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Literature / The Pillars of the Earth

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An epic novel, published in 1989 and set in 12th century England, The Pillars of the Earth is the chronicle of a man, his family, their enemies and the extraordinary dream that consumes them all. It is by far the most popular story that Ken Follett, mainly an author of thrillers and various spy novels, has ever written.

Tom Builder is a poor stonemason who dreams of building something that will be his legacy and which will sustain his family for the rest of their lives. Philip, the Prior of Kingsbridge, fights to build a cathedral there, against the wishes of his Bishop, his Lord and all manner of political enemies.

The Gothic Cathedral at Kingsbridge, it turns out, becomes more important than anyone imagines. Woven throughout this deeply personal drama are the civil wars between King Stephen and Queen Maud, and later the machinations of King Henry II and the priest Thomas Becket.

He followed it up with two sequels and one prequel many years later: World Without End, which picks up with the characters' descendants in the same village in 1327, A Column Of Fire, beginning in 1558, and The Evening And The Morning, set in the tenth century. Also adapted, along with World Without End, into a popular Euro Board Game, and a Video Game developed by Daedalic Entertainment and were released in 3 parts.

A miniseries starring Ian McShane, Rufus Sewell, Matthew Macfadyen, David Oakes, Sam Claflin, Eddie Redmayne as Jack and Hayley Atwell as Aliena ran on the Starz network in July and August 2010.


The original novel contains examples of:

  • Agony of the Feet: William tortures an enemy knight into confessing treason by hanging him from a tree limb and setting a fire under his bare feet.
  • Annoying Younger Sibling: Richard has the tendency to be a ball and chain to his big sis Aliena. He gets better as he gets older.
  • Aristocrats Are Evil: William is a depraved, war-mongering monster.
  • Arranged Marriage: William and Aliena would have become this (it ended very badly), but it was to be William and Elizabeth twenty years later.
  • The Atoner:
    • Brother Johnny, a former outlaw who became a monk after rescuing Jonathan when he was a baby.
    • Later Brother Remigius repents from his bad deeds throughout the story and accepts the role of a humble monk with no special authority.
  • Author Avatar: In-universe example — Jack makes up an epic story to tell his love interest, Aliena. The story's protagonist is a young squire who is not strong in battle but is courageous and determined all the same, using cunning or luck to barely escape from dangerous situations, and is madly in love with the beautiful princess.
  • Backstory:
    • Jack's parentage.
    • Philip's story about how he became a monk.
  • Been There, Shaped History: William was one of the assassins who killed Thomas Becket, and it was Philip's idea to make a saint of him.
  • Berserk Button
    • Don't ever laugh at William. He'll murder you.
    • King Henry II does not like his underlings' cheap talk.
    • Philip does not take kindly to people faking miracles.
    • Anyone physically harming Aliena will send Richard into a mindless rage.
  • Big Bad Duumvirate: Waleran Bigod and the Hamleighs, particularly William. Their schemes are the main source of problems that the people of Kingsbridge have to contend with.
  • Big Bad Wannabe: Alfred Builder and Brother Remigius loathe protagonists Jack Jackson and Prior Philip, devoting their entire lives to ruining them. Though they do their part, they're but small pieces in the schemes of the story's true villains, Waleran Bigod and William Hamleigh. Ultimately, their efforts amount to little and they are both dismissed when they are of no further use. Later, Alfred is killed unceremoniously by Richard when the former tries to rape Aliena while Remigius pulls a Heel–Face Turn and later saves Philip from disgrace.
  • Big Brother Instinct: Richard is younger than Aliena by a few years, but will unfailingly step forward to defend his sister from physical harm (even if it ends up with him being beaten or mutilated). Aliena recognizes that, for all his faults, Richard has always been exceptionally brave and has always attempted to protect her from physical threats.
  • Book Ends: The executions in the first scene and the last. The scenes even have the same opening sentence.
  • Break the Cutie:
    • From a modern perspective, young Aliena is a feisty and fetching noblewoman who wisely rejects the advances of a creep. She suffers very, very horribly for it.
    • Played straight with Elizabeth, quite literally on her wedding night, when William sates his violent lusts on her.
  • Break the Haughty:
  • Bring My Brown Pants: William wets himself on the way to the gallows.
  • Bury Your Gays: The effeminate Matthew is killed by William quite early in the story.
