Dark Rosaleen
By Marjorie Bowen
Ireland 1796 – the dream that became a nightmare
As a child, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, brother of the Duke of Leinster, was already acutely uncomfortable with his rank and status.
Drawn to and distressed by the plight of others – from the slave in his mother’s tapestry to the Irishmen and women subjugated by the English – it was only natural that he should find himself in Paris in the first year of the new French Republic.
Young, naïve, and full of dreams for the future, Edward sees in the French revolution a glimpse of what life in Ireland might be like if the yoke of English rule might be cast off.
But Edward, a man whose ideals have always been at odds with his family’s noble name, finds himself unhappy with the treatment of French nobility being murdered out of hand.
A chance encounter with an old acquaintance throws him into the path of the young, pretty Pamela d’Orléans, daughter of the imprisoned Duc d’Orléans, and Edward abandons his visit to Paris in order to marry her.
But their idyllic life at Edward’s home in Kildare proves a refuge from the world for only a short time.
Every Irish patriot is dreaming of the day when their country will be free from the tyranny of the English, and Edward cannot help but devote himself to the cause.
Fired by the success of the revolution in France, the United Irishmen – a top secret society – hatches a perilous plot to overthrow the Government.
Dark Rosaleen is the romantic, tragic story that follows one of Ireland’s greatest patriots.
