The Boleyn Inheritance - Book Review

In light of my film review of The Other Boleyn Girl, I decided to do a book review of its sequel, since both were written by Philippa Gregory, thanks to a friend. If I recall correctly, this was the first historical fiction novel I read. I can't remember if there was anything else, but I remember thinking that I didn't want to degrade myself by reading the original novel of The Other Boleyn Girl, so I opted for this instead. The novel focuses on three different perspectives: Jane Boleyn, Anne of Cleves, and Katherine Howard. These give a different insight into the events that go on in the English court between 1539 and 1542. Honestly, this wasn't as bad as its precursor. At least this one made a bit more sense.

I'll start with Jane Boleyn's perspective. For those who don't know who she was, she was Anne Boleyn's sister-in-law through George Boleyn. In this novel, she is depicted as a rather vindictive woman with a guilty conscience. Historically, we know very little about Lady Rochford, except her close relationship with the Queens of England. She was known for having been a lady-in-waiting since the days of Catherine of Aragon, and served her faithfully until Anne Boleyn succeeded her. Although we don't know much about her, it has been traditionally accepted that Jane did not have a close relationship with George, and it is known that she did give evidence that led to his and Anne's conviction. Historian Retha Warnicke suggests that the reason behind this was because George was a homosexual. This line of thinking has been a common perspective to take regarding George's character, but Alison Weir argues that it was because of his promiscuity. As there was little evidence to prove his sodomite behaviour, she believes there was more evidence to indicate that he had been a bit of a playboy. However, Philippa Gregory takes an interesting approach to Jane's unhappiness: Jane contributed to the downfall of both her husband and Anne because of her strong jealousy of their relationship. Despite Gregory's love for historical inaccuracies, I have to admit this was a far more likely reason Jane hated her husband and sister-in-law than his sexual conquests. Anne and George shared an intimate relationship that Jane could not compete with, and thus her jealousy increased.

The novel suggests a certain guilt about Jane's actions. She goes on about her hatred for George and Anne, but frequently admits that she regrets what she did because she cannot do anything about it. However, her ambition is plain. When approached by the Duke of Norfolk (the uncle of Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard), she makes it clear that she desires to attain a new position, better than her current one. If such an agreement was made, I think very lowly of Jane for it - as there evidence that she did contribute to Anne and George's undeserved executions, it is rather disgraceful that she still maintained such a high level of ambition that she did not deserve. Fortunately, I don't think any agreement of the sort actually existed. In the novel, the Duke of Norfolk and Jane agree that she might marry a foreign noble; such a thing seems extremely impossible as foreign matches were generally between royalty. Jane was far from royal, and given her reputation as an ambitious courtier who pleaded guilt on Anne and George's part, she would not have been accepted as a future wife. Gregory definitely plays on this when Katherine's downfall comes along, and the Duke harshly tells Jane that there was never any match for her in the first place. Smart move, since Jane was conspiring with Katherine to let her commit adultery, working with Katherine's lover to arrange meetings between the two.

Katherine Howard has been known historically for being a very frivolous and childish teenager, and Gregory takes full advantage of this fact. Many of Katherine's chapters begin with "now let me say, what do I have?" I did like this about the novel; it showed Katherine's rise and downfall very well, showing what kind of possessions she gains and loses as the novel goes. I don't know if it was Gregory's intent, but Katherine came across as extremely annoying. Perhaps that was meant to be the case, since we are talking about a fourteen-year old girl who only cared about jewels and dancing. There was something about the way she was depicted, however, that made me feel sorry for her in a way that the HBO series, The Tudors, did not. Katherine is shown to be very ambitious, but in a typical teenage way, easily led astray by shiny things. But Gregory shows a dark side of Katherine's role that betrays her true feelings: "Being the wife of a king is not all dancing and parties in the rose garden...Nobody must ever know that I am so disgusted that I could vomit; nobody must ever know that it almost breaks my heart that the things I learned to do for love are now done to excite a man who would be better off saying his prayers and going to sleep. Nobody knows how hard I earn my sables and my pearls." A vigorous young girl, she longs for true love, which she knows she can never find in her husband, especially since she did have an affair with Francis Dereham before she entered the English court. This was why I couldn't feel sorry for Katherine in The Tudors: Jonathan Rhys Meyers was depicted far too handsomely to be Henry VIII.

