Henry finally met his match
THE TAMING OF THE QUEEN by Philippa Gregory ( Simon & Schuster, £ 20)
WHY would any woman agree to marry a serial killer? Good question. But as Kateryn Parr, 30- year- old widow and the last of Henry VIII’s six wives, explains, she had little choice in the matter.
“This is how it will be from now until death parts us,” Kateryn observes in the opening chapter of Philippa Gregory’s latest tale which centres on the last four years of the Tudor tyrant’s brutal and bloody reign. “He will wait for my assent or he will continue without it. It really doesn’t matter what I say, I will never be able to refuse him anything.” Gregory has told the fascinating and meticulously researched stories of all Henry’s previous queens. Now it is the turn of the last, the woman who survived him and the one whom we know least about.
As the author comments, it is extraordinary that, given what a tenacious survivor Kateryn turns out to be, she is not better known.
The story opens with Henry’s marriage proposal to Kateryn, a woman young enough to be his daughter, in front of a packed court. She is in no doubt of the danger she faces. Her husband- to- be has abandoned two wives, left one to die in childbirth and murdered two others.
But despite her fears Henry appears to be genuinely fond of his new bride, even telling her: “You will be my last and dearest wife.”
Gregory paints an intimate portrait of an astute, highly intelligent woman who, while pining for her lover Sir Thomas Seymour, sets about educating herself and creates a radical study circle at the heart of a court at loggerheads over religious reform.
She was the first woman to publish a book in the English language under her own name and, like the great Spanish princess Katherine of Aragon before her, Kateryn is given the honour of ruling as regent during Henry’s last unsuccessful campaign in France.
However her Protestant beliefs earn Kateryn powerful enemies at court and she has to defeat several papist plots against her while an increasingly capricious and unhinged Henry seems set to put her aside in favour of her lady- inwaiting Catherine Brandon.
When the Queen is accused of heresy, the king himself signs her arrest warrant. Although Kateryn once again outwits her enemies by effecting an 11th- hour reconciliation with Henry, it comes at a heavy price and the king puts his wife firmly in her place. As Henry gleefully tells her: “I am the dog- master. I watch you all. I set you all at each other’s throats.”
Fans of the popular historical fiction genre will love this last instalment in the saga of Henry VIII and his consorts. A master storyteller of that era, Gregory captures the intrigue and suspense of life at the Tudor court in vivid detail. She skilfully combines painstaking historical research with a gripping fictional narrative and her characters are so lifelike and engaging that they practically leap from the page.