Historical Fiction With Philippa Gregory

I first heard about The Other Boleyn Girl when the movie was slated to come out in a few weeks and they were running ads on television and at the theaters. I'd never liked reading historical fiction much, but the clothes were beautiful and from what I could grasp from the trailer it looked interesting. I didn't want to outright buy the book only to dislike it, so I checked it out from my local library. The hardcover version I got was more than six hundred pages long, but I'd read longer Harry Potter books, so I wasn't daunted. Please note now that if you've seen the movie, disregard it completely. It wasn't true to the book and left out a lot of good parts.

The Other Boleyn Girl is about two sisters who fought for the love of King Henry VIII. I vaguely remembered hearing about him back in European History when my teacher taught us that he had six wives. (My first thought: what a player.) It starts out with Mary Boleyn, the narrator of the book, talking about going to her first beheading and how she expects the King to forgive the man on the block. It's her first introduction to the man's power, watching one of the King's closest friends receive no pardon as his head was chopped off. It moves swiftly into the return of Mary's sister, Anne Boleyn. When Mary talked about her rivalry with her sister I could relate on so many levels. My sister and I had always fought for the attention of our parents. It was amazing how one person could feel so much love and hate for the same person, a constant theme throughout the whole book.

Over the next hundred pages it was all about King courting Mary. He's still married to Queen Katherine of Aragon the entire time he's bedding her, including the time when she's giving him children. One of my favorite parts was when Mary fell in love with her daughter shortly after giving birth, realizing that she means more to her than the selfish, vain King. Anne has been playing her maid all this time and isn't at all agreeable about her position, so she openly starts flirting with the King when Mary is waiting to give birth to their second child, a son. Their parents and Uncle go back and forth between who should keep the King's eye, the two sisters being there for one another, but not entirely wanting to be.

The name Anne Boleyn becomes synonymous with ambition at this point. I found myself liking her despite the things she did to destroy Queen Katherine. I couldn't help but want her to win and lose at the same time. She pushed a good woman out of the throne and wound up doing no better than a commoner while in her place. You see by the end of the book that she turns to the King into a powerful, unstoppable killer. Anne, who read banned books by men like Martin Luther King, brought a new religion to power during her reign. She taught the King that his ideas, his yearnings and his desires were God given. It comes back to bite her when the King has her executed for treasonous behavior.

Philippa Gregory plays around with the idea that there was a homosexual ring surrounding Anne's inner court of friends. It was rumored that her brother and Francis Weston, his closest friend, had a sexual relationship behind closed doors. While we may never know if that was true or not, Gregory made the subtle hints of homosexuality an intrigue. She also introduced the rumor that Anne and her brother, George Boleyn, had a secret relationship themselves that spawned a monsterous, incestual child. The same child that the King ended up beheading her for at the end of the book.

It's Anne's rise to power and Mary's decline that I most enjoyed. Anne had always thought of herself before anyone else, despite being a woman and not having any true power of her own. When she becomes Queen you watch her settle deeper and deeper into depression as she fails to produce a male heir. Meanwhile Mary finds love with William Stafford, a man in her Uncle's service. He's not rich and he has no position, yet it's she who finds happiness and lives to have another child.

There's so many other intricate little plots within the major happenings of the book: a man Anne married in secret, Jane Rochford's silent plotting, even the politics of dethroning Queen Katherine for Anne. If my teacher had assigned me this book to read when when we were learning about King Henry VIII, I wouldn't have almost failed her class because of boredom. This period novel, based on truths and rumors, comes highly recommended by me. My own copy has been read many times and has been highlighted in various parts. Philippa Gregory truly grasped the relationship between Mary and Anne and made a worthwhile novel. If you enjoy historical fiction or even just lust, intrigue, politics and sex, then I'd suggest checking it out from your local library or even buying a copy. It won't disappoint.

This book is almost a sequel to The Other Boleyn Girl. It chronicles King Henry VIII's 4th and 5th wife. It's split between the three main characters, each chapter featuring a different woman. The review itself is best split the same way.

