May We Feed the King

A curator spends her days recreating the interiors of historic buildings, carefully arranging objects and details so that visitors can feel the presence of people who once lived there. While working inside the lavish rooms of a medieval palace, she becomes increasingly absorbed by the story of a long-forgotten king—and the boundaries between her own life and the past begin to dissolve. The king she studies is an unlikely ruler: a reluctant monarch who inherits the throne after the sudden deaths of his two older brothers. He has little desire for power, but rumours soon spread through the court that he is incapable of ruling. Questions about his strength, his marriage, and his ability to protect the future of the kingdom lead some to wonder whether another should take his place. Moving between the life of a woman escaping the uncertainties of her present and the story of a ruler whose legacy is being rewritten, May We Feed the King is a richly imagined meditation on history, storytelling, desire, power, and the ways people search for meaning in the lives of others. Rebecca Perry explores how the past is constructed, preserved, and sometimes invented—and how the stories we tell about history reveal as much about ourselves as they do about those who came before us.