Josce de Dinan

1116–1167

Josce de Dinan was an Anglo-Norman lord who held Ludlow Castle during the civil war between Stephen and Empress Matilda. He became involved in a violent private conflict with Hugh de Mortimer and other Marcher nobles, and his family’s fortunes were later woven into the ancestral romance of the FitzWarin line. The surviving evidence is fragmentary, combining charter material with stories written long after the events.

Elizabeth Chadwick’s Shadows and Strongholds fictionalises the world of Josce de Dinan and the FitzWarin family on the Welsh border. His castle and feud provide a setting in which private lordship, royal civil war and family honour cannot be separated. Novelists must decide how far to trust the romance of Fouke le Fitz Waryn, which preserves memorable narrative but not straightforward biography.

Ellis Peters’s The Virgin in the Ice places Josce de Dinan within a narrative shaped by crime, espionage and covert power, social change and the pressures of ordinary life, and military command and battlefield decision-making.

Series

Series featuring Josce de Dinan (1 series)

Chronicles of Brother Cadfael in Order

by Ellis Peters 19 books 4.5

The Chronicles of Brother Cadfael follow a former soldier and crusader who has become the herbalist of Shrewsbury Abbey. Between 1137 and 1145, Cadfael investigates deaths, disappearances and disputed identities while working within the rhythms of Benedictine life and the law of medieval England. The twenty novels unfold…

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