  • Butt-Monkey:
    • Deconstructed with William. In the beginning, he is just an idiot who is mocked by almost everyone. However, when he finally snaps, he becomes a nightmare: raping the woman who despised him, burning Kingsbridge to ashes, generally raping and pillaging all over the place because it's fun.
  • Celibate Hero: Prior Philip is not sexually deviant in any way. In the novel, he talks about his sexual lusts mercifully fading away over time. Word of God states that Philip was deliberately created to be a "cheerfully celibate" character, as Follett was sick of the outwardly-chaste but inwardly-smouldering-with-lust monk trope. invoked
  • Character Witness: Remigius, whose gossiping gets Ellen banished from the village. Later on, after he is disgraced and Philip decides to give him a second chance, he and Ellen save Philip from being accused of fathering Jonathan out of wedlock and confirm Ellen's tale that the previous Prior James and Waleran had condemned an innocent man for political benefit.
  • Christianity Is Catholic: Justified, not surprisingly, as the Reformation was still centuries away.
  • Civil War: Takes place during The Anarchy and this provides a number of crucial plot points.
  • Corrupt Church: Played straight with Ministers like Waleran who are raised to the top of the hierarchy; averted with Philip, Jonathan and other monks who strive to be Good Shepherd and dislike corrupt ministers.
  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Waleran Bigod, William Hamleigh, and Bishop Henry all have severe cases of this.
  • Come to Gawk: Remigius asks this to Philip when he's wandering the streets as a beggar. Philip, being the pious man he is, offers to take him back as a novice instead. This would save him a lot of problems later.
  • Cruel Mercy: Jack decides that forgiving Waleran and pitying him is the worst kind of punishment he can bring on the priest for engineering his father's execution.
  • Damsel out of Distress: Aliena is often in danger, but she's still quite intelligent and resourceful.
  • Dead Guy Junior: Tommy, the son of Jack and Aliena. Named after the deceased Tom Builder, whom William killed and had tormented in life. Fittingly, after he becomes the new earl, he dispatches William for killing Bishop Beckett on charges of sacrilege and sentences him to the gallows.
  • Death by Childbirth: Agnes, Tom's first wife, dies after giving birth to Jonathan in the woods.
  • Decoy Protagonist: Tom Builder, who dies about halfway through the book. Swapping protagonists in some fashion was probably unavoidable, since building churches was a generational undertaking, but Tom dies fairly young and suddenly.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance: Deconstructed, as Follet repeatedly illustrates a moral norm alien to modern values and then shows that plenty of contemporaries also rejected those norms and sought ways around them, reminding the audience that past societies are not monocultures.
    • Prior Philip, although a benevolent figure for his community, and more compassionate than most of his peers, still has the views of a 12th-century monk on subjects like extra-marital sex or the respect due to his own authority. Other people think it's absurd that he insists that Aliena and Jack not cohabit due to Aliena being technically married to someone else, even though Aliena and Jack have a child together. When they finally get married Aliena is suprised the village is making such a big deal of it, as the townspeople generally considered Jack and Aliena to be more or less married already.
    • Philip is nearly hoist with his own petard as a false accusation of fornication against him gets him put on trial and nearly ruins his career. People think it absurd that such a good man could be ruined by such a frivolous accusation and even one of his enemies, Ellen, speaks up in his defense.
    • Aliena ends up on the horrific side of this several times (see Break the Cutie and Break the Haughty above), but the crowning moment has to be when her brother actually tries to defend her from what modern-day readers would rightfully call Domestic Abuse; Richard killing Alfred is considered murder, since Aliena is Alfred's wife, making her consent a non-issue. A protracted debate ensues, at high legal levels, as to whether Aliena really counted as married at the time.
    • William indulges in his rights as husband and lord, raping his teenaged wife regularly and doing violence to his serfs when they violate his prerogatives and fail to pay what they owe him. Even his own steward is dismayed by his behavior, even the legally justified parts, and his wife is eventually rescued and returned to her family. When William insists on exercising Droit du Seigneur his steward points out that that isn't even a real thing.
    • William's first attack on the quarry fails because while murdering laypeople is tolerable, murdering the monks present at the quarry would be crossing a Moral Event Horizon in the cultural norms of the time.
  • Didn't Think This Through: King Henry unintentionally sending William as an assassin for Thomas Beckett, a well-loved Archbishop who's remained in good standing with the Catholic Church. The backlash following this leaves Henry at the mercy of the Church and God, and William at the gallows on the charges of sacrilege.
