Customer Reviews

The Constant Princess

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Since Katherine of Aragon is vastly underrepresented in fiction about Henry VIII (people tend to focus of Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard) it's nice to see a book just from her point of view.

This is the story of Katherine of Aragon, born to parents constantly on crusade against the moors (Muslims, Jews and other none Christians) in Spain, with a comparatively feminist mother for the time period. From the age of three she was betrothed to Henry Tudor's eldest son, Arthur. She was married, after great haggling by the royal parents, to Arthur when she was 16 and he was 15. There was a language gap, she spoke Spanish and French and Latin, and he spoke English, French and Welsh. But they got along. In this book the story of Katherine's first marriage is highly romantic and very sweetly written. This book is her life story, with a major gap between Princess Mary's (Later Queen Bloody Mary) birth and the time of the separation of Katherine from Henry so Anne Boleyn could be queen, told in third person and quite a lot of first person seeming journal entry type sections also from Katherine's view point (those parts can be quite boring.) This is a good book written about a largely ignored time period in the time of one of Henry's greatest queens and truest loves.

That said, I have some major issues with this book.

Philippa Gregory is a good writer, there's no question about that. But she made some very large historical presumptions in writing this book that I have problems with. I could understand if the book was supposed to be purely from a fictional standpoint, or had an author's note saying that pretty much all serious historians believe that Katherine and Arthur Tudor's marriage was never consummated, but this book doesn't ever say that. So, while this book is well written and a great story it's important for people to remember that it is fiction, and the facts in real life were quite different from what was represented in this book. No historian I can think of belives that Katherine and Arthur's marriage was consumated.

Henry's portrayal as hugely selfish I found a little offensive, considering that his goal in life of a male heir wasn't strange at all for the time period (he was the king and the last of his direct line) and wasn't brought up a total brat, he was royal yes, but that does not equel spoiled brat. Quite the opposit if you know your history. His parents were very careful royals (royal by right of conquest remember) with great people skills (they had to be charismatic to rule) who loved each other (probably) and loved order. He just wouldn't have been allowed to run wild in his childhood like he is shown to do in this book. Also the way Henry VII lusted after Katherine was odd, since there is absolutely no evidence that he ever cheated on his wife, or had a sexual relationship before he met her or after she died (the man was a prude and that is a fact.) Henry VII probably really did love his wife Elizabeth and while he did offer the princess of Spain his hand, it was mostly because he was a money lover who lusted after her dowry, not her.

Katherine has some very forward thinking tolerance ideas in this book, which are kind of strange and completly inaccurate considering her background and major Catholic belief system. In this book she seeks medical advice from a moor which is something that the real Katherine never EVER would have done. Her early life poisoned her gainst Islamic people and Jews to a total extent. That also makes it extremly unlikely that her people and family took on moorish customs while living in the captured moorish palace in Granada. Katherine was Catholic, and this was Catholic before Matrin Luther. If you were Catholic then even thinking about the moorish way of life with some tolerence was a sin. Also, the way Katherine lied in this book about the consumation of her first marriage would have-to the real Katherine-been a major sin, and thus not even a thing to contemplate.

If you want more, and very well researched info, about Katherine's early life check out The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir, which includes a very long section on Katherine's life before she married Henry and quite a lot about the consummation issue with Arthur. It is an extendedly researched book by THE expert in the feild and concludes that the marriage was never consumated. This conclusion is based partly on the fact that Katherine was pregnant almost all the time she was married to Henry and clearly fertile. So, if the marriage with Arthur was really consumated (and if it was more than once as in this book) she probably would have gotton pregnant. No baby, probably no sex.

Also, just because I'm a hopeless romantic I like to imagine that until he met Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII really did love Katherine of Aragon, and she him. So while this book does have some of that, I would have liked to see that love story further developed. And if you're a romantic like me check out The Autobiography of Henry VIII : With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers by Margaret George, which has a very sweet Henry/Katherine early relationship.

So, while I have some major historical issues with this book, it is another good book by Philippa Gregory. Four stars for the story and the writing, but just remember, she's a novelist, not a historian, and this is not a true work of history, or even an accurate work of historical fiction.

