Log In
Register
Home
Topic RSS
1:18 pm
October 11, 2009
Offline
I'm reading Murder Most Royal by Jean Plaidy, and through it's excellent, two points bother me a little:
-isn't it a little Katharine of Aragon and Mary bashing? The first is said to be dull, and never have been pretty, but in her youth she was a real beauty, celebrated and loved, and Henry married her partly because he loved her! And Mary is simply a fanatic, wishing to see heretics on stakes, but as The Firsty Queen states, she only became Bloody Mary because of the trials she experienced, and in the beginning of her reign she thought that she could restore the Roman Faith without killing her subject, simply by guiding the lost souls!
-Anne is always celebrated as perfectly beautiful, but a great point is that she wasn't considerate beautiful by people of her time: her power was in her charm, wit, charisma and elegance. No?
But I think that this book in nevertheless a very good one, understanding the purpose and evolutions of Anne, Henry and Catherine Howard.
6:40 pm
June 20, 2009
Offline
I've never read that, but now i'm really interested. I do not agree with bashing Katherine or Mary though… but I would love to read it..
Let not my enemies sit as my jury
7:49 pm
January 9, 2010
Offline
Jean Plaidy wrote a ton of historical fiction, usually royal women, from the medieval period right up until Queen Victoria and a lot of the books were grouped into series, the Tudors, the Stuarts, etc. She's one of the better historical fiction novelists in that she pretty much sticks to the facts without the need for embellishment or flat out making things up (unlike some I can think of…. 
)
It's been a while since I read Murder Most Royal, but I think its Anne Boleyns and Catherine Howards stories put into one book. They each have their own books, The Lady in the Tower and Rose Without a Thorn respectively. I don't know if you could accuse her of Katherine and Mary bashing per se, as each story is told from the heroine's perspective and Katherine and Mary have their own books. I'm not sure but I think Katherine of Aragon may have her own trilogy, I know Anne's story crops up in more than one book. Jean Plaidy also wrote under different names, Victoria Holt and Philippa Carr spring to mind (again, not totally sure on that point without looking her up) so it can get a bit confusing!
I know that over the past couple of years a lot of her work has been re-issued with brand spanking new covers, different ones for the UK and the US. I personally think the UK ones are nicer, but that's just me
Anyway, enough of my rambling! Hope you enjoy the book!!!!!
11:32 am
February 16, 2009
Offline
I read it a while ago but can't remember the Catherine and Mary bashing, I just remember being impressed with how it brought Anne to life and how it made the crumbling of their relationship more understandable. I quoted the following in my review of it:-
“He had thought that when Anne became his Queen he would know complete happiness; she had been that for five months, and instead of his happiness growing it had gradually diminished. The King still desired Anne, but he was no longer in love with her; which meant that he had lost that tenderness for her which had dominated him for six years…The stalking of Anne was finished; she had managed to make it arduous; she had made him believe that the end of the hunt was not her surrender, but her place beside him on the throne; together they had stalked a crown for Anne: now it was hers, and they were both exhausted with the effort.”
I think for a book written in the 1940s, before good old Eric Ives's biography and the theories of our modern day historians, that it did a pretty good job of depicting Tudor times and the characters and I enjoyed it much more than “The Other Boleyn Girl”, Anne was more the Anne that I have in my mind than the Philippa Gregory version of Anne.
Debunking the myths about Anne Boleyn
3:35 pm
October 11, 2009
Offline
Reading again my post I must say that bashing was a too harsh word. In fact, what I meant is that I found that it would have been nice to picture Katharine as the intelligent and formerly beautiful queen she was, in order to show that even this qualities, which were Anne's too, couldn't prevent from fall when Bluff Hal was angered. But I adored that book, and I wept when Anne thought of Elizabeth while waiting for death, wishing to see her baby but knowing it would be a torture for her and something bad for her daughter
. I've planned to read all taht Plaidy have written about Anne and other Tudor figures!
1:07 am
December 30, 2009
Offline
I read a lot of Jean Plaidy's books when I was in my teens and early twenties and she awoke my interest in many different periods of history. As has been said by earlier posters, she worked with the facts as known at the time. Her Daughters of Spain series about Katherine's parents and brother and sisters is also very good for understanding the Spanish elements of Tudor history. I also really loved her Catherine de Medici trilogy too!
7:54 am
March 12, 2010
Offline
I read “The Lady in the Tower” and really enjoyed it as well. It was the first work of fiction I've read that tells the story of Anne's entire life from start to finish. Jean Plaidy did a great job of creating an image of the Anne that I imagine when I read about her. I also love that her books are often about characters who are usually part of the background in more popular stories.
