Waiting on Wednesday (59)

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating. So here's a thing I'm looking forward to: The King's Curse, by Philippa Gregory (9 September 2014).

Regarded as yet another threat to the volatile King Henry VII’s claim to the throne, Margaret Pole, cousin to Elizabeth of York (known as the White Princess) and daughter of George, Duke of Clarence, is married off to a steady and kind Lancaster supporter—Sir Richard Pole. For his loyalty, Sir Richard is entrusted with the governorship of Wales, but Margaret’s contented daily life is changed forever with the arrival of Arthur, the young Prince of Wales, and his beautiful bride, Katherine of Aragon. Margaret soon becomes a trusted advisor and friend to the honeymooning couple, hiding her own royal connections in service to the Tudors.

After the sudden death of Prince Arthur, Katherine leaves for London a widow, and fulfills her deathbed promise to her husband by marrying his brother, Henry VIII. Margaret’s world is turned upside down by the surprising summons to court, where she becomes the chief lady-in-waiting to Queen Katherine. But this charmed life of the wealthiest and “holiest” woman in England lasts only until the rise of Anne Boleyn, and the dramatic deterioration of the Tudor court. Margaret has to choose whether her allegiance is to the increasingly tyrannical king, or to her beloved queen; to the religion she loves or the theology which serves the new masters. Caught between the old world and the new, Margaret Pole has to find her own way as she carries the knowledge of an old curse on all the Tudors.

*****

I've greatly enjoyed all of her Cousins' War series, and it's interesting to see how it all leads up to the books she wrote a good deal earlier about the Tudors. I haven't read The Constant Princess, which is about Katherine of Aragon and should cover some of this same time period; I'll have to catch up with that one too, just to see how it compares.

Waiting on Wednesday (15)

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating. So here's a thing I'm looking forward to: The White Princess, by Philippa Gregory, the latest in her Cousins' War series of historical novels, due out from Touchstone on July 23, 2013.

 When the King of York, Richard III, is murdered in battle at the hand of Henry Tudor, Henry claims the crown and demands Elizabeth wed him, knowing that it's the only way to weaken the claims of other surviving members of the House of York.
Elizabeth begrudgingly agrees. As impostors claiming to be the last York heir begin to come forward, Elizabeth's mother, the former White Queen Elizabeth of Woodville, concocts a plan for revenge.
 What only she knows is that her son Richard, in hiding since he was smuggled out of England during the usurpation of Richard III, is now a young man prepared to take his rightful place as king. Holding the interest of her clan close to her heart, Elizabeth Woodville supports an uprising against Henry, placing her daughter, now Queen to Henry's King, between two loyalties.

When Henry learns of their plan, he imprisons his mother-in-law and orders Richard to live with them at court as the Queen's brother, keeping him close while attempting to prove that he is merely another impostor. But when Richard attempts to escape from court, Henry locks him in the tower alongside a York supporter, and the two prisoners escape - only to be recaptured and sentenced to death.
 Elizabeth must respect her husband's order and witness her brother's execution, torn once again between family and crown...

*****

For a while there the end of June and all of July was looking like a vast wasteland for books to look forward to, but I finally found one at the end of July! I've been a fan of Philippa Gregory since I first read The Other Boleyn Girl on an airplane years ago, and this series is my favorite of hers. I thought the last couple of installments kind of went over the same ground she'd already covered, so I'm glad to see that this one advances a little farther into the early Tudor period.

Coincidentally, Alison Weir has a biography of Elizabeth of York coming out this year, so I'll probably pick that up after I've read this novel.

The Kingmaker's Daughter

by Philippa Gregory. Fourth in her "Cousins' War" series.

Anne Neville, the younger daughter of the 16th Earl of Warwick, walks behind her mother and her sister Isabel at the coronation feast for King Edward's queen Elizabeth knowing that nobody likes this queen, that Edward should not have married her against Anne's father's advice. Warwick's support had been instrumental in putting Edward on the throne, and Warwick had expected his advice to be followed afterwards as it had been beforehand; his ambition to be the power behind the throne in England will shape the rest of Anne's life, first as he attempts to use her as a pawn and finally as she grows up to play the game herself.

I like Philippa Gregory's novels a lot, and I like this series better than her later Tudor ones. She's very good at taking limited information--and women from this period, even royal women, left few traces on the historical record--and using it to develop plausible characters. I particularly like her take on Richard III: neither the thoroughly and self-consciously evil villain of Shakespeare nor the thoroughly noble, slandered king some other authors have described, but an ambitious man who saw his chance and took it. This is a Richard I can believe in (especially since Gregory takes the line that Richard did not kill the princes in the Tower).

Very interesting to see the same events from a different perspective; Jacquetta and Elizabeth Woodville, both presented very sympathetically in their own novels earlier in the series, make great villains from another point of view!  But we've gone over these same events three times now, or in some cases four; I'm very much looking forward to The White Princess, which I hope will carry the story forward a little farther.

The Red Queen

As a child Lady Margaret Beaufort hoped to become a nun, had visions of Joan of Arc, and was thrilled to realize she had spent so much time praying that she had "saint's knees." But the heiress of the royal house of Lancaster could not be allowed to follow her own inclination; her destiny was to provide a male heir for her house, and to that end she was married off to the king's half-brother Edmund Tudor when she was just twelve, half her husband's age.  At thirteen she became a widow and a mother in short succession, and embraced a new ambition for her life: that one day her son would be king and she would be My Lady, the King's Mother.  But this vision came to seem increasingly unlikely after the house of York came to power.

I was talking to a coworker at the library about this book.  She and I were first and second on the hold list for it as soon as the library had ordered it, because we had both liked The White Queen so much, and after we finished this second one she remarked to me that she had read a lot of novels about this period, but Philippa Gregory was the first author to make her understand and sympathize with Margaret Beaufort's point of view.  So often Lady Margaret is presented as simply the Mother-In-Law From Hell.  Here she's incredibly self-centered and very narrowly focused, but you really do get why she might have been like that.  Wonderful book, and I'm very much looking forward to The White Princess now!