The most fascinating character of this novel is Anne of Cleves. In this novel, she is depicted as an innocent Lutheran, bent on being a devoted wife. She is the total antithesis of Jane and Katherine, lacking in ambition, and desiring the good of others rather than herself. The only thing she worries for herself is her safety, and does whatever she can to conform to the will of King Henry to protect herself. While she is sent by her brother in the hopes that she can convert England to a Lutheranism, she realises very early on that she will not be able to do this, and immediately begins following the religion of her husband, however confused she may be about it. Traditionally, it has been accepted that Anne was from a Lutheran family, since her father had been influenced by a moderate line of thinking within the Reformation, her sister married the head of the Protestant Confederation of Germany, and her brother was a leading member of the Protestants who sought to fight against the Catholic rulers of France and the Holy Roman Empire. At least on that front, Gregory stayed true to historical accuracy. Anne's upbringing in the novel is shown to have been very simple. She was taught common wifely skills of the time, such as needlework, but not much else. She is only able to converse in German, and when asked to dance by Henry, her party is forced to inform him that she doesn't know how to dance. Yet she is seen to be a quick learner; she adapts to the English lifestyle, picking up English with the help of her ladies-in-waiting, dressing more fashionably, and learning different habits of the English court.

However, she is shown to be in constant danger. Knowing the changeable nature of Henry, she fears for her life at every point of the novel. When she was introduced to the King, she feared that his disgust of her would either prompt him to send her back to Cleves, or that he might find a way to kill her. When the marriage was disintegrating, she feared he would find a way to convict her of treason, just as he did with Cromwell. Even after she had agreed to the annulment and lived quietly in her own estates, she frequently worried about Henry deciding to send for her arrest, even if she knew she did nothing wrong. It wouldn't be until his death that she would finally feel free.

Certainly, Gregory does explain the Boleyn inheritance well. The blurb of the novel is an excellent summary of the inheritance that is bestowed upon the three women. Anne's inheritance is accusations, Katherine's is execution, and Jane's is "a fortune and a title, in exchange for her soul." She explains all this very well in how she depicts the three women, and I have to say, she redeemed herself. Perhaps she knew that success with The Other Boleyn Girl meant more historical scrutiny, and thus she felt it necessary to follow history more closely rather than constantly go down the road of "what if?" At least self-reflection is possible with her, however much I still think she is sub-par compared to other historical fiction novelists.

Innocent Traitor - Book Review

The idea of reading a historical fiction novel was not something I'd considered before I was 16. I'd heard of them, primarily because I watched The Other Boleyn Girl and learnt that it was based on a novel, but there was very little interest for me. That changed when I came across Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir in 2013.

The story of Lady Jane Grey is very fascinating to me. I didn't know much about her until I'd watched Lady Jane (1986), which featured Helena Bonham Carter and Cary Elwes. Until I was 11, all I knew about Lady Jane Grey was that she had been Queen of England for 9 days, a role granted to her by her predecessor, Edward VI. Watching the film made me want to know more about the mysterious young girl, so I researched her as much as I could - with the limitations of an eleven-year-old. My interest in the Tudor dynasty never wavered as I grew older, but I was running out of resources. I didn't have the keenness to pursue reading historical texts at the time (what teenager would?), and films could only do so much without tampering with historical accuracy. By this point, I had just created a goodreads.com account, and I had documented what books I had read. I decided to see what books were similar to The Other Boleyn Girl, since I had zero interest in reading it after watching the film. There, I found Innocent Traitor.

If I thought this book was going to be anything like Lady Jane, I was sorely mistaken. The elements remained the same: Jane Grey, the daughter of harsh parents, was married off to a man she despised, and was considered a Reformist martyr. That's about it. The finer details were vastly different. The most important detail of the book was the character development of Jane Grey, transitioning from a devout Catholic to an unyielding Reformer. The form in which she supports reforms in the Church of England has varied depending on the author's interpretations; where Philippa Gregory portrays Lady Jane as a staunch Calvinist, Alison Weir depicts young Jane as a fervent supporter of general reform against anything Catholic, which makes it difficult to tell exactly what school of thought she holds to. Another fascinating detail about this novel is that it tells the story of Lady Jane Grey from various perspectives, ranging from young Jane to Katherine Parr to the Duke of Northumberland.

