Margaret it was a special place in which to recover the spirit and carry on writing. And write she did. All together, over two million copies of Margaret Campbell Barnes’s historical novels have been sold worldwide.
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