I'm a big fan of Philippa Gregory's novels, but it seems she's writing them too quickly. This one's subject -- Katherine of Aragon's girlhood and marriages to Prince Arthur and Henry VIII -- is potentially fascinating, as is the underestimated Katherine, or Catalina as she is known here. And without spoiling the novel's secret, it is bold of Gregory to make certain assumptions about Katherine's marriages. However, none of the characters is as well developed as in her better novels, such as Earthly Joys and Virgin Earth. The historical events are also presented superficially, with no real sense of the complexity of court intrigue at this time. Henry VII is sketched as a mere dirty old man lusting after his son's fiancee, and Henry as a spoiled adolescent. This novel also lacks the subtle supernatural touches that enliven Wise Woman, the Wideacre trilogy, and The Queen's Fool.

I really, really wanted to like this book. When I saw it on the shelf and read its back cover, and I was very interested and immediately set about reading it. The idea of a romantic fiction story involving Queen Catherine and set against the backdrop of pre-Reformation England was quite intriguing. Further, I saw that its end date was in 1529 (five years before the break between Henry VIII and Rome), so it promised to be free from the controversy surrounding the 1534 Act of Supremacy.

In many ways, the book delivered. Its characters were well-developed and the dialog well written. I especially savored the depiction of the final reconquista of Spanish Granada, despite the fact that Ms. Gregory seems unaware that Moslems do revere Jesus and Mary (although they do not respectively acknowledge them as Son of God and Mother of God), and therefore would in all likelihood not knowingly have defiled an Ave Maria prayer in the manner depicted in the first chapter of the book (Granada, 1491).

Unfortunately, this book proved very problematic from that point onward. As the sincerely devout daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel (the Catholic) - under whose rule Catholic Spain completed its 800-year fight for liberation from the Moors - the Infanta would not have been prone to the repeatedly expressed sense of hyper-predestination that Ms. Gregory's writing ascribes to her. This stood out as a major anachronism pasted onto someone who in reality would have been unable to embrace such a mentality so alien to the Catholic and Apostolic Faith she professed.

Similarly, Ms. Gregory's hamfisted attempt near the end of the book to put the concept of peaceful coexistence between Christians and Moslems into the mind of Queen Catherine is just plain risible. Unlike our era, the 16th Century world believed in (and fought over, and died for) doctrinal and objective truth - hence all those wars of religion from 1517 to 1648. So that sort of secular Enlightenment thinking is as blatantly out of place in Imperial Spain and Tudor England as atomic warfare. (I would assume this is an example of the author simply projecting her personal ideology into the past.) Nor, I suspect, would the Infanta have harbored much in the way of positive inclinations toward the Moorish civilization that had subjugated her people from 711 to 1492, for that matter. (Moorish Spain was not a tolerant place, Ms. Gregory. That's why the Spaniards fought for 800 years to recover their liberty and independence.)

But the biggest sin that this book commits against the historical record (as an earlier reviewer correctly noted) is its unambiguous depiction of the consummation of the marriage between Prince Arthur and Princess Catherine. This is not some minor detail; it is **the** linchpin of what would become the single biggest issue in separating the English realm from loyalty to the Bishop of Rome. While betrothal and even marriage between minors were common among royals in that era (even by children younger than Arthur and Catherine's 15 years), the consummation would not be performed until the husband and wife had both reached the age of consent. Only then would the marriage be recognized by the Church as sacramental (and thus indissoluble). The sole reason that siblings-in-law Henry and Catherine were able to obtain a papal dispensation from Canon Law to marry one another is because Catherine solemnly vowed that the marriage between her and Arthur had never been consummated. And at no time in his subsequent conflict with the Church did Henry VIII ever attempt to contradict or deny her claim.

So if I am to accept the premise of this book, then I am to assume (against prevailing moral and legal customs, all of recorded history, and evidence to the contrary) that Catherine made an illicit vow with her dying husband Prince Arthur in 1502 to effectively deny their marriage (by which early consummation they would have jeopardized the sacramental integrity of the marriage - thus defeating its secular aim of cementing a permanent alliance between Spain and England), then continuously lied to her confessors (that's a mortal sin in Catholicism, Ms. Gregory), including Bishop St. John Fisher, for three decades (and to the womanizing Henry VIII, who in any case would have certainly discovered the real truth on their wedding night, and been most displeased) - and then, come 1534, when merely admitting the truth would have guaranteed Catherine an annulment and spared England and Rome the chaos of the Reformation (not to mention smoothed relations between England and the powerful German Empire, led at the time by Catherine's nephew Kaiser Charles V), she still chose to cling to falsehood - apparently to an unrepentant deathbed in 1536, although the book doesn't go far enough for us to find out.

