Changeling, the first in the series to be known as The Order of Darkness, is set just prior to this time period, at the end of the 15th century in Italy. Gregory is well known for her books on Renaissance England ( The Other Boleyn Girl, The Virgin’s Lover). While waiting for her new book, The Kingmaker’s Daughter, to arrive on the holds shelf for me, I have been trying out her new series for teens, The Order of Darkness. I am unabashedly in love with stories of Medieval and Renaissance Europe, so it is no real surprise that I love Philippa Gregory. En route they encounter alchemists, poisoners, inquisitors, purported witches, and more - ending up at the castle of real-life historical figure VladDracul (meaning Dragon in Latin).With the first book in her Order of Darkness series, Philippa Gregory sets a tale of romance, intrigue, and Inquisition in the startling and delightful ambiance of pre-Enlightenment Europe. They travel across France, Switzerland, and over the Alps into Romania. Titus and Ygraine find themselves attracted to one another, despite the conventions of the time.

Titus is intrigued - could they really be using witchcraft? He follows their route and ends up linking up with them on their travels.

Ygraine is a reluctant nun and manages to escape the abbey with Ishrak, though no one can work out how they did it. The abbess, Ygraine, is actually a fifteen-year-old girl who has been shut up in a nunnery by her brother after her father's death, to ensure that she cannot inherit any of the family estate.

Titus is sent to investigate an abbess who has been accused of witchcraft, alongside her slave and Moorish half-sister, Ishrak. Known as The Order of the Dragon, it is headed up by a mysterious man with a tattoo of a coiled dragon eating its own tail on his arm. Instead he is recruited into a secret order investigating strange occurrences across Europe. He is brilliant and gorgeous but, cast as a heretic, he is sent to the Vatican in Rome where he expects to be punished or executed. Sixteen-year-old Titus Devere is thrown out of his religious order after proving that a divine revelation (blood streaming from a religious icon) was a fake, using his knowledge of Moorish science.

Changeling by Philippa Gregory