  • Dirty Coward: Alfred Builder, who torments Jack mercilessly since childhood, then comes crawling back for a job, only to use it to backstab Jack.
  • The Dog Bites Back: When William's abused wife helps Richard and his army to infiltrate and take over his castle and depose him as earl. Lampshaded by Waleran in the miniseries, saying, "If you kick a dog, it may someday bite you."
  • Domestic Abuse: Alfred beats Aliena because he is impotent. And then there's William's brutal treatment of any female he's even mildly attracted to...
  • Doorstopper: 973 pages.
  • Dumbass Has a Point: For such a clod-headed oaf, William is quite cunning on a number of occasions.
  • Dumb Muscle: Richard is a good soldier, but is not really good at anything else. It becomes especially obvious when he becomes the Earl.
  • Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: William's one good act is to build a church in his mother's memory, to rescue her soul from Hell, and he's even offended when Waleran takes advantage of it for his own plans. Granted, it's strongly indicated this is more over his fear for his own soul than love for his mother, given he had pretty much no love for her previously and had watched her die.
  • Have You Come to Gloat?: Remigius asks this to Philip when he finds him begging. Instead of that, Philip invites him back to Kingsbridge.
  • The Heavy: Waleran Bigod's position and intellect technically make him the Big Bad, but it is William who remains the most immediate threat to the people of Kingsbridge. While Waleran schemes from the shadows, William is the one who is always active on the scene. His actions are what effectively drive the story.
  • He Knows Too Much: The reason Jack's father was hanged. Jacques was the only survivor of the White Ship disaster, which claimed the life of Prince William, the heir to Henry I of England. The conspirators behind the ship's destruction had him imprisoned. At first they were going to leave him there, but after he began to get a grasp of English they realized they had to have him killed, so they framed him for theft and hanged him.
  • Honor Before Reason:
    • Aliena's father in the novel, much to Aliena's dismay. In the book, she resents her father for making her swear to restore the family's lordship. Averted in the miniseries, where she's the one with the idea.
  • Hope Springs Eternal: However the villains try to stop the construction of the cathedral, they fail. Even burning the whole town down doesn't help. There is one point in the story when Philip gives up all hope, but it only lasts until Jack returns from France and decides to build the cathedral in Gothic style.
  • Hopeless Suitor: William. Aliena suffers awfully for this.
  • Hot Witch: Ellen definitely has some kind of supernatural power and is a very fit and attractive woman, so she counts.
  • Humiliation Conga: Waleran Bigod is put through this at the end of the book. He ends up a powerless monk.
  • Identical Grandson: Jack looks so similar to the father he never knew that he is mistaken for him by several people.
  • Impoverished Patrician: Aliena and her brother Richard.
  • I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: When Jack works in Toledo, his employer's daughter Aisa falls in love with him, and her father also wants to marry her to Jack. After he leaves, Aliena arrives, and Aisa is the only one who is nice with her and tells her to go after him because she realized that Aliena loves him.
  • Karmic Death: William receives one courtesy of Tommy, Jack and Aliena's son, the new Earl of Shiring. William got Jack's stepfather unemployed twice, killed him in a raid on Kingsbridge, and has been tormenting his family, including Aliena. As the earl, Tommy exercises the right to arrest William on charges of sacrilege after the latter assassinates Thomas Beckett in a church.
  • Karma Houdini:
    • William spends years getting away with murder, rape, pillaging, and sabotage because Waleran is the only priest who will absolve him.
    • Waleran's role in framing Jack's father doesn't do a thing to his reputation in the Kingsbridge priory, apart from disproving his accusations. He merely walks away when Jack demands answers from him. It takes a political scandal which involves King Henry, William, and Philip to deliver the punishment of humility.
    • As a child, Jack burns the original cathedral to the ground and is never punished.
  • Kick the Dog: William does everything except kicking an actual dog to remind you that yes, he is the villain.
  • Kneel Before Zod: Lady Regan forces Aliena's father to kneel before her in front of his people, at threat of Aliena getting her ears cut off, and tosses off a triumphant rant to the crowd warning them that this is what happens to people who disrespect the Hamleighs.
  • Knight In Shining Armour: Jack was raised on Chivalric Romances by his mother, a former Norman noblewoman, so he tries to live up to this image. Its part of why he's such a Wide-Eyed Idealist. Averted with a vengeance by William and his men, despite being actual knights.
  • The Lad-ette: Ellen, raised by a widowed father among his men; she learns all sorts of masculine habits, until her father decides it's time she become more of a lady and sends her to live in a convent. It doesn't work out as he would have hoped.
