The Constant Princess (Boleyn)
by Philippa Gregory
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Book Summary Information
Author: Philippa GregoryEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-08-28
ISBN: 0743272498
Number of pages: 393
Publisher: Touchstone
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Book Reviews of The Constant Princess (Boleyn)
Book Review: More Fantasy Than History
Summary: 2 Stars
I really, really wanted to like this book. When I saw it on the shelf and read its back cover, and I was very interested and immediately set about reading it. The idea of a romantic fiction story involving Queen Catherine and set against the backdrop of pre-Reformation England was quite intriguing. Further, I saw that its end date was in 1529 (five years before the break between Henry VIII and Rome), so it promised to be free from the controversy surrounding the 1534 Act of Supremacy.
In many ways, the book delivered. Its characters were well-developed and the dialog well written. I especially savored the depiction of the final reconquista of Spanish Granada, despite the fact that Ms. Gregory seems unaware that Moslems do revere Jesus and Mary (although they do not respectively acknowledge them as Son of God and Mother of God), and therefore would in all likelihood not knowingly have defiled an Ave Maria prayer in the manner depicted in the first chapter of the book (Granada, 1491).
Unfortunately, this book proved very problematic from that point onward. As the sincerely devout daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel (the Catholic) - under whose rule Catholic Spain completed its 800-year fight for liberation from the Moors - the Infanta would not have been prone to the repeatedly expressed sense of hyper-predestination that Ms. Gregory's writing ascribes to her. This stood out as a major anachronism pasted onto someone who in reality would have been unable to embrace such a mentality so alien to the Catholic and Apostolic Faith she professed.
Similarly, Ms. Gregory's hamfisted attempt near the end of the book to put the concept of peaceful coexistence between Christians and Moslems into the mind of Queen Catherine is just plain risible. Unlike our era, the 16th Century world believed in (and fought over, and died for) doctrinal and objective truth - hence all those wars of religion from 1517 to 1648. So that sort of secular Enlightenment thinking is as blatantly out of place in Imperial Spain and Tudor England as atomic warfare. (I would assume this is an example of the author simply projecting her personal ideology into the past.) Nor, I suspect, would the Infanta have harbored much in the way of positive inclinations toward the Moorish civilization that had subjugated her people from 711 to 1492, for that matter. (Moorish Spain was not a tolerant place, Ms. Gregory. That's why the Spaniards fought for 800 years to recover their liberty and independence.)
But the biggest sin that this book commits against the historical record (as an earlier reviewer correctly noted) is its unambiguous depiction of the consummation of the marriage between Prince Arthur and Princess Catherine. This is not some minor detail; it is **the** linchpin of what would become the single biggest issue in separating the English realm from loyalty to the Bishop of Rome. While betrothal and even marriage between minors were common among royals in that era (even by children younger than Arthur and Catherine's 15 years), the consummation would not be performed until the husband and wife had both reached the age of consent. Only then would the marriage be recognized by the Church as sacramental (and thus indissoluble). The sole reason that siblings-in-law Henry and Catherine were able to obtain a papal dispensation from Canon Law to marry one another is because Catherine solemnly vowed that the marriage between her and Arthur had never been consummated. And at no time in his subsequent conflict with the Church did Henry VIII ever attempt to contradict or deny her claim.
So if I am to accept the premise of this book, then I am to assume (against prevailing moral and legal customs, all of recorded history, and evidence to the contrary) that Catherine made an illicit vow with her dying husband Prince Arthur in 1502 to effectively deny their marriage (by which early consummation they would have jeopardized the sacramental integrity of the marriage - thus defeating its secular aim of cementing a permanent alliance between Spain and England), then continuously lied to her confessors (that's a mortal sin in Catholicism, Ms. Gregory), including Bishop St. John Fisher, for three decades (and to the womanizing Henry VIII, who in any case would have certainly discovered the real truth on their wedding night, and been most displeased) - and then, come 1534, when merely admitting the truth would have guaranteed Catherine an annulment and spared England and Rome the chaos of the Reformation (not to mention smoothed relations between England and the powerful German Empire, led at the time by Catherine's nephew Kaiser Charles V), she still chose to cling to falsehood - apparently to an unrepentant deathbed in 1536, although the book doesn't go far enough for us to find out.
Please, Ms. Gregory, considering the well-documented disparity between the pious personal life and moral conduct of Catherine compared to that of the wife-beheading Henry VIII, this idea defies credibility. Once upon a time, it was fighting words to malign a woman's reputation in such manner. (The aforemoentioned St. John Fisher, by the way, was the lone English bishop that openly defied Henry's Act of Supremacy - and he paid for that defiance with his head. So the one man most familiar with Catherine's spiritual state proved to be quite willing to die for the Queen's honor.) I recognize that this is a work of fiction, but historical accuracy is still supposed to count for something. Even in her grave, the saintly Queen Catherine of Aragon deserves better than such shabby treatment.
One unfortunately comes away from this book with a sense that Ms. Gregory is forcing her own 21st Century beliefs and social mores onto 16th Century characters and settings that are constitutionally incapable of supporting them. She betrays a blissful lack of comprehension of the larger religious issues present in the time period and on which the entire prevailing culture of pre-Reformation Western European Christendom was based. (This would seem to pose something of a problem for an author that has written several such titles covering this time period.)
This is a well-written, stylized work of fiction. But please do not look to it for historical truth or accuracy, which are entirely absent within its pages.
Summary of The Constant Princess (Boleyn)
Thus, bestselling author Philippa Gregory introduces one of her most unforgettable heroines: Katherine of Aragon. Known to history as the Queen who was pushed off her throne by Anne Boleyn, here is a Katherine the world has forgotten: the enchanting princess that all England loved. First married to Henry VIII's older brother, Arthur, Katherine's passion turns their arranged marriage into a love match; but when Arthur dies, the merciless English court and her ambitious parents -- the crusading King and Queen of Spain -- have to find a new role for the widow. Ultimately, it is Katherine herself who takes control of her own life by telling the most audacious lie in English history, leading her to the very pinnacle of power in England.
Set in the rich beauty of Moorish Spain and the glamour of the Tudor court, The Constant Princess presents a woman whose constancy helps her endure betrayal, poverty, and despair, until the inevitable moment when she steps into the role she has prepared for all her life: Henry VIII's Queen, Regent, and commander of the English army in their greatest victory against Scotland.
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