Last night I finished 'The Red Queen' by Philippa Gregory, the third book in her Cousins' War series and part-inspiration for the recent BBC serial 'The White Queen'.
'The Red Queen' is Margaret Beaufort, daughter of the House of Lancaster and cousin of the unfortunate King Henry VI. Married to Henry's 24-year-old half-brother Edmund Tudor at just 12, she learns early that while an important tool in dynastic power games, she's not free to make her own decisions or wield power herself. Tudor dies two years later, but not before the 13-year-old Margaret becomes pregnant. She endures a horrifying birth which, fortunately, results in a baby boy. Naming him Henry after the troubled king of England, she sees her son as rightful heir to the throne and begins to set her sights on the ultimate prize. But will Henry Tudor support his mother's ambitions? Will her plans be discovered by the new York kings? Will either of them survive long enough to claim the crown for themselves?
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| 'The Red Queen' by Philippa Gregory (Simon & Schuster, 2010) |
It also doesn't help that the narrators are women. I applaud Ms Gregory's intention of bringing female historical figures out of the shadows, but this doesn't change the fact that very few of them were allowed to actually do very much. I was vaguely aware that Lady Margaret Beaufort was her son's greatest confidante and advisor (none of which comes across here, so I'll have to check now.), but prior to gaining the status of King's Mother, things appear to have been very different. Beyond giving birth to Henry and finding a politically astute husband willing to support her, she doesn't really do that much in this book. What she does do is interesting, but not really enough for a whole book. The fact that Ms Gregory has to tell the final section of the story in third person away from Lady Margaret kind of suggests that even she was struggling at that stage. She didn't even bother to have her recount the story as if she'd heard it afterwards or a messenger tell her what happened.
Really, I feel that I would've enjoyed this book and its predecessor a lot more if they'd been written like 'The Other Queen', with multiple narrators, each contributing their perspective on the story to create a whole picture. I also think I might've liked it more if I'd not read it straight after 'The White Queen' as I may have forgotten some events and needed the reminder, but then again I didn't know that there was going to be so much overlap. Afterall, I loved 'The Lady of the Rivers', the first book in the series, and there was hardly any duplication between that and 'The White Queen'.
The one thing I would recommend this book for, and which shows Gregory at her best, is the birth of Henry Tudor. The incident is so shocking and awful that it could put you off having children for life. Then you remember that this was the suffering of a 13 year old girl and it all feels a lot worse. Ms Gregory is known for her skill in creating a sense of time and place through her characters and this is the only point at which I really felt it in this whole book.
I don't really want to be negative about the work of such a fantastic writer, but I didn't enjoy this book as much as I have books from the Tudor series and doubt that I'll bother reading the new novel, 'The White Princess'. What I will probably do, however, is look up some non-fiction books about the key characters portrayed. When I've got a few more titles off the shelves of course!
Now for something a bit different. Science fiction anyone?
