Weekly Reader Philippa Gregory Edition: The Boleyn Inheritance (The Plantagenet and Tudor Court Series Vol. X) by Philippa Gregory; One of the Best Books in the Series Covers Least Known of Henry VIII's Wives

Weekly Reader Philippa Gregory Edition: The Boleyn Inheritance (The Plantagenet and Tudor Court Series Vol. X) by Philippa Gregory; One of the Best Books in the Series Covers Least Known of Henry VIII's Wives

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Of the six wives of King Henry VIII, probably the least known are Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard.

Henry VIII first encountered Anne of Cleves when he observed her portrait by Hans Holbein. Liking the look of her, he proposed from a distance. No sooner than they were wed, than Henry derided her as “fat” and called her “the Flanders Mare.” They were married less than six months when Henry divorced her citing a previous betrothal between her and the Duke of Lorraine which declared her not free to wed. She agreed to the divorce and accepted the title as “The King's Sister.”

Katherine Howard, was sixteen and Anne of Cleves’ lady in waiting when the fiftyish Henry set his eyes on her. They were wed after Henry's divorce but their marriage lasted over a year. She was arrested with her lover, Thomas Culpepper and beheaded.

Told at face value, many would think of Anne of Cleves as ugly and Katherine Howard as stupid. But in her usual gift for writing, Gregory gives these two wives a lot of depth and character making them some of the best protagonists and this one of the best books in the Plantagenet and Tudor Court Series.

In many of the novels in the series, Gregory plays with the narratives. For example, The Virgin’s Lover and The Other Queen use male viewpoints. The Queen's Fool's narrator is a fictional character. With the Other Boleyn Girl, Gregory did the insurmountable task of making Anne Boleyn alternately detestable and fascinating. With, the Boleyn Inheritance, Gregory juggles three narratives of three different women all with their own agendas to be a part of King Henry's court no matter how dangerous it may be.

Anne longs to be free from her oppressive family particularly her mentally ill father, cold mother, and abusive brother. Her family are strict Protestants and they believe that Anne's marriage to Henry will not only ally England with Germany but permanently bring England into the Protestant religion. (Henry waffled his religious persuasion with his wives from Catholic with Katherine, to Protestant with Anne, back to Catholic sort of with Jane.)

However, Anne's brother may claim religion, but his actions suggest otherwise. He is physically and mentally abusive towards Anne and implied to be sexually as well since he constantly orders Anne to cover up to hide her body from men's lustful eyes including his own. Anne's family order her to wear plain tightly constrained gowns and covered hoods, that look frumpy and dowdy and cause her to be derided by the people around her.

However, once Anne sees her adopted home country of England and the freedom that women have as compared to her rigid upbringing, Anne does not want to return to Cleves and her family's cruelty. She looks forward to the independence that she hopes to get as Queen.

Kitty Howard also wants to fulfill family obligations and obtain romance and excitement. Kitty is cheerful, romantic, beautiful, and not entirely bright. She has been trained and educated to be a lady in waiting for the queen and can't wait to fill that role. Her Uncle Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk eyes her appreciatively and wants her to fulfill the family interests. If she catches the king's roving eye so much the better.

Kitty enjoys the attention that is bestowed upon her as a lady in waiting and then as Queen. She constantly itemizes and counts all of her material items no matter how high or low her status is. She also has qualms about marrying a man who is abusive, sickly, perverted, who three of his previous wives died, and is old enough to be her grandfather. She likes the material possessions, but not the man that she is married to and recklessly engages in her affair with Thomas Culpepper.

The third narrator is Jane Parker Boleyn, Viscontess of Rochford widow of George Boleyn and sister-in-law of Anne Boleyn and Mary Boleyn Cary Stafford. As Uncle Thomas describes her, Jane's name is a byword for lust, greed, and betrayal. She turned evidence on her husband and sister-in-law accusing them of incest and adultery resulting in their executions. Uncle Thomas recruits her to be Anne and then Kitty's lady in waiting and his palace insider.

Jane is a particularly one-dimensional villain without the fascination of Anne Boleyn or multi layers of many of the War of the Roses antagonists. Instead, she keeps justifying her earlier actions. She was trying to save her husband. She didn't think they were going to kill them. What else could she do? etc.

Jane never takes personal responsibility in her betrayal and has selective memory about those days insisting that she, George, and Anne were the best of friends laughing, hanging out together, and were the centers of the court. Jane insists that she was passionately in love with George who would have loved her in return if not for his jealous and conniving sister.

She chooses not to remember that in the Other Boleyn Girl, George spent a great deal of time trying to get away from her, had a male lover, and confided in his sisters about his unhappy marriage and their plans to seduce Henry. Jane instead was known to the Boleyn Siblings as a pest who was constantly listening through keyholes and stealing correspondences.

Not just Jane, but Thomas Howard has emerged as the true villain. He knows what to dangle in front of people and how to use them. He guarantees freedom for Anne, pretty things for Kitty, and an advantageous second marriage for Jane to get them to do whatever he wants. He is completely malicious and hateful and unfortunately like many villains, he gets no comeuppance. He abandons others to save his skin so he can live another day. (Unfortunately, he lived well into Mary Tudor's reign and remains a key player in the next two books.)

However while Jane and Thomas are detestable with few qualities that their predecessors had, Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard more than make up for it by being outstanding. There are many chapters that show this but two passages in particular show the difference between the two in personality and in status.