  • Love at First Sight: Jack towards Aliena; he can't stop thinking about her from their very first meeting, at which time he's twelve and she's seventeen.
  • Mama Bear: Ellen leaves Tom when he won't do a thing about Alfred bullying Jack, in addition to being forced to stay away for a year.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Every curse of Ellen's comes true. Scary, isn't it?
  • Mission from God: Philip considers his work to raise a cathedral to be this.
  • The Mole: Remigius is a secret spy to Waleran.
  • Moses in the Bulrushes: Tom Builder's son, Jonathan. He was abandoned as a newborn and left to die. He was found by monks and raised as Philip's son.
  • Murderers Are Rapists: William. He was a murderer, many times over. He also raped Aliena and many other women and girls.
  • My Secret Pregnancy: Aliena hides her pregnancy until the day of birth. Not surprising since she never had sex with her husband.
  • Naughty Nuns: Ellen had shades of this when she was a novice, justified by the fact she was forced by her father to join the nunnery and she hadn't any religious vocation. After having met Jack's father, she leaves the monastery with him.
  • Noble Tongue: Norman French is often spoken by members of the nobility and clergy in England; at one point, when a senior clergyman speaks Norman French with an odd intonation, someone else realizes that he's a non-native speaker and one of the relative handful of English-speaking clergy to have risen through the ranks of the Norman-dominated church.
  • Off with His Head!: Robert gets his head taken off cleanly. For Archbishop Beckett, it doesn't happen so cleanly.
  • Parental Abandonment: Played heavily throughout the book. Tom abandoning his baby son so he could provide for his other two kids instead just shows how hard people had it during these times.
  • Parental Favoritism: Tom ignores Alfred's selfishness and sometimes malicious "teasing" towards Martha and Jack.
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: this is William Hamleigh's rationalization for most of his violent acts, although the audience would not be expected to agree, whether he is seizing a man's castle (and later raping his daughter) because the latter dishonored his family by spurning his marriage proposal; burning a neighboring town because it infringed on his economic rights as lord; or raping and killing his own serfs for failing to pay their debts to him.
  • Plucky Girl: Aliena, who goes from spoiled noblewoman to resourceful wool merchant in order to avenge her family. Ellen also counts.
  • Put on a Bus: After he joins the Crusade, we hear talking about Richard again only when he dies without heirs.
  • Rags to Riches: Aliena goes from being homeless to one of the wealthiest wool traders in England.
  • Rape as Drama: Happens to almost every woman in William's path.
  • Redemption Equals Death: Averted. Both Remigius and Waleran end their time with the book as humble monks rather than die.
  • Red Right Hand: Lady Regan has boils covering her face.
  • Replacement Goldfish: Aliena is freaked out noticing how William's young wife Elizabeth looks like her.
  • Riches to Rags: Happens to Aliena twice. She first goes from pampered noblewoman to being homeless. She then becomes a wealthy wool trader but loses everything in a fire thanks to William, falling from a position of wealth and social prominence to needing financial support (including an Arranged Marriage to Alfred) to survive.
  • Romancing the Widow: Ellen was doing this to Tom, although they had met when his wife still lived.
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something: Both King Stephen and Prince Henry (the future Henry II) lead men in battle. See also Warrior Prince.
  • Royal "We": Queen Maud. "We are betrayed!"
  • Sacrificial Lamb: In-universe example in the story Jack tells Aliena (see the Author Avatar entry above) — the story initially focuses on the traditional brave, strong, virtuous knight, but he is abruptly killed off very early in the story, revealing the squire as its actual protagonist.
  • Sadist: William is sexually impotent unless he is violently assaulting his victims - consent inhibits him. When he is given the order to cut Aliena's ears off in front of her defeated father and his retainers, he discovers the command sexually arouses him. William comes to understand this quality gradually in himself; while he is holding an enemy's feet in a fire to make him confess treason William discovers that torturing a man gives him the same feeling as raping a girl, but later, dissatisfied, he decides that torturing a man without killing him is like stripping a girl without raping her.
  • Sadistic Choice:
    • Once the Hamleighs have captured Aliena's castle her stiff-necked father refuses to kneel in submission, so Lady Regan orders that Aliena's ears be cut off if he does not submit.
    • William gives Aliena a choice between lying still as he rapes her and watching her brother's ear get cut off.
  • Second Love: Ellen and Tom are this to each other.
