Customer Reviews

The Founding (Morland Dynasty)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"The Founding," set during the War of the Roses, is the first book of the prolific Moreland family saga. The story opens with the marriage of the ambitious young Eleanor Courteney to Robert Moreland, son of a wealthy York wool merchant. Eleanor, having lived among nobility for most of her life, believes the match is beneath her station and desperately opposes it. The first half of the book revolves around Eleanor's struggle to come to terms with her marriage. As the novel progresses, the family is swept up, for better or for worse, by the tumultuous political tides of the war.
"The Founding" was an enjoyable read, full of colorful descriptions of everyday life during mid-to late fifteenth century England. The author effectively blends her fictional creations with historical events by giving her characters minor roles in the royal households and in significant battles of the war. In doing so, these characters' adventures seem plausible in light of known historical events. The author has also included a family chart, which this reader found extremely helpful for keeping track of the prodigious Moreland family.
I have only a few minor criticisms (the reason for the four star rating). The large gaps in time that occur between chapters can be disorienting for the reader. I also thought the book would have been more satisfying had the author given her characters more depth, rather than emphasizing the same character traits repeatedly.
Despite these criticisms, I felt the book was highly entertaining and am eagerly looking forward to continuing with this saga.

This book lays the foundation for Harrod-Eagles 20+ series of the Morland dynasty. I won't go into the plot details as it's already been said by many other reviewers; I'll just list what I found to be the good and the bad of this book.

What I disliked was how the author only mentions one facet of each character's personality. Eleanor, the main character, is repeatedly characterized as being a strong, imposing, dutiful woman. She is described as such over and over again. And the other characters are treated the same. By about the tenth time it's mentioned how strong-willed Eleanor is, you want to scream. The only real exception to this is the daughter, Isabella. She goes through circumstances which force a dramatic personality change in her and so she gets to be a slightly rounder character. But everyone else is more or less flat and one-dimensional.

The other negative comment I have is the history involved in these stories. Having accurate history is less important than having good character development but some of Harrod-Eagles claims leave you wondering just where she got her information. She has the princes in the tower being killed after Richard III in this first book, and then states in the second book that the Princes were shipped out of England and probably died in obscurity in a cottage in France! And, in her foreword to the second book, she says that Henry VIII had only two mistresses in his lifetime! Such inaccuracies tend to irritate me as a history buff but if you can overlook that, then this book isn't so bad (aside from the lack of good characterization).

The good thing about this series is that they are light, easy reads for when you're in the mood to go back in time but don't want to be bogged down in something deep and dark. The story is entertaining enough, even with those flaws, that you can quickly go through it.

This is the first book in the Morland Dynasty series. It begins in 1434 with the marriage of Robert Morland, son of a Yorkshire woolmerchant, and Eleanor Courtney, a young Dorset maiden. It heralds the beginning of a great family. Under the craftful eye of Eleanor, the woolmerchant she maried soon becomes a very successful clothier. This series follows the Morland family from the War of the Roses to the present day. A MUST!

This is the first book in a long series about the Morland family. Their saga spans the centuries and the characters are indirectly involved in the main events of English history.
The Founding describes the beginnings of the dynasty. Robert Morland has made money farming sheep in York. Eleanor is poor, but has powerful relations. Their arranged marriage is not a grand passion, but both work hard to establish their family as one of the richest and most respected in Yorkshire.
Harrod-Eagles cleverly weaves the turbulent events of the Wars of the Roses into the story. The Morlands are not aristocrats, but they choose sides to protect their family and business interests. Their fortunes roll with the highs and lows of the Yorkist cause.
The book is historically accurate, from the dates of battles to the fashions and sheep farming practices of the late Middle Ages. But these do not overshadow the story, which is essentially a well-written family saga. Often this book is displayed in the Romance section of bookstores amongst bodice rippers and melodramatic romances. This is sad, because it is far more intelligent than that. While it isn't too deep and meaningful, this is a nice read which won't make you cringe in disbelief.

The Foundling begins a series that blows the mind with its historical accuracy. Unlike many other authors, Harrod-Eagles shows the good side as well as the bad, and each character is different. A depiction of real life and what the women (and men) had to go through during that time is written in great detail.

A must read for history fans!!

