Weekly Reader Philippa Gregory Edition: The Last Tudor (The Plantangenet and Tudor Court Series Vol. XIV) by Philippa Gregory; The Tudor Family Line Ends on An Average Note
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: It's fitting that The Last Tudor is the final book written and the penultimate chronologically in The Plantagenet and Tudor Court Series. It presents the best and worst qualities that the previous books had in one book. This book alone is a checklist of what Phillippa Gregory did right and wrong in the entire series.
This time the book focuses on Jane Grey and her sisters, Katherine and Mary. Jane was the cousin of King Edward VI whom he declared his heir after his death instead of his sisters, Mary and Elizabeth. After, Edward's death, his guardian Lord Dudley connived to have Jane and her husband, his son, Guildford, put on the throne. Jane was queen for only nine days when supporters of Mary Tudor intervened, dethroned Jane, and declared Mary queen. Jane was eventually executed along with her husband and both of their fathers.
Jane Grey probably gets a minor footnote in history if that, but her sisters get barely any mention at all. Katherine Grey married Ned Seymour, a courtier and distant cousin by marriage, despite refusal from Queen Elizabeth. She eventually got arrested and gave birth to one son while in prison. She was released, but ended up giving birth to a daughter and spending the rest of her life separated from her husband and son while under house arrest.
Mary Grey's story was even more interesting. She was a Little Person, under 4" tall. She too married without the Queen's permission to Elizabeth's sergeant porter, Thomas Keyes who stood at 6"7. Mary served as lady in waiting under Elizabeth, but eventually she too fell out of favor and both she and her husband were arrested. Keyes was reportedly confined to a cell much too small for his large body. While Mary was under house arrest, Elizabeth eventually had her released.
The Last Tudor covers many of the themes that make the Gregory novels so great. Among them is the strength and rivalry of sisterhood. Unlike the previous sisters, the Boleyns, the Nevilles, and the Tudors, the Greys don't bare any animosity towards each other. Oh, they have differences of opinion, but those are mostly confined to just conflicting personalities rather than any real attempt to steal the throne or a position from each other. It's nice to see at least one Gregory sorority act like real sisters instead of sworn enemies.
Part of the way that Gregory does this is contrasting the sisters' personalities so they bounce off each other. Jane is much more bookish and studious. She is the most spiritual as she looks upon her ascendency as a calling from God to lead the English into Protestantism. Katherine is the most easy-going and dizziest. She is also an animal lover and is usually seen with different cats, dogs, birds, and a monkey that she names Mr. Nozzle. She is swept up in her love for Ned and when they are separated longs to be a family with him. Mary is the boldest and most outspoken. She constantly cracks jokes about her height or other things. She also has a steadfast determination to survive and she does everything she can, even deny her marriage, to ensure that survival.
We also see the theme of seeing historical characters through different eyes. Just like Katherine of Aragon and the players during the War of the Roses, Elizabeth is looked on differently here than she is in the previous books. The Queen's Fool and The Virgin's Lover were aware of her flaws, but also recognized her strengths as a cunning leader, a master strategist, a learned scholar, and a courageous fighter and survivor. The Grey Sisters see her as at best a frivolous egoist who values her own happiness (such as her relationship with Robert Dudley) over anything else. At worst, they see her as a cruel and capricious tyrant who turns on people for a whim and then just as quickly pardons them.
The reasonings behind Katherine and Mary's arrests are not fully explained, as they are meant to be arbitrary. Though they more have to do with being the last in the line of Protestant Tudor heirs. (Most of the others such Mary Stuart and Margaret Douglas are Catholic). While the book goes out of it's way to show that The Grey Sisters themselves are innocent of any plots against the queen, Elizabeth's haters aren't above using them as pawns in their means to dethrone her (like Jane was).
However the Gray Sisters themselves have another theory on why Elizabeth is so hateful towards thrm. Both believe that it is because Elizabeth envies their chances for happy marriages and she feels that if she has to be miserable then so do they. They think that she doesn't want the spotlight on anyone but herself. Their views are a bit childish, but they do come from fear and uncertainty. Sometimes, you don't know the specific reason why you fell out of someone's favor, so you simplify it in your head. Gregory does a good job of translating that uncertainty.
Gregory's gift for narration also falls into play here. She wisely separates the sisters' stories into three individual parts, allowing each sister to tell her story with the appropriate beginning, middle, and end. She also does some interesting framing devices that tie the three parts together. Each husband is introduced as a minor character in the previous story, only to take center stage in the next story as the intended of his Grey sister.
Some situations play out in all three stories. For example, Katherine's monkey companion, Mr. Nozzle is a source of irritation to Jane and she constantly wants to have him removed from her sight. For Katherine, he is an exotic pet to love, spoil, and let him be admired as a pet of the lady's chamber. By the time he gets around to Mary after she is under house arrest, Mr. Nozzle becomes her last link to her sisters so she keeps him into old age. One of the more delightful images in the book is the final scene in which an older Mary, still small, is dressed in black with a red petticoat underneath and walks a now gray Mr. Nozzle wearing Tudor green.
