Mary I: Queen of Sorrows Alison Weir
(Headline, £25)
ALISON WEIR’S latest historical novel reminded me of the granite cross marking the site of the murder of the Oxford Martyrs in the Broad: a memorial to clerics sent to horrific deaths, burned at the stake, by a monarch reviled as ‘Bloody Mary’. However, Dr Weir deftly sidesteps that damning sobriquet and takes instead ‘Queen of Sorrows’, for her title; her American edition, The Passionate Tudor, flagged consciously as a novel, adds another nuance. Is this book, then, a blurring of fact and fiction, something we have come to expect after Netflix’s The Crown? As well as works of nonfiction, Dr Weir writes accessible ‘popular’ history, arguing that history is not the sole preserve of academics.
Her focus has been on the Tudor Court, especially on Henry VIII’S six wives, but what can a novel tell us about a historical figure that has already been the subject of well-researched, academic biographies? Is it to bring the sights, sounds and texture of a lost world alive to embellish a truth or to craft a fiction? Can we ever truly understand what it meant to be a princess in the Court of Henry VIII? Philippa Gregory, C. J. Sansom and, most supremely, Hilary Mantel, have used the licence afforded by the novel form to give fresh perspective and immediacy to their historical fiction. Dr Weir sets out to do the same here, presenting impeccable scholarship in an empathetic and engaging narrative.
Mary’s appalling early years as the child of warring parents battling through separation and divorce reads like a modern cautionary tale. She was always on the move from palace to palace, only seeing her mother at Christmas and Easter; she suffered from irregular monthly ‘courses’ and migraines and she worried constantly about her succession and being branded ‘baseborn’ if Katherine of Aragon’s marriage to her father was annulled. Most of all she hated the ‘Witch’, Anne Boleyn, with a fierce passion, all of which explain her motivations when she eventually became queen.
Dr Weir sticks closely to historical events, telling her extraordinary story with insight and compassion. She is particularly good on the complex relations between Mary and her half-sister Elizabeth, the fanatical political and religious fervour of the time, the consequences of Mary’s extreme piety and the frailties of human life. Dr Weir deconstructs the machinations of the Tudor Court, taking us into the minds of those in power in a compelling narrative history. Timothy Mowl