Anne Of Cleves

• Her story begins with Holbein, a famous painter in that era, doing a sketch of her for King Henry. His third wife, Jane Seymour, died while giving birth, and so he's looking for a replacement. Anne is the middle sister and her older brother's biggest torment. She longs to escape his abuse and hopes that a marriage to the King of England will be her key to freedom. Upon meeting the King for the first time, not knowing who he is, she spits out the kiss he places on her mouth and tells him to leave. The King has aged since last seen in The Other Boleyn Girl. He's become a portly man with a bulging stomach and a stinking bandage on his leg from a jousting accident. No one in his kingdom, however, has the heart to see him this way. Instead they pretend he is the same man he was twenty years prior. When Henry sees himself for the first time in the eyes of this woman he is appalled. Immediately he dislikes her and while they marry despite this, he is quick to divorce her.
  
  
• She is lucky that her divorce from the King, when finally obtained, is a good one. Queen Katherine of Aragon was banished after her divorce, but because Queen Anne promised to leave without making a fuss she was made a "sister" to the King. He gave her fine quarters to live in and a court of her own far from his. The rest of the story she doesn't appear to have much of a storyline other than befriending Henry's first wife's daughter, Mary, and trying to keep her head down so that it doesn't get chopped off in one of the King's rages.
  
  
• Her Boleyn inheritance: accusations and false witnesses.

Katherine Howard

• Cousin to the beheaded Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard makes an immediate impression on the King by drawing his attention away when Anne of Cleves offends him at their first meeting. From then on she is pushed forward by her Uncle to win the King over. She's a vain young woman, caring more about her looks and the way she is perceived than the fact that she's being prepped for the slaughter. It's only when Anne of Cleves is divorced that she takes the title of King Henry VIII's fifth wife. She fails to acknowledge that no woman before her left the position of Queen willingly, but in time begins to realize she is not safe.
  
  
• The King, who is often too old and incontinent to have sex with Katherine properly, blames her as they fail to produce a child. Her Uncle encourages Jane Rochford to help speed up the process of getting the Queen pregnant by bringing in a third party. For the rest of the novel we see Katherine fall in love for the first time with Thomas Culpepper. It's hard not to root for them as a couple until you realize what a deadly game she is playing. In the end it is her acts prior to coming to court that get her caught. Someone tells the King of her bedding Francis Dereham before she met him and he considers their marriage invalid. Regardless, he has her beheaded for her romance with Culpepper.
  
  
• Her Boleyn inheritance: the threat of the axe.

Jane Rochford

• She was married to George Boleyn and it was her testimony that drove him and his sister to their deaths. Her story opens up with her remembering her sister-in-law and husband, their closeness and how beautiful they looked when they walked around the castle together. She is close to the Duke of Norfolk, Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard's Uncle, since he saved her title and position when her husband was executed. He has her advise both the queens represented in this novel, for good and bad reasons. Jane thinks she's her Uncle's most trusted servant up until Katherine gets found out and she perishes right along side her.
  
  
• It is when the King finds out that she was providing a way for Thomas Culpepper and Katherine Howard to meet that she receives her own grizzly fate. She pleads with the Duke of Norfolk to save her once again, but he accuses her of sending her husband to his death because she was jealous he didn't love her the way he did his sister. Jane tries to appeal to the King's law that insane people can't be executed by pretending to go mad, but before she knows it she finds herself on the block. The law she thought would protect her has been changed: insane or not, those who plot against the King can still be killed. It's almost poetic that she dies the same way her sister-in-law did, a woman she testified against.
  
  
• Her Boleyn inheritance: a fortune and a title, in exchange for her soul.

Like The Other Boleyn Girl there are many smaller plots to take into consideration. The novel ends with Anne Of Cleves quietly celebrating the death of the King, knowing that she no longer has to fear dying the same way her friends had. Another political novel intertwined with lust and sex, Philippa Gregory creates a second masterpiece surrounding the true stories and rumors swirling around King Henry VIII and his many wives.