A New York TImes Book Review Editor's Pick
A colorful and authoritative narrative history of the often-overlooked—yet hugely influential—figures of the Tudor court: the ladies-in-waiting.
Every Tudor Queen had ladies-in-waiting. They were her confidantes and her chaperones. Only the Queen's ladies had the right to enter her most private chambers, spending hours helping her to get dressed and undressed, caring for her clothes and jewels, listening to her secrets. But they also held a unique power. A quiet word behind the scenes, an appropriately timed gift, a well-negotiated marriage alliance were all forms of political agency wielded expertly by women.
The Waiting Game explores the daily lives of ladies-in-waiting, revealing the secrets of recruitment, costume, what they ate, where (and with whom) they slept. We meet María de Salinas, who traveled to England with Catherine of Aragon when just a teenager and spied for her during the divorce from Henry VIII. Anne Boleyn's lady-in-waiting Jane Parker was instrumental in the execution of not one, but two queens. And maid-of-honor Anne Basset kept her place through the last four consorts, negotiating the conflicting loyalties of her birth family, her mistress the Queen, and even the desires of the King himself.
As Henry changed wives—and changed the very fabric of the country's structure besides—these women had to make choices about loyalty that simply didn't exist before. The Waiting Game is the first time their vital story has been told.
“Lively and vivid. Clark brings these ladies—traditionally the window dressing of Tudor literature—forward and casts them as the heroes of their own dramas. While Clark reminds us that ‘women’s history does not need to be exceptional to be relevant,’ her subjects are anything but ordinary.”
"By discovering the lives of the ladies-in-waiting, Clark is connecting us to a long lost piece of history."
“Clark takes a fresh look at the well-known history of Henry VIII by focusing on women chosen as ladies-in-waiting to each of Henry’s wives. Clark conveys the sumptuous richness of Tudor life—banquet tables groaning under platters of meats, halls hung with costly tapestries, crimson gowns of velvet and satin—and also the risks—pestilence, miscarriage, childbirth, arduous travel, and betrayal.”
“A captivating group portrait of the ‘phalanx of pretty faces’ who served as ladies-in-waiting to the six wives of Henry VIII from 1501 to 1547.”