Please, Ms. Gregory, considering the well-documented disparity between the pious personal life and moral conduct of Catherine compared to that of the wife-beheading Henry VIII, this idea defies credibility. Once upon a time, it was fighting words to malign a woman's reputation in such manner. (The aforemoentioned St. John Fisher, by the way, was the lone English bishop that openly defied Henry's Act of Supremacy - and he paid for that defiance with his head. So the one man most familiar with Catherine's spiritual state proved to be quite willing to die for the Queen's honor.) I recognize that this is a work of fiction, but historical accuracy is still supposed to count for something. Even in her grave, the saintly Queen Catherine of Aragon deserves better than such shabby treatment.

One unfortunately comes away from this book with a sense that Ms. Gregory is forcing her own 21st Century beliefs and social mores onto 16th Century characters and settings that are constitutionally incapable of supporting them. She betrays a blissful lack of comprehension of the larger religious issues present in the time period and on which the entire prevailing culture of pre-Reformation Western European Christendom was based. (This would seem to pose something of a problem for an author that has written several such titles covering this time period.)

This is a well-written, stylized work of fiction. But please do not look to it for historical truth or accuracy, which are entirely absent within its pages.

Yes, I know it's a historical novel, and thus a work of fiction. However ...

Catharine of Aragon was an incredibly devout Catholic, devout to the degree that very few people would even comprehend today. It was her rigid faith that caused her to refuse to admit that her marriage to Henry VIII was not valid due to her marriage to Prince Arthur being consummated, even though it cost her and her daughter dearly. For expedience's sake, she could have gone along with Henry and lived in incredible comfort, but she insisted on telling the truth, and ended up in miserable circumstances for the rest of her life. She swore on the Host that her first marriage was never consummated. She would never have done this and lied, because she would have believed that doing so would send her eternal soul directly to Hell for all time.

So what is the point of writing a historical novel based on something that absolutely never happened? Catharine's marriage to Henry VIII was cooked up between her father and his, so that Henry VII could keep her dowry in England. It was not some plan cooked up between the young lovers, Catharine and Arthur!

If a historical novel doesn't have some grounding in reality, it's not really "historical" now, is it? Sorry, this one is just way too far out in left field for me.

Even though I have found Philippa Gregory's Tudor series ("The Other Boleyn Girl;" "The Queen's Fool;" "The Virgin's Lover" & "The Constant Princess," to be excellent reads -- Gregory writes well and in an engaging manner -- I will have to admit that "The Queen's Fool" & "The Virgin's Lover" did not quite measure up (for me) to "The Other Boleyn Girl." I found those two books to be less emotionally engaging and a little less complex. Of course, this could well be because I'm not so partial to Elizabeth I. Whatever the reason, it was with relief that I found myself becoming totally involved and engaged with the plight of Catalina of Aragon as she circumvated her way through the treacherous English court politics of Henry VII.

Catalina of Spain, youngest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, had been raised to believe fervently in her parents' causes (to unite all of Spain and make it a completely Christian country, and to create alliances with other Christian European countries that would enable them to beat back the Muslims) and to know her place in her parents schemes -- to marry the English Prince of Wales and become Queen of England, and to ensure England's help in her parents' crusade against the Muslims. But even though Catalina had anticipated that her life would not be a completely easy one (being so very far away from home and family, and feeling so completely alien in a foreign land), even she had not imagined how much pain, sorrow and heartache her life in England would be. Or just how tenacious she would have to be in order to ensure that she retained her rightful place.

Soon after her arrival in England, Catalina finds herself married off to the young Prince of Wales, Arthur, who behaves both in a rather immature and rather resentful way towards her initially-- something that the princess of the blood finds difficult to endure. But just as things begin to look up for our princess, disaster strikes; and Catalina finds herself a widow with no secure place in the English court. As Catalina battles for her rightful place, she comes face to face, for the first time, with the petty cruelties of Henry VII, as well as the almost casual indifference of her own parents. And faces the bitter truth that she can only depend on herself to survive (a lesson that will help her in future times) . With her faith and her pride as her only props, Catalina stubbornly clings to her belief that she was born to be Queen of England -- something that keeps her going through her long hard years living on the fringes of Henry's court, until he finally dies and Arthur's younger, charming but lazy brother becomes king. Will Catalina's faith and tenacity finally pay off?

