Weekly Reader Philippa Gregory Edition: The Queen's Fool (The Plantagenet and Tudor Court Series Vol. XII) by Philippa Gregory; Fictional Protagonist Sees Reign of Queen Mary I Up Close

Weekly Reader Philippa Gregory Edition: The Queen’s Fool (The Plantagenet and Tudor Court Series Vol. XII) by Philippa Gregory; Fictional Protagonist Sees Reign of Queen Mary I Up Close


By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews


Spoilers: Of Philippa Gregory's The Plantagenet and Tudor Court books, The Queen's Fool has a peculiar legacy. It is the only one of the entire series that tells the book through the eyes of a fictional character.

The advantage of this unique volume is that the fictional character is just as well-written and developed as her real-life counterparts.

The fictional character is Hannah Verde, also known as Hannah Greene, a young Jewish woman. Hannah has fled Inquisition-era Spain with her father and Daniel Carpenter, her betrothed. They now live in an England that is reeling from the death of King Henry VIII and ascension of his frail son, King Edward VI.

Hannah tries to settle into life in England by working in her father's print shop making and selling books and not looking forward to her upcoming wedding. One day three men stroll into the shop. Two are Robert Dudley, the son of John Dudley, King Edward's regent and the most powerful man in England, and John Dee, astrologer and advisor to the king. However, the third man gets the most attention when it is revealed that only Hannah can see him and no one else can. Dee reasons that she must have seen an angel and that Hannah possesses clairvoyant abilities, called the Sight.

Seeing a distinct advantage to having a psychic friend, Robert begs for Hannah's services as a fool to King Edward. Hannah finds herself acting as a fool to Edward then after his death to Edward's sister, Queen Mary I. Hannah then is recruited as a spy and go-between among Mary and her younger sister, Princess Elizabeth. She then finds herself caught between worlds:. Raised Jewish but forced to conform to the religions that the Royals practice, arranged to marry Daniel but falling in love with Robert, and becoming a close confidant and unofficial advisor to both Queen Mary and Princess Elizabeth.

Hannah is a fascinating protagonist in that she is completely different from the other narrators of these books. For the first time, we see the court through the eyes of a commoner with no noble or royal distinction. It's interesting reading about how the average working person lived and survived in Tudor England.

We also get to see what it is like to be an outsider and minority in this era. Hannah and her friends and family have to hide their Jewishness from the outside world. They practice their religion in secret by celebrating the High Holy Days in dark rooms behind locked doors and closed drapes. They whisper Hebrew prayers and only privately call one another by secret names that reveal their religion. They hide all of their Torahs and Hebrew language books away from curious customers. It gets to the point where Hannah is ashamed of all of this hiding and becomes dismissive of her religion. She later recants these feelings to the point that she proudly insists that the child who is put into her care is circumcised.

In one heart tugging moment, Hannah is left alone with her father's books and considers destroying them. She can't bring herself to do it, because she realized that she would be no better than the Inquisition that burned her mother and considered “ideas to be dangerous.” As a woman who has a deep thirst for knowledge and learning that is found in books, she cannot bear for that to happen.

Through Hannah's narration, we meet three rulers of England and hear about a fourth. King Edward is young and sickly and unfortunately dies before he can leave any lasting impact. However, he is ruled by regents who use the prince to get their way. After Edward's death, Dudley tries to get his Protestant daughter in law, Jane Grey to become queen and gets her on the throne for nine days before they are arrested and executed. (We only hear about Jane and get no sense of her as a character. Her story is saved for The Last Tudor).


However, we do get to meet Mary and Elizabeth who are interesting in their characterization. Mary is written as a woman who has a full awareness that time is running out for her. She does not ascend the throne until she is in her late-30’s so she is desperate to create a lasting legacy after years of being disgraced, bastardized, and ignored.

She throws herself into a hasty marriage to Prince Phillip of Spain and is desperate to conceive a child. Even though Hannah's Sight warns Mary that this is a marriage destined for heartbreak, Mary doesn't care. She placates her young husband and looks the other way when he flirts with other women including her own sister. On two emotional occasions, she announces that she is pregnant and goes into seclusion to deliver. Both times, no baby appears and she stays in seclusion long after the believed due dates.

