Sara's Reviews > The Boleyn Inheritance

This installment in the Tudor series was Philippa Gregory at her best, giving life to some of the least known or understood characters of the Tudor era. Two queens, one perpetual lady-in-waiting and the ever cunning Duke of Norfolk make this story gripping and frightening.

First, there is Anne of Cleves, a twenty-four year old queen, who reigns some six months, but is savvy enough to survive being disposed of by Henry VIII, a feat that few of his wives could boast. Anyone familiar with her story must have wondered why she elected to stay in England after Henry set her aside for Katherine Howard and how she managed to become regarded as his “sister” after she had been his wife. We are mostly told by historians that he found her ugly, but Gregory’s explanations are far more believable and credible than that, and she gives this shadowy queen life.

Next, there is Katherine Howard, the fifteen year old, who is beheaded like her cousin Anne Boleyn, but with much less fanfare. Little is known in actuality about Katherine, with exception of an extant letter from her to her lover, Thomas Culpepper. Gregory makes her a pretty and foolish teenager, taken with the limelight and repulsed by the fetid old man, whom no one can deny Henry VIII had become. Again, there is no doubt that this is who she might have been, as plausible a portrait as anyone could draw without having more information to draw on.

The third woman we are allowed to see closely is Jane Boleyn. Ah, here much is known and even more imagined, but this is a portrait of Jane that is somehow removed from the cold and calculating portrait we normally see. Not that she is warm, or soft, or lovable, but she is, here, human and pitiable.

In fact, even Henry himself is different in this account than in any of the previous ones, but this incarnation seems to be the logical outgrowth of what has come before--a madman, and in many ways a monster. How else to explain a man who would bed a fifteen year old, thinking she desires him, or behead a seventeen year old girl because she does not.

I have three more installments in the Plantagenet/Tudor series and I am certain I will miss having another to look forward to when I have completed them all.