  • Serial Rapist: William, by far the vilest of the characters of the book, is sexually impotent with willing women, and can only get aroused through sexual brutality, either by beating up prostitutes first or by raping people.
  • Shown Their Work: Ken Follett wants you to know all about cathedral architecture.
  • Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Essentially what drew Ellen to Jacques, and eventually to Tom Builder.
  • Stalker with a Crush: After William Hamleigh seizes the Shiring Earldom, he is aware that Aliena, Richard, and their servant Matthew are still living in the castle. He stalks and watches over Aliena with freakish fascination, still obsessed with her even after she disgustedly rejected him twice. As soon as he gets the chance, he rapes her.
  • Standard Female Grab Area: Used against Aliena during Alfred's attempted rape. Also attempted by William when he raped Aliena, but it fails there; instead, William threatens her brother to force compliance.
  • Standard Hero Reward: William believes that his heroic capture of the treasonous Earl Bartholomew and his castle will be rewarded with the opportunity to rape Aliena and then forcibly marry her. His mother disabuses him of the notion, as Aliena's new social status as the daughter of a traitor renders her unworthy. William is eventually temporarily given Bartholomew's earldom.
  • Storming the Castle:
    • Averted when Aliena wants to attack William in Shiring Castle, but Richard patiently explains that storming a castle never works. They manage to trick their way in instead.
    • The Hamleighs seize Bartholemew's fortress home through a clever infiltration strategy.
  • Succession Crisis: Truth in Television as this is set against the political backdrop of The Anarchy.
  • Supernatural Gold Eyes: Ellen, who may or may not be a witch.
  • Switching P.O.V.: The story is told from the POV of 5 characters.
  • Tell Me About My Father: One sideplot revolves around Jack wanting to know who his father was, who killed him, and why.
  • Time Skip: Happens between every part.
  • Thanatos Gambit: Thomas Becket doesn't run from his attackers, but lets himself be killed (in a church no less) to become a martyr. This results in exactly the opposite effect from what the antagonists expected.
  • The High Middle Ages: The novel is set in this era.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Richard. Goes from being little more than a puppet for Aliena to being a fairly kickass knight.
  • Took a Level in Dumbass: Don't expect Richard to be competent at anything that doesn't involve hitting someone with a sharpened stick. He's better off fighting and dying in the Crusades than being Earl of Shiring.
  • Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Jack burns the orginal Kingsbridge cathedral as a child so Tom will be able to feed the family by working on the building of its replacement.
  • Turbulent Priest: Thomas Becket, the Trope Namer himself, of course.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Philip telling Waleran about Bartholomew of Shiring's plans to overthrow King Stephen, in an attempt to protect the Church and bestow the responsibility on someone higher in Church standing, starts a chain of events that leads to William's father becoming the new earl, William raping Bartholomew's daughter Aliena as revenge for her declining his proposal and insulting him, and Tom the Builder losing his first income in ages as well as his life in good time. Philip seems to realize this, since he buys Aliena's wool when no other merchant will buy from a woman and she needs the money.
  • The Upper Crass: William Hamleigh is a noble, yet interested in little other than sex, hunting, and fighting. This is why Aliena rejects William's marriage proposal.
  • Villainous Crush: William has a very creepy obsession with Aliena.
  • Villains Never Lie: Generally Waleran can't be trusted, and the only thing that can be is his promise to make sure the Kingsbridge Cathedral is never built. By the end of the book, Prior Jonathan and a reluctant Jack believe that he has truly been broken by the Beckett scandal and thus can be trusted to live at the monastery as a humble monk.
  • Wedding Deadline: Jack tries to stop the wedding between Aliena and Alfred, but for this, he needs to escape the monastery. He ultimately fails, and while his mother actually goes there and curses the marriage, she doesn't stop it.
  • Wham Episode: William and his gang of soldiers attack Kingsbridge, nearly burning it to the ground and killing hundreds, including Tom Builder.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: For all that he fails to act like it most of the time, the very mention of Hell is usually enough to make William shake with fear.
  • Worthy Opponent: Minor example, but Richard and Robert of Gloucester have a degree of respect for each other.
  • Would Hurt a Child: While on a punitive visit to one of his villages William discovers a young couple who have married without paying a fine en lieu of submitting to Droit du Seigneur, and decides he wants to rape the woman. To distract her father from interfering William grabs her newborn baby by the ankles and hurls it in the air as high as he can, attacking the woman as her father scrambles to catch his grandchild.

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