The first passage happens right after Anne's arrival in England. She and her ladies in waiting, including Jane and Kitty, attend a bear baiting when a tall elderly stranger walks in and begins flirting with Anne. Anne is disgusted and bids him to leave. When he doesn't get the hint, he attempts to kiss her and Anne spits in his face. Kitty however recognizes King Henry from his arrival, stands, and says politely that she is a stranger and would this kind and handsome stranger show her around the kingdom.

This scene characterizes many of the traits that contribute to Anne's descent and Kitty's ascent. Anne was brought up very strictly and was not subjected to palace life. She would not be aware of such things as masquerades and courtly play.
Kitty's family was a central player in palace life so she has known all along that King Henry disguises himself and is pleased when people pretend not to recognize him.
This also shows Anne as willing and wanting to please the king up to a point. She is willing to argue and fight if she feels compromised.
Kitty is also given a chance to show that she is more than she seems as well. While she is still dizzy and frivolous, she has a sharp cunning side that is willing to play the game.

The other reason that this scene is important is that it foreshadows Henry's dislike for Wife #4 and favor towards Wife #5. By insulting and spitting at him, Anne's honest and forthright demeanor shows Henry as he really is: a foolish old man trying to win the favor of girls in their teens and early twenties. Anne is someone who doesn't act like a fawning courtier or tells him what he wants to hear. She is someone to tell him the truth. She is almost the voice of the people. For someone who had been spoiled, coddled, and surrounded by sycophants, yes men, mistresses, and an already revolving door of wives, the truth is the last thing Henry wants to hear. He would rather say that something is wrong with the wife than with him. Hence his mocking of her appearance and the impediment that he conveniently uses to discredit her.

Kitty however is from the family of fawning courtiers and sycophants. She knows what to say and how to say it. She knows that an older man likes flattery and wants to feel young. Put Kitty and Henry in modern day and they would definitely have a Trophy Wife/Sugar Daddy relationship. Kitty is the wild oat that an older man like Henry wants to sow and her family and she are just avaricious enough to let him have her.

The second passage shows a reversal of roles between Kitty and Anne. After Anne and Henry have divorced and Henry and Kitty have married, Anne makes an appearance at his Christmas party. Gone is the confused shy German girl with the frumpy clothing. Instead, she is dressed in a Renaissance-era gown and French hood. Where she was once mocked for her weight, instead she is seen as having strength and substance. While Kitty has the king's hand, she no longer wants it. Instead she retreats to the arms of her lover, Culpepper.

This moment reveals how much the women have changed over the book and what they consider as success. Anne has gained her independence. Because of the impediment that caused her divorce, Henry declared that she cannot remarry which is fine with her. She has thrived in England. She has her own estate and staff. She bonded with Henry's three children from his previous marriages particularly Prince Edward and has the love of the people. She has become the free beloved woman that she always wanted to be.

Kitty however has also revealed her true nature as well. It is difficult to truly hate her. She is a sweet, cheerful, frivolous, mental lightweight put in a situation in which she was unsuited. She spends all her days wearing gowns and jewelry, playing with her dogs and cats, laughing with her younger ladies in waiting, and being romanced by Culpepper. She is an eternal child who all along was much too immature and thoughtless to be the queen and in some ways she knows it too. She just doesn't articulate it. Instead she retreats into her vain desires and giggling girlfriends.

When she falls in love with Culpepper, it is almost Kitty's own declaration of independence to take a lover of her own. Ironically, this is where she gains some substance wondering if the king can have as many lovers as she wants, why does the queen have to hide her own feelings. She appeals to her own desire for romance and affection that Culpepper provides as well as the material goods Henry provides.

Of course, Uncle Thomas and Jane are there to manipulate Kitty and Culpepper’s affair so she can hopefully produce the spare to go with Prince Edward, the heir. Jane arranges Kitty and Culpepper to meet in private so they can have their liaisons.

Uncle Thomas knows that if they succeed, the Howards have a lock on the Tudor family. If Kitty fails, she is the type who is foolish enough to hang herself. He is not surprised when she gets caught and does what he does best: looks out for #1.

Jane, Kitty, and Anne handle the fallout of Kitty's arrest in their own ways. Jane is also arrested for arranging Kitty and Culpepper's affair.She feigns madness, to avoid execution. Though throughout the book, her stalkerish obsessive thoughts for George and her psychotic love and hatred for Anne Boleyn reveal that she was probably insane all along. She is surrounded by her guilty conscience and has run out of excuses to justify it.

Kitty however gains the grace and dignity that had been buried under the romantic schoolgirl frivolity. No matter what she did whether it was entering a room or addressing a dignitary, she practiced until she got it right. Resigned to her sentence, she does the only thing that she can do. She asks for a block in her cell so she can practice lowering her head upon it in front of the executioner. She wants to leave the world calm, graceful, and composed: traits that she never had in life.

Anne however emerges the ultimate victor. In an epilogue set after Henry's death, she is glad to have outlived him and most of the other wives. (Indeed she lived to see Queen Mary's coronation.) In her home and life that she has grown to love, Anne of Cleves has one of the best lines in the entire series: “I will own a cat and not fear being called a witch.” She has earned what most women long for: freedom.

The Boleyn Inheritance not only looks at Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard, but it makes them stand out as some of the best protagonists in the entire series. Philippa Gregory turned Henry VIII’s forgotten wives into women worth remembering.