Summary:
The King is dead… but who will live long now?
A fateful accident upon the jousting field leaves Henry VIII dead, crushed to death under the weight of his horse. His country, already divided over faith and power, trembles on the brink of chaos as Anne Boleyn rises to become Regent, ruling for her children, for her daughter Elizabeth and for the child as yet unborn in her womb.
Yet the children of Anne Boleyn are not the only ones who may stake a claim to the succession. Heirs will rise, supported by families of power and wealth, all vying to place their heir upon the English throne.
As conflict and rebellion unfold, alliances will be made and broken. At court and in the streets of England this war will rage, deciding who has the right to rule England, and who has the will to see this fight through, to the end.
Review:
The premise of this novel is exciting, as it draws on one of the biggest “what-if” scenarios of the Tudor era: What if Henry VIII had been killed in the 1536 jousting accident that many say altered him forever? This is arguably one of the most impactful moments to have a succession crisis, with at least four claimants to the throne who could viably be considered eligible. It was also a time when Henry’s marriages muddied the waters, as some believed his first marriage was still valid, and the repercussions of his marriage to Anne Boleyn reached into the courts of Europe and the Vatican.
There’s obviously no way to know for sure how events would have played out had Henry not been around. Any story is going to be a series of educated guesses based on the known history and who held any kind of power at the time. Lawrence does what I feel is a good job of wargaming out the possible outcomes and figuring out who would have supported whom. She also takes into account that the Wars of the Roses were not that far in the past and would probably have been in the minds of those living at the time. Peace was a precious commodity.
I initially had a bit of trouble swallowing one of the choices the author made, namely the one allowing Anne to keep her pregnancy instead of losing the baby to miscarriage. In an afterword, she explains that historically, Anne blamed the loss of the fetus on seeing Jane Seymour sitting on Henry’s lap, which Anne says so shocked and grieved her that she miscarried. This event happened after the jousting accident, so in this novel, it doesn’t take place, and Lawrence decided to take Anne at her word for the purposes of this story. And admittedly, it does muddy the waters delightfully to know that Anne is carrying a son, who would take precedence over both Mary and Elizabeth. The novel ends before the birth, so we’ll have to wait to see how that affects matters.
I do enjoy all of Lawrence’s novels, although I sometimes think that they could be improved with a bit more editing. The author’s writing style leads her to sometimes repeat herself or say something in a more roundabout way than others might. It’s not enough to put me off of her novels, though, as I enjoy that she tackles the complexities of Tudor life and politics. She also humanizes some of the figures that you probably know from movies and TV shows that go for spectacle and drama over more thoughtful aspects.
I’m definitely looking forward to the next book in this series, which I’m hoping will arrive in the next few months. The Tudor era is rife with these moments where history could have taken a dramatically different turn than what actually happened, and exploring those moments is a great way to take a closer look at history and the forces that influence it.
