Historical Romance

Philippa Gregory has done amazing again to capture the fear of the later years of Henry VIII’s court and how being loved by him could also be your undoing. Catherine Parr certainly helped form the reigns of her step children and helping the empowerment of women. ( )

One of the finest of Philippa Gregory’s historical novels of the court of Henry VIII of England, [b:The Taming of the Queen|25106926|The Taming of the Queen (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #11)|Philippa Gregory|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1433348581s/25106926.jpg|44759727] deals with the reign of Kateryn Parr, his last wife. I knew only a scant biography of Kateryn Parr, which might be one of the reasons I enjoyed this book so much. I was not only reviewing a history I knew, but learning some that I did not.

She was, as might be said of anyone who survived a close proximity to Henry, a remarkable person. She was the first woman ever to publish an original work under her own name in English, no minor achievement, and one for which she should be more widely recognized. By the time she was married to Henry, he was already old, rotting from his leg wound that never healed, and perhaps a bit unhinged. What is certain is that he was cruel and capricious by this time. His life had been a series of murders of anyone who might get in the way of his will or question his total authority, and anyone who lived within his notice or his reach was at risk.

He is like an animal in a trap, twisting and turning against his own pain. He grieves more for his hurt pride than for the drowned men. He has to rescue his self-regard. Nothing is more important than that; no one is more important than that. The ship can sink into the silt of the Solent as long as the king’s pride can be salvaged.

In reading this series of books that traces the Plantagenet and Tudor rulers, I have seen Henry progress from a boy who was pampered and loved, to a young man who was thrust into a position of authority he had not expected, to a man who bent the rules in whatever way brought him pleasure and was never curtailed by anyone. That the final act would read like a chronicle of the Seven Deadly Sins is not really a surprise. By this time in his life, I think it is reasonable to imagine that he was so self-absorbed and believed himself so omniscient that he was himself confused as to where he stopped and God began.

You are Barbe-Bleu, and your wife, Tryphine, opened the locked doors of your castle and found dead wives laid out in their beds. Because I know you now for a wife-killer, I know you are merciless. Because your fat glory in yourself is so great that you cannot imagine anyone thinking for themselves, or being themselves, or caring for anything but you. You are the sole sun in your own heavens. You are a natural enemy of anyone who is not you, not your very self. You are a murderer in your soul, and all you want of a wife is her submission to you or submission to the death you prescribe for her.

But, hidden inside this Henry is the other one, the early Henry, the man who has been twisted by the machinations of those around him into being the monster he now is.

'I want nobody now,’ the king says coldly. ‘Because nobody gives nothing away, Nobody loves no one. The world is filled with people seeking only their own ambitions and working for their own causes. ..I will never be a fool again. I know that every smiling friend is an enemy, every advisor is pursuing his own interest. Everyone wants my place, everyone wants my fortune, everyone wants my inheritance.’

One can hardly like Henry, but how could one not feel sorry for him? He has been told all his life that he is loved, only to find that he is disposable. Perhaps this would explain why he found others so disposable as well.

I was afraid that I had simply worn out with Gregory’s style and the telling of these stories. The last installment, [b:The Queen's Fool|252499|The Queen's Fool (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #12)|Philippa Gregory|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1399204116s/252499.jpg|1024199], seemed to me to be preposterous more than thoughtful, and I moaned that perhaps the tale had gone on longer than the storyteller was able to sustain it. I am happy to report that I was wrong. This novel lives up to my best expectations of Ms. Gregory. I felt the tension of Kateryn, living day-to-day with a threat of death because of a whim and with the ghosts of five previous queens dangling over her head--dressing in their gowns, wearing their jewels, sleeping in their beds. I believed that a life of dissipation and greed, in which one had slaughtered out of fear or caprice every childhood friend, advisor or confidant, would create precisely the warped and cruel person that is Gregory’s Henry VIII. I ached for the woman who must put aside the love of her life to marry a man that must revolt her, and must then find ways to insure that her love will never be betrayed on her face, on pain of death.

One more book left in the series for me, and I am hopeful that it will be as excellent as this one. ( )

The Taming of the Queen is a novelization of Katherine Parr's marriage to King Henry VIII. I listened to an audio edition on 15 compact discs. I liked Bianca Arnato's narration, but the story makes it clear that being the queen doesn't even begin to make up for being married to Henry VIII. Nor did Ms. Gregory sugar coat matters such as how much Henry VIII's ulcerated leg stank or what it was like being bedded or kissed or held by him. (My mouth is involuntarily going into 'sour lemon pucker' mode just remembering the descriptions.) The title is explained in an incident late in the novel. The portrait used for the cover is the center part of one. That is not Katherine Parr's face. Even though she died shortly after Edward was born, that's Jane Seymour's face. The unveiling of that portrait appears in the book and I felt very sorry for Katherine after it.

I am Catholic, so I got very tired of Katherine Parr talking about how Purgatory isn't in the Bible. Although the beliefs expressed in chapter 12 of Second Maccabees isn't quite the same as Purgatory, it does bring up prayers for the dead. Didn't Parr read any of the seven books in the Catholic Bible that the Protestant Bible leaves out before Henry founded the Church of England? She was over 20 when that happened. Or couldn't she read Latin and Greek when she was that young?

As I listened, I wondered how Katherine Parr would have felt had she been able to see in the future and find out that some Protestant churches have become as corrupt as the Catholic Church was in her day.

That theme in this book wasn't as laughable as a story I read which had a plot against the Catholic Church which depended upon faking the Rapture during Mass (The Rapture is not part of our beliefs), but it was worth some eye rolls. ( )

"The Taming of the Queen" touched me deeply. Katherine Parr is the property of men many times and makes the best of it. I had a hard time reading the "taming" parts. Philippa Gregory knows how twisted Henry is by this time and how much he would despise a woman writing, publishing and being "unwomanly". She took it and survived. I just wished she had enjoyed her life without Henry longer. ( )