Weekly Reader Philippa Gregory Edition: The Constant Princess (The Plantagenet and Tudor Court Series Vol. VI) by Philippa Gregory; Tudor Portion Begins With Strong-Willed Warrior Katherine of Aragon

Weekly Reader Philippa Gregory Edition: The Constant Princess (The Plantagenet and Tudor Court Series Vol. VI) by Philippa Gregory; Tudor Portion Begins With Strong-Willed Warrior Katherine of Aragon

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: So this is it.

We enter the Tudor portion of the series, the part of history that even non-history buffs will know: the story of King Henry VIII and his six wives: Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard, and Kathryn Parr.

The trick with writing such a well-written portion of history is how to make your version different. What makes your account stand out from other versions? Philippa Gregory accomplishes by personalizing each wife of Ol’ Henry. As she did with the various sides of the War of the Roses, she makes each wife stand out in their goals, relationship with Henry, and their personalities.
She starts the series off right with giving us Katherine of Aragon, daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella and turning her into a fiery, strong-willed, deeply religious warrior devoted to her God, her family in Spain, and her destiny as Queen of England.

The book begins by giving us insights into Katherine's upbringing in Spain as the daughter of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile. With the two acting as co-rulers, she sees that a female head of state can wield as much power as a man, sometimes more so because of her dominant nature that gives her the final say in all matters. We also see that Isabella is a formidable leader in battle as well when she commandeers a secret mission to take the Muslim palace Alhambra in Granada. This mission turns the tide for the Christian forces in their holy war against the Moors. Katherine admires the militant firebrand that is her mother and strives to be like her.

Katherine is greatly inspired by her parents’ devotion to their religion. They are devoted Catholics and authorize the Inquisition. Many times, they do horrible things to their Muslim and Jewish enemies, such as refusing to honor pacts that allow them to practice their religions and instead either force them to convert, be tortured, or leave the country. Katherine justifies all of this by saying that the Catholic religion is the only true one and all others are false.

Katherine also comes from a very passionate emotional family whose members often become obsessive in their romantic relationships. While Ferdinand had the occasional mistress that Isabella tolerated barely, he always returned to Isabella considering her his one true love in which she reciprocated to the point of an almost slavish devotion.

The “Of Aragon and Castile” Family obsession with their love lives takes on creepier tones with Katherine's siblings who have unhappy marriages. Her sister, Juana for example threatened and tried to poison any potential rivals for her husband's affections. Then when he died, Juana was so grief stricken that she succumbed to a mental breakdown, causing her father and other relatives to put her in seclusion. This unfortunate turn of events gave her the sobriquet Juana the Mad.

These incidents towards Katherine’s early life help shape her to become the staunchly religious, passionately married, strong-willed queen and fighter that she becomes in her marriage and subsequent leadership as Princess of Wales and Queen of England.

Something that makes this telling of Katherine of Aragon’s story unique is the emphasis on her first marriage to Prince Arthur, the oldest son of King Henry VII and Queen Elizabeth of York. In most versions of the wives of King Henry VIII, Arthur is reduced to a mere footnote and is barely mentioned at all, beyond giving Henry a lame excuse for saying that his first marriage is not valid because he married his brother's widow.

Here not only is Arthur an important presence to the story, but he comes across as a better character than Henry. When he and Katherine are first wed, they go through the usual troubles of an arranged marriage. He brags after his wedding night that he spent it “in Spain” much to her irritation. She underestimates the cold English air and nearly freezes. But once they get past the initial nervousness and arguments, they become a compatible loving couple.

Arthur here is written as a quiet scholar, less active than his feisty wife but is a more strategic and detailed thinker. Some of the highlights in the book are when Katherine tells him idyllic fairy-tale like stories of her childhood in Spain including a beautiful description of Alhambra. They spend many nights making love and taking notes and describing their version of a perfect kingdom that outdoes Camelot. They are such a charming and idealistic couple that this Reader wanted history to rewrite itself so that Arthur would survive to adulthood and become King of England with Queen Katherine by his side and Henry become a mere footnote.

Unfortunately, history does not rewrite itself and Arthur dies, but not before he makes Katherine vow to marry Henry and swear that her marriage to Arthur was not consummated thereby ending any impediments to their marriage. Katherine agrees and promises her late husband that she will mentally still love him even while she physically marries his brother.

