Kronika Karla IV. - Orel a lev – Vaňková Ludmila (2014)

The Eagle and the Lion (1347 - 1362) After the Battle of Crécy, death intervened in the life of Charles IV three more times — the death of his wife Blanka, his young son Václav, and his second wife Anna of Pfalz, the moody queen who could not understand her husband when he returned from a serious injury with a mutilated body and a scarred face. Only his third marriage to Anna of Silesia and the adventurous journey to Rome for the imperial coronation would show that it was only now that Charles had reached the peak of his royal power and glory. The novel features a number of historical figures alongside Emperor Charles — Arnošt of Pardubice, the Roman tribune Cola di Rienzo, painter Theodorik, poet Petrarch, and many others. After the Roman coronation, Charles attempts to establish a firm order in the Roman Empire and tie it to the golden core of his own power — the Kingdom of Bohemia. This task seems almost impossible, and moreover, Charles does not yet have an heir for his Central European empire. This changed only before his forty-fifth birthday when his son Václav was born. Anna of Silesia was Charles's great love, and he adored her longed-for child immensely, which was not the best for the prince's future character and ruling qualities, but it was the happiest period of Charles's life, when peace and love reigned in the imperial family.