![]() ![]() When they flood a marsh to create a dam, they drive species to extinction. As the nuns labour ingeniously to build a labyrinth of earth and trees, they destroy ancient trees and destroy habitats. ![]() ![]() Marie’s empire costs people too, but Groff also uses the growth of the abbey to comment upon the ecological cost of human pride and expansion. The human cost of Eleanor’s empire is shown in Marie, and how she was cast out for being both a bastard and unmarriageably ugly. Marie learns with age that she has built her empire as a shell, to spite the court that threw her out and show them what she was capable of. ![]() It is here that Marie erects her own empire, saving the abbey, which begins with 20 starving, near-dead nuns, and expanding its network till she has over 100 well-fed women at the centre of an impenetrable natural labyrinth, having acquired vast wealth in land, gold and connections.īoth the networks are propped up by the mortal pride of the women at their centre. Eleanor, wife and mother of kings who themselves are barely mentioned, also happens to be Marie’s first and enduring love, as well as the woman who has the teenage Marie kicked out of the French court and exiled to an abbey stricken by poverty and disease in deepest, muddiest Angleterre. ![]()
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