Central to this story is the relationship between Jane and her parents, and how this has affected her own relationship with her sisters, and with her nurse, Mrs Ellen. Jane's mother, Frances Grey, was known to be a tenacious and ambitious woman, yet the way in which she treated Jane was speculated to be that of overly harsh. When speaking to scholar, Roger Ascham, Jane remarked:

"For when I am in the presence either of father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing anything else, I must do it as it were in such weight, measure and number , even so perfectly as God made their world, or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea presently sometimes with pinches, nips and bops and other ways (which I will not name for the honour I bear them) that I think myself in Hell."

The general understanding was that Jane bore her parents the dutiful love she was expected to, but that was it; if given the chance, she might've hated them. I did read an alternative approach to this statement from another historical fiction novel, Her Highness, the Traitor, by Susan Higginbotham, which depicted Jane as susceptible to exaggeration. It was not uncommon for a parent to use corporal punishment on their children in this time period, so to say that Frances did not beat Jane at all is extremely inaccurate. However, Weir's portrayal of Frances Grey, in my opinion, was overly harsh. Frances is seen in the novel as hating Jane because she was not the son Frances had hoped for, going as far as to only show the slightest bit of remorse for the way she treated Jane when it was too late to do anything about it. Furthermore, Frances demonstrates a higher regard for her second daughter, Katherine. Is this because Katherine is the beauty of the family? Possibly. I surmise it is because the disappointment of bearing another daughter was not as great as when Jane was born (especially considering Jane Seymour bore the heir to the throne not long after, which more than likely felt like salt on a wound), because Katherine did not demonstrate as much willful attitudes compared to Jane, and because she was not disabled in any way unlike her youngest sister, Mary. Thus, it is understandable why Jane bears indifference, and sometimes jealousy towards her younger sister.

Jane's scholarly reputation was infamous in England and Europe; it was unusual for a mere teenager, and a female one at that, to be so widely read about doctrines, enough to hold her own in a debate against other theologians. As a Catholic, I found her arguments, which I've encountered countless times on debate groups, ridiculous, but on a rudimentary level, Jane's desire to learn more was no doubt fascinating. She was fluent in at least five languages, enough to read, interpret and analyse classic texts from ancient civilisations; she frequently corresponded with theologians from Switzerland, like Heinrich Bullinger, where the Calvinist interpretations of the Scriptures flourished. While the latter was not seen as much in Innocent Traitor, her love for learning and for languages was definitely clear, so much so that Frances is seen telling Jane off for being too learned. Or just too "anything." Unfortunately, it is this love of learning for the reformed religions that made her a dangerous target for Queen Mary, and ultimately condemned her to death as Mary was likely to have forgiven her all her treason if she converted.

Unlike Lady Jane, Jane's relationship with her husband, Guildford Dudley, was far from the tragic romance that the film made it out to be. Whether Frances whipped Jane into submission to the marriage is unknown, but what was known was that Guildford and Jane did not like each other. In the novel, Guildford is depicted as a spoiled brat and a hypersexualised male, who rapes Jane when they consummate their marriage and then again when she is Queen. I'm not sure how much of this depiction I agree with; a chronicler who knew Guildford remarked that he was a "comely, virtuous and goodly gentleman." At the very least, on the outside, Guildford was a stereotypical gentleman with all the knowledge of court etiquette. As for his relationship with Jane, I'd like to believe it was a very frosty one that had been consummated, but more out of duty than anything else, and that the two grew closer in imprisonment. Guildford more than likely did not love Jane much when she was declared Queen of England, as he was reputed to have been furious that she did not wish to make him King. Up until that point, his known acts of love towards her were through "prayers and caresses" when Jane reacted negatively to Edward VI's last wish. Many authors depict Jane as not wanting to meet with Guildford when they were locked up in the Tower of London, but based on Guildford's known actions (writing to Jane's father, writing Jane's name on the walls he was locked up in, etc.), one can at least come to the conclusion that Guildford developed a spousal respect for Jane, which I believe may have come from meeting together in the Tower of London.

Don't get me wrong, I love this novel. A sensational piece, my love for the Tudor dynasty grew tenfold and I developed a desire to research key characters of this time period by using historical books. However, because I became more invested in historical research, I began to see the flaws of a novel I came to love so much. Yet, in spite of these flaws, I can still say Alison Weir is one of my favourite authors, and I've followed her publications religiously for nearly 7 years. Overall, I'd give this one a 4 out of 5.