Lita-Rose Betcherman’s Court Lady and Country Wife brings to life two royal sisters with very little in common. Lucy and Dorothy Percy were bound simply by a father imprisoned in London’s infamous Tower during the early 17th century.

Lucy was a vain busybody steeped in city life, where she meddled in business and political affairs and took on extramarital lovers. “Her narcissism is implicit in the flowery tributes of her admirers, who often portrayed her gazing in a mirror,” Betcherman writes. Dorothy, meanwhile, was a stoic countrywoman who lasted barely more than a few months between pregnancies, and who, over the course of a lifetime, provided unconditional emotional support to her more dramatic, scheming sister. “From her youth, [Lucy] had turned to her sister at every crisis of her life.”

The account, told entirely in an overly detached narrative, starts in the era of King James I’s rule, and walks through decades of civil wars, invasions, beheadings, imprisonments, affairs, deaths, accusations, betrayals, and spousal fights, introducing an overwhelming number of historical figures in a calm, methodical tone much like that of a master’s thesis. Betcherman provides an exceptional outline of 17th-century England – the political, social, and economic situations of the time – as well as an interesting analysis of the sisters’ implicit connection with each other and to the power struggles of the times. But the lack of emotional connection to the central figures may leave the reader feeling somewhat disengaged.

Still, Court Lady and Country Wife is a good read for British history buffs, with just enough story to keep things intriguing, and just enough fact to aid in personal research.