The biggest framing devices are the letters each sister writes to the next one while she is in prison. They reveal a lot about who they are as people. Jane's letter to Katherine is very clinical and impersonal. Instead of appealing to Katherine as a family member, Jane regards her just as someone that she thinks will carry on her legacy. The words that echo throughout are "learn you to die." Jane is someone who lives her life in her own head and according to her Protestant values. She goes along with her father and the Dudley family because she feels that becoming queen is God's plan. However, when it falls apart and her supporters turn against her (most heartbreaking of all is the moment when Jane's own father turns his coat and pleads for Mary), she realizes that it was brought upon by pride and ambition, things that she thought that she was against. She realizes that she too was ambitious in her own way and that she went along with the plot not for God's glory but her own. The only thing that she can do now is die for her faith as a martyr.
By contrast, Katherine's final letters to Mary are warm and filled with emotion and love, the kind of person that she was. Rather than learning to die, Katherine is more interested in learning to live or more specifically learning to love. She is someone who has a deep love for people and animals. While she is often the central
figure in plots against Elizabeth, she is never really involved in them. In fact there are several times when she states that she would rather have a happy marriage to Ned and lots of children than the throne.
Mary of course has no letter to write and no sister to receive it. But that makes sense to her character. Unlike Jane who is acted upon by the ambitions of others and her religious views and Katherine who is acted upon by her emotions, Mary is only acted upon by herself. She is the most active of the trio. When Katherine dithers whether marrying Ned is the right decision, Mary marries Thomas. Katherine languishes in prison brokenhearted, Mary remains outside still serving under Elizabeth but secretly plotting her escape. Even in prison, she manages to make the most of her survival by reuniting with the few family members that remain such as Katherine's children and trying to send letters to Thomas.
As I mentioned before, Gregory did so much right with this book, but she also did so much wrong too. One of the biggest problems with this book is that the longest story, Katherine's, is the most boring. While the early passages of Katherine and Ned's courtship is sweet, her imprisonment is less interesting and that covers most of that part. It might have been salvageable if Katherine was able to do anything while in there, perhaps but she spends most of the time in tears unable to do anything about her situation. Yes, I know prison is tough but that's no excuse to waste over 200 pages talking about it.
Jane and Mary's stories are far more interesting, but way too short.Jane's story is the most well known and Mary's not so much. But either one could have been expanded upon. For example, we get some tell of Jane's education, but we aren't shown it particularly her friendship with Kateryn Parr. Okay, she was queen for nine days but she barely sits on the throne before getting forced off. A few more chapters, even short ones, to describe her plans for ruling could have been added. And what about Mary? We are given very little of her and Thomas together. Shouldn't we get to know them as a couple before fate and Elizabeth drive them apart from each other?
Another problem in this book calls back to Lady of the Rivers, forgoing a more interesting protagonist for a lesser interesting one who only hears about the interesting one's adventures. This time Mary and Katherine get told about Mary Queen of Scot's marriages to the Dauphin of France, Lord Darnley, and the Earl of Bothwell. We are particularly given great details about Darnley's death and hints about Mary's possible involvement in it. This Reader read that section and thought, "Why aren't we reading about that?"
I know, I know. Mary Queen of Scots has been done to death but come on this is Philippa Gregory. The Cousin's War and the Six Wives of Henry VIII aren't exactly big historical secrets. Plus, there are ways that Gregory could have told that story from a fresh perspective, perhaps from Darnley himself, or Bothwell, or even Mary's ladies in waiting (who were all named Mary incidentally). She could dip into historical mystery with "Who Killed Lord Darnley?" just as easily as she did with the mysteries of the Princes in the Tower and Amy Dudley. Instead this is a missed opportunity. (That missed opportunity continues into the next book, the chronological final volume in the series, The Other Queen. More on that later.)
Above all, this book carries a sense of lethargy throughout. I compare The Last Tudor to the last time we saw the end of a family, The King's Curse. The latter carried a sense of darkness and tragedy as though an era really was dying out. It's felt through the characters as one by one they are either executed or survive by getting with the program. In the case of The Last Tudor, that despair isn't near as emotional. Instead it is muted by several pages of inaction and dullness. At least Margaret Pole tried to fight her fate by screaming and running from the executioner. The only one who really shows any spunk to challenge her situation is Mary and at least she lives.
Instead the intrigue is more stale. The characters are more predictable. The conflicts are less interesting.
It is clear that Gregory wanted to end the series and was pretty much running on autopilot throughout. She was probably looking forward to writing the words, "The End" as much as Jane Grey was looking forward to being martyred.
The Last Tudor is not the worst way to nearly end a series, but it could be better. At most it's average. However, for a series, that is so superb that makes the average worse.
