At first determined to ignore the rumors about her new husband, Barbara embraces the pleasures of the Ferrarese court.

But no one dares accuse him, and no one has proof-least of all his second duchess, the far less beautiful but delightfully clever Barbara of Austria. Half of Europe is certain he murdered his first wife, Lucrezia, the luminous child of the Medici. In a city-state known for magnificence, where love affairs and conspiracies play out amidst brilliant painters, poets and musicians, the powerful and ambitious Alfonso d'Este, duke of Ferrara, takes a new bride. I look forward to Elizabeth Loupas’s next book.A rich, compelling historical novel-and a mystery of royal intrigue. I thoroughly enjoyed The Second Duchess and recommend it to all who love a good historical mystery with a well-developed romantic component.

The wonderful research and the setting of 16 th-century Ferrara serve to flesh out the plot into a fascinating historical mystery. The Medici princess comes across as a willful and spoiled child who is unable to see her mistakes until it is too late. Her voice is very different from that of the determined and driven Barbara. Her spirit, awaiting her eternal fate, is neither saintly nor idealized. The ghost of Lucrezia de Medici is the linking character throughout the story. He walls himself away from his new wife and tries to brutalize her into submission, but he finds he cannot break Barbara’s spirit. Her deepest fear, that she may be the bride of a murderer, drives her to solve the mystery of the death of her predecessor - at risk of her own life.Īlfonso, brooding, dark and powerful, lives with his own ghosts-that of his father and his dead wife. She is a clever, ugly duckling princess who must come to grips with being a stranger in a strange land, a foreigner in her new home. From the start of her marriage to Duke Alfonso d’Este, Barbara is obsessed with curiosity about Alfonso’s late first wife, Lucrezia de Medici.īarbara is drawn with depth and compassion. The author’s debut novel, based on Robert Browning’s famous poem “My Last Duchess,” focuses on Barbara of Austria, daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I.

Have you ever read a book that you wish you had written? Have you ever read a book that you wish did not end? For me, The Second Duchess is that book.

The Second Duchess by Elizabeth Loupas