THE FOUNDING begins THE MORLAND DYNASTY series, which as of this writing consists of 29 titles. It opens during the Wars of the Roses with Henry VI at the helm and Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, struggling to gain power. Eleanor, a teen raised by the Beaufort's, leaves home to marry Robert Morland, a wealthy sheep farmer.

The book covers the years 1434 to 1485; it ends shortly after what will come to be known as the Battle of Bosworth where Richard III dies. While the wars serve as a backdrop, the author weaves much of the history as we know it today into the story.

The book also reveals a lot about the clothing industry during medieval times. The family's matriarch (Eleanor) takes it from a well-to-do sheep farm to wool merchandising to cloth manufacturing.

After reading Sharon Kay Penman's THE SUNNE IN SPLENDOUR, I was skeptical about this book. I didn't think any other novelist could to the period justice. I was wrong. THE FOUNDING (originally published in 1980 before Penman's work) is a wonderful start to what should prove to be both an entertaining and educational series.

The Founding is the first book in the Morland Dynasty series, covering the War of the Roses from 1434 to 1483. Robert Morland, heir to the Morland estate, marries Eleanor Courteney, thereby uniting money with a family name. Eleanor quickly becomes the family matriarch, staunchly supporting the Yorkists in the struggle for the English throne. The story of The Founding covers fifty years and five generations of the Morland family.

The series is truly addictive. It's not great literature, by any means, but Cynthia Harrod-Eagles knows how to tell an entertaining story, and none of it is contrived. The Morland family in the Founding is closely aligned with the Plantagenets, following them right up through the Battle of Bosworth Field.

Just finished this first entry in what looks to be a very long series of historical novels dealing with the fictional Morland family. Being mostly unimpressed with the initial offering, I am unlikely to read the rest. This opener starts off reasonably enough with Eleanor Morland, the matriarch of an up-and-coming family involved in the wool and cloth trades in England during the Wars of the Roses. I developed an antipathy for Eleanor early on that only increased as the tale progressed, as her grasping, ambitious and totally self-absorbed nature was a complete turn off. Any sympathy or identification I had with her went out the window when she resorts to violence to coerce her daughter into marriage with a sadist, simply because said sadist is rich and has prospects which would advance Eleanor's family holdings. So much for her close family-feelings or any semblance of maternal compassion. Apart from the main character's unpleasant personality, my bigger problem with the read overall is that the fictional lives of these made up people lack interest. When it comes to historical fiction, I much prefer fictionalized biographies of actual historical personages. The stories of their lives are far more interesting, even when fictionalized details are thrown in, than totally fabricated inventions of an author's imagination. Ms. Eagles spices up the narrative by occasionally including actual events and real people (Richard III, for example) who are supposedly acquainted with the Morlands. This did little to enhance interest for me, however, as the main plot revolves around the doings of the purely fictional Morlands whose personal tragedies and triumphs are no doubt mostly of interest to themselves. As far as this reader is concerned, one of these was enough.

The Founding is the perfect title for the story of Robert and Eleanor Morland, who are married in 1434 and are the key characters in this first book of the 32-book series The Morland Dynasty. Although they were not pioneers starting out with nothing, until Eleanor came along the Morlands were simply two men raising sheep for their wool and living in a dark, dirty house with a few servants who went about their days with no direction. With Eleanor's ideas and support, Robert is able to build his business, acquire more land, and found what will become a wide-spread, influential English family.
In addition to enjoying Eleanor's family story and the historical information, I was very excited that the book has a family tree at the front, to which I often referred while reading. On Cynthia Harrod-Eagles website she has all of the family trees for each novel, as well as a hand-drawn map of the Morlands' fictional world, which I printed out to look at while reading. Her website is fascinating with information on her research and the factual places she melded to create the Morland home and environs.

I picked this up in a Canadian bookstore (it can be hard to find in the U.S.) and eagerly ordered each subsequent volume from Amazon. This is historical fiction at its best. Perhaps the characterizations are not as deep as another type of novel, but the plots zip along as Harrod Eagles plunges the reader into historical England. I enjoyed the details, such as the description of the road from Yorkshire to London in the winter. And for the most part, I really cared about the characters. Even if one volume in this series is not quite as good as the others, the series as a whole makes for fascinating and entertaining reading.