Mary is also fervently devoted to her Catholic religion considering it the only comfort in her tumultuous past of the banishment and death of her mother, the disgrace and dismissal by her father, and the revolving door of stepmothers. Mary's Catholic faith was the one constant in her life, so it's no surprise that she would find solace in it upon adulthood.

However as Mary's life implodes she becomes more ruthless and fanatic. She constantly pressures Elizabeth to convert to Catholicism not listening to the princesses’ claims of illness and not knowing the catechism. Even though she is concerned for her sister's soul, she is still highly suspicious of her and has her put under house arrest numerous times.As her marriage to Phillip disintegrates, Mary becomes a dictator putting Protestants to death if they do not conform to Catholicism. Hannah is horrified as the Queen that she once loved and respected becomes another Inquisitor in her life.

By contrast, Elizabeth gives Hannah someone to admire. Unlike Mary who is dour and shriveled up from all of the waiting, Elizabeth is young and has plenty of years ahead of her. She is vibrant, witty, and alive with fire and passion. When she enters a room, she makes everyone else fade away by her brilliance, especially her sister. (Hannah realizes that Mary had better marry Elizabeth off and fast otherwise she will be in complete competition against her.)

While Hannah looks at Mary as a mother figure and pities her because of her sorrows, she sees Elizabeth as almost an older sister, someone whom Hannah could be like. She sees Elizabeth's independence and how she carries herself at court and wishes she could be that self-assured. She sees how Elizabeth openly flirts with men, loving the attention but refusing to give her heart to them and wishes that she didn't have to be tied down and married. Elizabeth is a woman that Hannah hopes to become.

Elizabeth is a shrewd game player. Her every move, word, and action is calculated to ensure her survival. She will do anything from remaining bedridden from stress related illness to studying the catechism while greeting Protestant ministers in secret, to not only play the game, but to win.

This plays into her romantic relationship. When she lives with her stepmother, Kathryn Parr and Kate's fourth husband, Thomas Seymour, Elizabeth allows Thomas into her bed and plays sexual games with him. Then when Thomas is arrested for treason, Elizabeth denies being with him. (In reality, no one is sure how active Elizabeth was in Thomas's Seymour's seduction of her. Most of her enemies said she was a willing participant. Supporters believed her. Most modern historians believe at the very least, Thomas had committed statutory rape with her and she was a victim who was coerced into being with him.)

Elizabeth pulls the same trick with other men including Prince Phillip and Robert Dudley. She flirts with them to gain powerful allies and the upper hand in her rivalry with Mary. However, what is clear is Elizabeth is a woman with her own mind and will not allow any man to rule over her.

Mary and Elizabeth's influence play into Hannah's life as well. As the Fool, her role in court is to wear men's clothing, tell jokes, and predict the future using cryptic clues. Since she can say whatever she wants, she has the unusual task of being blunt and honest to the monarchs and keep her head. Her gift of the Sight also holds great interest in court.

Through her involvement with Mary and Elizabeth, Hannah sees other alternatives to how a woman could live her life. She had been reluctant to marry Daniel in the first place, and now likes the freedom this strange role as a Fool gives her. Not to mention that she harbors a crush on the handsome and charismatic Robert Dudley. For a time, Hannah is separated from her father and Daniel as they move to Calais and then Genoa. Hannah enjoys her independence and freedom that comes with the territory of being the Fool.

Unfortunately, Hannah's happiness is short lived when Mary suspects her of treason. Hannah flees to Calais and settles into marrying Daniel, giving up her former life of palace intrigue and friendships with the Queen and Princess.

In some of the slowest portions of the book, Hannah has to uncomfortably settle into the life of a Jewish wife and then later, after the English lose possession of Calais, has to go into hiding in the country home of Robert’s wife, Amy. However, they both reveal Hannah's difficulties of conforming to the life of a normal woman of the Tudor era. They also show her reconciliation with her Jewish heritage as she begins to find common ground with Daniel and her father and cares for a young abandoned boy.

While Hannah Greene was not a real person, Philippa Gregory's writing makes her a compelling character that is just as real as everyone else around her.