The Constant Princess (Boleyn)
by Philippa Gregory
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Book Reviews of The Constant Princess (Boleyn)
Book Review: The greed got to me.
Summary: 3 Stars
Book The Constant Princess is about King Henry VIII's first wife Katherine of Aragon, mostly before they get married. She is betrothed to Henry's older brother Arthur at the age of three and grew up her entire life knowing that she would someday be the queen of England. Her first marriage gets off to a rocky start, but eventually she and Arthur learn to love one another and have a rather passionate four months together before he dies. It is at this point that Katherine's fate is undecided. She is the right political match for Henry but she's 6 years his senior, and since he's only 11 at the time that's a big deal. Henry VII, Henry VIII's father, takes a liking to Katherine and proposes marriage to her after his wife Elizabeth dies in childbirth. Katherine at first accepts but then realizes that her power would be minimal with such a strong king and decides to wait for Henry to figure out that they should be married. Of course he does, they are betrothed, but Henry VII doesn't make life easy for Katherine, keeping her in poverty by refusing her allowance and making life otherwise miserable for her. He soon dies, though, leaving Henry free to choose his wife, so he chooses Katherine. The story ends with Katherine's triumphant victory over the Scots through a battle that ended in King James's death.
While I really enjoyed the first half of this book, the middle and latter half really brought me down. Katherine suffered the plight of so many other of Gregory's heroines: power greed. Gregory paints such a power hungry picture of Katherine that she ceases to be a "real" character for me and moves into the archetype that she created with Anne Boleyn. And while I don't doubt that someone of Katherine's station has to be power hungry, the overt manipulations, the decisions, the plotting, all get old after a couple hundred pages. And the epiphany on the battle field where Katherine realizes that if she were to lay waste to Scotland that she would be perpetuating her mother's wrongs, fell flat for me. I guess Katherine had grown and matured by that point, but the switch was so abrupt that it felt lacking in sincerity.
So, while I would recommend this book to lovers of Gregory's work, especially the Tudor era novels, I would recommend those who want a less stock portrayal of Katherine to steer clear of it. I will read her next book, the Boleyn Inheritance, because I like her story telling and can tolerate her women when they get greedy, but I would love a more holistic portrayal of the life and times of the Henry VIII court that what was found in the Queen's Fool.
Book Review: What I look for in a historical novel: a point of view
Summary: 4 Stars
Lots of people are warning you that this presentation of Queen Katherine's story isn't historically accurate. Piffle. You probably already knew that, and you probably didn't care.
When I read a historical novel, whether it's about Anne Bolyn or Merlin or Queen Esther, it's not because I want a factual history of who begat whom. I'm perfectly happy to read a non-fiction account of such things, and if you read through some of my book reviews you'll see that I do so rather often.
What you want from a historical novel, or at least what *I* want, and why I'm recommending this book, is "a" story (not "the" story) of a prominent individual, and how he or she got that way. Whether wholly factual, like Marie Antoinette, or semi-mythical, like King Arthur, we wonder what courage or presence of mind or fears that individual dealt with. I've read nearly every Arthurian tale I could get my hands on, just because I love seeing Merlin painted first as a dotty Dumbledore-like wizard, next as a mystical psychic, another time as an engineer who inherited a sword made from a meteorite. All of them are true; none of them are true. That's what fiction is about. I'm perfectly willing to suspend my disbelief, and to dive headlong into good talespinning. And Gregory certainly achieves that.
The key question behind Gregory's handling of Catalina/Katherine is this: the woman undeniably was brought to England to marry the older son, married the younger son after the first boy's death, and eventually had to deal with Anne Bolyn (who gets a lot more airplay). To the last, Katherine maintained that she was the true queen and Henry was her husband. She was steadfast, she was resiliant, and she was, as the title says, constant. From where does one get such strength? How can one be so sure of one's rightness? Katherine of Aragon got it from _somewhere_, certainly -- and Gregory gives her a story worth reading.
Is it factual? I doubt it. For one thing, as in most romances (and this certainly is one, if not following a usual format), the hero and heroine are just a little too shiny, and they make understandable if not good decisions. (The young Arthur, Henry's older brother, is a sensitive new-age kind of prince.) I do prefer stories in which the characters grow up a little more -- Henry was painted as a bit too petulant and spoiled, when I know full well he was brilliant too -- but I enjoyed reading the story. Set aside what you "know" about these characters, and I think you'll enjoy it too.
Book Review: The Constant Princess: Consistentally Boring
Summary: 2 Stars
The Constant Princess follows in the same exact pattern as Gregory's other works-she focuses on a princess in the English court, lets us eavesdrop on the private thoughts of a public women, has some explicit sex scenes, and forces us to watch the woman's downfall. In this work, the princess is Katherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife. We follow Katherine as a child, then a wife, and finally an outcast. You would assume that the woman replaced by Anne Boleyn would have been more exciting. I was mildly entertained.
Philippa Gregory began the novel with this premise: Katherine was a liar. Okay, history lesson...Before she married Henry VIII, Katherine was married to his brother Arthur-the first heir to the throne. She was allowed to marry Henry because she swore to the POPE that the marriage wasn't consummated. Henry later used her first marriage to push her aside, and he blamed this fact on their lack of sons. Well, Gregory theorizes that Katherine loved Arthur and that she lied about their sex life to stay the Queen of England. Would a incredibly devout woman do this? Would a devout Catholic lie to the Pope to stay Queen?
