An uncertain sixteen year-old in black armor steels himself to lead the vanguard of his father's army on a muddy battlefield. It is a stormy day in August, 1346. He is Edward Plantagenet, called "the Black Prince." The place is "The Valley of the Clerks," near the town of Crecy, France. This is the story of his youth and adulthood as he tells it, from a childhood among lions in the Tower of London to his love for a woman whose life is as wild and exceptional as his own. She is Joan, called "the Fair Maid of Kent," renowned for her beauty. At 26, after years of vast social and economic change...