Solomon's Crown Quotes

“I wish I understood you," he said. "Sometimes you speak, and I feel like a sailor navigating my foreign stars."
"I am nothing like the stars."
"You are, he replied. "You are as lovely, and almost as distant.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“My liege," I said, bowing low.
"My Lord Aquitaine," he replied, as he stood from the bench. "Is the gate broken, or do you make a habit of vaulting over walls?"
"Only when you are on the other side of them.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“I think of you constantly. You are the sky above me and the ground below, you are the rain and the sun and the snow and the grass. You are winter and you are spring. I cannot escape you.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“Kisses do not a kingdom make, nor love a conquest end.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“If he managed to kill me now, if he could really bring himself to do it--then at least I would die in his arms. There were worse endings.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“Was it worth the trouble?" I asked.
"Certainly. To think, I had feared you might be dull." His eyes trailed languidly over my face, from my hairline to my jaw; a cataloguing, exploratory sort of gaze, one that felt almost violating. "I thought you might be tedious, as your father was. But you are not."
"What am I then? If not dull?"
"I do not know, he replied. "A contradiction. An enemy, an ally. A question and an answer.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“You are my question and my answer, Phillip”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“For the rest of our lives, we would be as dusk and dawn; one’s ascendancy would cause the other’s fall. Perhaps, in that way, we could never truly part.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“Richard knelt to me on a field outside Nantes, with a pair of armies watching. He knelt to me on damp grass in the sunlight, and I felt the very moment that we were bound.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“I was furious with him, that much was certain. But I had mastered that contradictory position in which I adored him simultaneously.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“I wanted everyone to know the Duke of Aquitaine, in all his virtue and depravity, basking in his liberty. See how his spirit remains unbroken! See the leviathan unbound!”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“Blood makes a monarch, I thought. But glory is earned.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“I am a king," I said. "What could possibly be more important than that?"
She laughed, and she picked up her fork once more. "Anything Philip," she said. "Almost anything else.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“I had been naive to ever assume I could keep us at peace. Kisses do not a kingdom make, nor love a conquest end.
I loved him, but that was not enough.
Perhaps it never would be.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“But I had been a fool not to understand. Little wonder my father had wasted away, considering what had been taken from him. I understood that now. If I caught light as he once had, if I burnt and then faded; if I became ashes and soot, the dust in the air; then certainly, I would be as he was. I would be the dirt beneath another's boot. It was only natural to fear such a fate. But I was wrong to think I could ever avoid it, once Richard came.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“I was certain of so little, my fear was nothing less than a disease, it had been my entire life. But I loved him, and that was enough. King or no - it no longer mattered. I needed to be nothing but his.”
― Natasha Siegel , Solomon's Crown

“I was certain of so little, my fear was nothing less than a disease, it had been my entire life. But I loved him, and that was enough. Kind or no - it no longer mattered. I needed to be nothing but his.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“For the rest of our lives, we would be as dusk and dawn; one's ascendancy would cause the other's fall. Perhaps, in that way, we could never truly part.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“I will always want you. Enemy or ally, I always shall”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“Natasha Siegel is a writer of historical fiction. She was born and raised in London, where she grew up in a Danish-Jewish family surrounded by stories. When she’s not writing, she spends her time getting lost in archives, chasing after her lurcher, and drinking entirely too much tea. Her poetry has won accolades from Foyle’s and the University of Oxford. Solomon’s Crown is her first novel.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“For all the blood and grime and suffering of the past, people loved one another just as much as they do now. I think that’s wonderful.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“first learnt about Richard and Philip’s relationship in James Reston Jr.’s Warriors of God, one of the few histories I’ve read that lends the rumors of their romantic entanglement credence. The concept of two kings so destined to rivalry falling in love utterly captivated me. Further inspiration came from the perfect 1968 film adaptation of The Lion in Winter, in which a young Timothy Dalton made Philip dark-haired and blue-eyed in my mind forevermore.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“And all my life, in the search for something remarkable—something extraordinary—I had never imagined something such as this; something so solitary, this private and flawless moment. Once, before I had known Philip at all, I had wanted to be the subject of songs, a hero in poems. I had wanted to be like Richard the Lionheart, like Philip Augustus. These were the men who would be chanted of, who would be immortalized in their castles and their cities, in the soil of their kingdoms and the white stone of their effigies. But those men were not real, and they never would be. We were real, he and I, and I was glad that no one else would ever know Philip as I did in that moment, nor know me as he did. We were only for each other.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“Everything in my life is uncertain, except how I feel about you.” It was true. There was no other constant in my life, not anymore; no mark upon its landscape but him. Everything I did, everything I wanted, was bound irrevocably with him.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“Everything in my life is uncertain, except how I feel about you.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“This troubadour is rather slow, I fear—” Philip said, and then he squealed as I threw myself at him. I caught him at his back, winding my arms around his waist. The momentum was such that we both stumbled, nearly falling halfway down the hill. “Richard!” he squawked, squirming. “Release me at once—” “I shall, my liege, but I will ravish you quite thoroughly first”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“My liege,” I said in an Occitan accent. “If you would permit me to play you a short canso”—here I clapped to exaggerate the words, and Philip laughed—“in private.” “In private! I think this troubadour very bold, to take such liberties with his king.” “But how can I resist, when my king dances so prettily?” I reached out to catch his arm. Laughing, he spun away.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“I was certain of so little; my fear was nothing less than a disease, it had been my entire life. But I loved him, and that was enough. King or no—it no longer mattered. I needed to be nothing but his. And, for a moment, every possibility, every choice I once thought I could never make, bloomed before me, stretching upwards around us; reaching up, up through the roof of the building, smashing through the tiles, bursting into the sky. Hope grew anew, untethered and unrooted, like the branches of the elm we would now cut down.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“I was certain of so little; my fear was nothing less than a disease, it had been my entire life. But I loved him, and that was enough. King or no—it no longer mattered. I needed to be nothing but his.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown

“I surged upwards, then, taking him off guard; he laughed as I flipped our positions and pushed him down to straddle him. His hands fell to my hips. Despite the heat, I pressed my mouth to his neck, so that I could taste the salt of his skin.”
― Natasha Siegel, Solomon's Crown