I picked this novel up as part of my "The Tudors are over. What am I going to do now???" recovery. I was desperate to get a Tudor fix. This novel fixed it alright. Now I know why the show was so good-it was exciting, and it focused on exciting characters. The Constant Princess did not. Katherine was not exciting for me, not believable. The sections where her inner voice spoke where so boring that I almost skipped them entirely.
Another thing that really troubled me in the novel, was the whole premise of the lie. Katherine of Aragon has been described as an extremely devout woman. Part of her infertility issues are now based on her extreme fasting and extremely long prayer times. How could a woman who was so devout tell such a lie? How could she claim to be a virgin when she wasn't? Gregory argues that it would have almost impossible for Arthur and Katherine to not consummate their marriage-that Katherine would do anything to be queen. I, for one, had a hard time reconciling her incredible faith with her amazing ambition.
This novel left something to be desired for me. I don't know if it was because this Katherine didn't fit the image already in my head from The Tudors or if Gregory's work is just getting old for me. Either way, I am in no hurry to read another one of her works.
Book Review: Katherine the Ignored
Summary: 4 Stars
The Constant Princess / 0-7432-7249-8
Everyone loves Tudor history, but too often we only really start to pay attention when Anne Boleyn enters the scene. In "The Constant Princess", Gregory has put together an entertaining fictional account which attempts to bring us the early years of Katherine. While a lot of historical detail has clearly gone into the novel, it is important to remember that the work is fictional, and not meant to be a history text.
Katherine's childhood and tutelage under her iron-willed mother Isabel is shown, and we are given a careful look into the character of Katherine. She is deeply religious, yes, but incredibly strong-willed and driven. She also understands that while her parents love her, she is their bargaining chip first and a daughter second. When her arranged marriage fails due to the tragic death of her young husband, she is faced with a choice: go back to Spain and become a minor Spanish duchess, or spin the audacious lie that she is still a virgin and eligible to marry the next English heir.
Gregory carefully notes the animosity against Katherine by the chilly royal family, and emphasizes the relative poverty in which Katherine was forced to live during the time between her husband's death and her eventual marriage to Henry. Henry is seen here as a spoiled child, who is more than willing to leave the mundane affairs of rulership and budgeting to his older, more competent queen. We see the impetuous and careless cruelty that causes Henry to abandon his pregnant queen to seek the arms of someone else rather than accept a temporarily imposed chastity. Thus we also see in his treatment of Katherine a shadow of things to come later: if Henry cannot remain faithful to his wise and valuable princess-wife, what hope have the later girls to come?
The character of Katherine is sterling here, and it is easy for the reader to agree that her lie is a necessary evil in order for her to become what she feels destined her to be. We sympathize with Katherine the girl as she is beset by difficulties that she bravely tries to weather; we fear for Katherine the woman, whom we know will be forced aside later for a younger woman. We feel a sympathy with this lesser-known figure of the famous drama and it is easy to imagine that Katherine may not blame Anne, but rather recognizes that her husband is an inconstant monarch destined to betray her.
~ Ana Mardoll
Book Review: Unsure what to think
Summary: 3 Stars
This book had a great beginning. The first chapter really hooked me in. The image of a barefoot princess standing atop a chest watching her mother ride off into flaming battle is particularly haunting. I wish I could say that the rest of the book was as striking to me.
Now, I'm not going to comment on the historical inaccuracies of this book, since so many other reviewers have been gracious enough to cover everything I'd want to say, but since it's been proven that Ms. Gregory has taken liberties with historical facts (I'm okay with that - there's a reason the word FICTION is part of the genre title), I wish she would add some details into the story to make it more interesting.
I loved the descriptions of the Moorish culture in Spain, like the Alhambra, but unfortunately that's the most interesting part of the book. After the part where Arthur gets sick, nothing really interested me. When Catalina and Arthur get married, they act like petulant children, instead of teenagers who were raised to rule a country someday. Then they magically fall in love after a huge fight, and have a storybook romance with not a fight between them. I know this book is historical fiction, but considering the liberties the author has taken with a lot of other facts in this era, couldn't she have put some conflict into the mix to liven the story up? As a writer, I can tell you that no story is interesting without conflict of some sort, and we see no conflict in about 100 pages of this book. Ms. Gregory could have added adventurous hunts, matrimonial fights, conflicts with spying servants, snarky castle-mates, etc, but there is next to nothing of interest happening after the first chapter. As far as story ideas go, this was very disappointing to me.
I really didn't think the multiple point of view storytelling was particularly beneficial to the story. Ms. Gregory would have done quite well to cut out the first person altogether. The story flowed just fine without it.
As somewhat of a history nerd, I have collected a lot of knowledge about this time period, and knew how the story is going to end. If you don't, I'm sure you can gather it from the other reviews on here. After the first hundred pages, I debated whether I wanted to finish this book or not. I already knew the ending, but I'd hoped the quality of the storytelling will improve. Not really.