Parallel Alices: Alice through the Looking-Glass of Eleanor of Aquitaine by Christopher Tyler, a visual psychophysicist and the creator of the autostereogram (“Magic Eye” pictures), is an erudite yet approachable and very well designed look at the pervasive mediaeval themes throughout the Alice books, focusing on the remarkable parallels between the travails of the fictional Alice and a historical Alice who lived in the time of the knights and castles, duchesses, and chess games that figure so largely in the narrative. The earlier Alice of the Vexin spent her life as a trading pawn of the monarchs of England and France, a lost soul on the checkerboard of twelfth-century territorial intrigues. A daughter of Louis VII of France, for much of her life she was held hostage by the Plantagenet court, successively held as a bargaining chip by Queen Eleanor and Kings Henry II, Richard the Lionheart, and John. To order or investigate further, visit parallelalices.com.