The middle half of the book kind of drags as Katherine's title of Princess of Wales is stripped, leaving her alone and penniless with very few companions except her Spanish advisors and Lady Margaret Pole, whose brother Edward was executed after making a try for the throne. Despite the awkwardness between them in that Ferdinand and Isabella would not consent to their daughter's marriage while Edward was alive (so he was executed so Katherine and Arthur could marry), Margaret is very forgiving and she and Katherine form a friendship that is embellished upon in the next volume, The King's Curse.

This section in the book involving Katherine's widowhood emphasizes her solitude when she is left without funds or her parent’s support. Her mother dies and her father withdraws any support for her because he is caught up in issues of his own in Spain.

Katherine is left in England under the watch of King Henry VII who hasn't gotten any better since our last encounter with him in The White Princess. In fact, the lecherous sovereign openly lusts after Katherine while she is married and pursues her after his wife dies. Only his death saves Katherine from being assaulted by her father-in-law.

Henry's death paves the way for Katherine's marriage to King Henry VIII and for her to fulfill her destiny as Queen of England. Henry is not yet the abuser, serial adulterer, and tyrant he would later become but there are already hints of trouble brewing ahead with the young king. He repeatedly puts himself in the spotlight demanding attention when it is given to someone else, such as at Katherine and Arthur's wedding when he does a complicated dance with his sister, Margaret. He is spoiled endlessly by his grandmother, Margaret Beaufort and is not denied very much.

He also has a strong libido that does not let a little thing like marriage vows get in the way of his sexual pleasures. When Katherine is confined during her first pregnancy which results in a miscarriage, she learns that Henry spent most of that time dallying with one of her lady's in waiting. Already, Henry's character doesn't amount to much and he gets worse as the series goes along.

Katherine however improves as she matures in The Constant Princess. One of the ways that she improves is by stepping out from her parent's shadows and forming her own beliefs. During her miscarriage and second pregnancy, she relies on the advice and medicine provided by a Muslim physician. This assistance from the only doctor that wasn't afraid to be honest with her causes Katherine to rethink the beliefs from her parents. She realizes that they were wrong to throw the Muslim and Jewish people out. She sees her parents not as superhumans who could do no wrong. Instead she sees them as people who made mistakes.

Katherine also gets the chance to become a strong leader in her own right. When Henry declares war on France, Katherine is declared regent in his place and has to defend the north from the Scottish forces led by King James IV, Henry’s brother-in-law and husband to his sister, Margaret. When James is killed in battle, Katherine triumphantly has his body buried in London and his blood stained coat delivered to Henry as proof. This and the birth of her daughter, Mary give a high note to the young queen.

The Constant Princess while great in capturing Katherine of Aragon is very flawed mostly because it is too short. In fact, it is one of the shortest books in the series. The book mostly ends with Katherine's victory against Scotland and it time jumps into the future when Katherine interrupts the Privy Council meeting to challenge Henry's divorce throwing her over for Anne Boleyn.

Major parts to this story are missing. How did Katherine feel about Anne? We have a brief mention of her when her mother is Katherine's lady in waiting, but nothing of her as a character. Since it is established in this canon that Katherine did consummate her marriage to Arthur and that she still loved him, how did that affect her feelings towards the separation? Did she manage to stay true to her vow even after she was left alone? What were her thoughts during her isolation and her separation from her daughter, Mary? Was she glad to die so she could be with Arthur? A couple hundred more pages could have really helped.

While yes Anne Boleyn had been covered before and Gregory dwells on these events in The King's Curse, Three Sisters, Three Queens, and The Other Boleyn Girl. She didn't shy away from covering multiple views of the same events in her Plantagenet Series.
In fact the multiple viewpoints in different books makes the series interesting. They show that there are no good guys and bad guys in history and there is more than one voice that can tell a story.

The exclusion of the conflict with Anne Boleyn is egregious and makes the book rushed and almost empty like there is nowhere else to go. But the Reader knows that is not the case. Instead they have to wait until the next volume of the series for the story to continue.

Despite the rushed book, Philippa Gregory writes Katherine of Aragon as an excellent character: strong, feisty, clever, spiritual, faithful and a woman who was always true to herself, her beliefs, her family, and her loves.