She makes blunder after blunder, always naively confident there will be no long-term consequences. She lives superficially, caring primarily about her own pleasure and comfort, repeatedly succumbing to male attention - even when the man’s reputation is known to be questionable. She’s attractive, fun-loving, immature, irresponsible, flighty, and passionate. Taken together, they are an impressive achievement - not even considering all those remarkable non-fiction works Weir is so famous for. This one is #5 and I look forward to the final one about Katherine Parr. Like any devotee of Tudor fiction, I have dutifully read Alison Weir’s series of lengthy historical novels SIX TUDOR QUEENS as each has become available.
Note: The publisher gave me early access to this novel in exchange for writing an impartial review. Multi-Dimensional Katheryn = Tudor Page Turner What happens next to this naïve and much-wronged girl is one of the saddest chapters in English history. But Katheryn has a past of which Henry knows nothing, and which comes back increasingly to haunt her -even as she courts danger yet again. If she can bear him a son, her triumph will be complete. She comes to love the ailing, obese king, enduring his nightly embraces with fortitude and kindness. Henry tells the world his new bride is a rose without a thorn, and extols her beauty and her virtue, while Katheryn delights in the pleasures of being queen and the rich gifts her adoring husband showers upon her: the gorgeous gowns, the exquisite jewels, and the darling lap-dogs.
But as instructed by her relations, she holds out for marriage and the wedding takes place a mere fortnight after the king’s union to Anna is annulled.
Henry quickly becomes besotted and is soon laying siege to Katheryn’s virtue. A flirtatious, eager participant in the life of the royal court, Katheryn readily succumbs to the king’s attentions when she is intentionally pushed into his path by her ambitious family. Like her cousin Anne Boleyn, Katheryn is a niece of the Duke of Norfolk, England’s premier Catholic peer, who is scheming to replace Anna of Kleve with a good Catholic queen. A prematurely aged and ailing forty-nine, with an ever-growing waistline, he casts an amorous eye on a pretty nineteen-year-old brunette, Katheryn Howard. In the spring of 1540, Henry VIII is desperate to be rid of his unappealing German queen, Anna of Kleve. “A vivid re-creation of a Tudor tragedy.”- Kirkus Reviews Bestselling author and acclaimed historian Alison Weir tells the tragic story of Henry VIII’s fifth wife, a nineteen-year-old beauty with a hidden past, in this fifth novel in the sweeping Six Tudor Queens series.
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