I enjoyed Philippa Gregory's portrayal of the Princess of Aragon, warts and all. We see Catalina at her very best and at her worst -- her pride and her arrogance, her stubborn faith in her parents' manifestoes, refusing to see that her parents' claims were often at odds with their actions; but we also see Catalina at her most vulnerable and get to admire her for her courage and tenacity -- one may not always like the manner in which this Catherine acts, but one cannot help but admire the bravery and strength of mind she exhibits in order to obtain the results she so desires. I also liked the manner in which the author portrayed Henry VIII, laying the foundations for what would happen in the years to come, by showing the man to be a very vain, lazy and easily manipulated character. And what a wonderfully chilling portrait of autocratic and proud Margaret of Beaufort (Henry VII's mother) Ms Gregory provides us with! She definitely hit the nail on the head for me with that characterisation. And if I didn't totally buy Philippa Gregory's contention that Catherine and Arthur's marriage was consummated (too many people would have known and Henry VIII's henchmen would have left no stone unturned in their bid to discredit Catherine), I found myself devoutly wishing that it had been so, as this would definitely transform Catherine from the pious and devout wife who allowed Henry to ride roughshod over her, to a Queen who had loved and lost, but who survived her loss and achieved her ultimate goal to be Queen of England. All in all, a captivating and riveting read.

This book starts out very strong. The scene where 5 year old Infanta Catalina watches her mother and father ride out on their horses to calm a hysterical camp is awesome. It made me want to read more about Queen Isabella.

The book goes downhill somewhat when Catalina grows up and goes to England. Philippa Gregory doen't really flesh out this part of the story it's choppy and full of abrupt character sketches. She sticks to the usual view of Henry VII as a stingy, mean, crafty low man who snatched the greatest prize in England but she also makes him into a lustful old goat. She makes poor, sickly Prince Arthur into a girl's romantic dream and she turns Catalina into a modern woman. That was the biggest mistake.

The political correctness in the novel was as obvious and annoying as a Kevin Costner movie but making Catalina sound and act like a modern woman spoils the book. On top of that she's presented as being scheming, vengeful and contemptuous of Henry right from the start. That is too far from the historical evidence.

Also, Thomas Woolsey, the most important man in young Henry VIII's life is mentioned only two or three times. Woolsey was a major player in Katherine of Aragon's tragedy so this makes little sense. It's not a bad book but it reads like it was hastily put togehter. I much prefer Jean Plaidy's Katherine of Aragon Trilogy.

I will admit up front that I am not a Philippa Gregory fan. True fans may wish to skip this review altogether. I do read a lot of history and historical novels about this period, and I was intrigued as I flipped through the pages and read about the confrontation between Katharine and Margaret Beaufort, Henry VIII's very powerful grandmother, who tends to be left out of accounts of this period. I was also glad to see a novel that dealt extensively with Katharine's earlier years.

I disliked The Other Boleyn Girl, but at least I didn't become as bored as I did by this novel. There are a few effective and historical incidents: Henry VII's gift of jewelry to assuage Katharine's homesickness, her refusal to state an opinion on going to Ludlow, her false pregnancy, etc. Gregory shows Katharine as the pretty young girl and shrewd woman she probably was. The beginning, at Granada and Gregory's revisionist view of Katharine and Arthur's marriage are both interesting and intriguing. For the most part, however, the book is entirely too interior, too focussed on the private and Katharine's very repetitive thoughts. Clearly, Gregory is partly trying to explain Katharine's adamant refusal to allow her marriage to be dissolved, but I don't need to be retold the same thing every tenth page. Too much is told and not shown: we are told of Queen Elizabeth's kindness to Katharine, but we don't see it. We are told that the Duke of Buckingham gave Katharine gifts of food when she was in dire straits, but we never see him showing up at her home. Moreover, since the book leaps from 1513 to 1529, the trial at Blackfriars, I hope the reader is familiar with The King's Great Matter, because there is almost no explanation here. I don't mind that the book ends here, there have been so many other books, but there may be some readers who have no idea what is going on. Maybe one could read the first two parts of the book, switch to The Other Boleyn Girl, and then switch back when it gets up to the trial, and then resume reading it after this.

One problem with the book is that except for the longing for a child, there is only ever one thing happening in Katharine's life at a time: from Fall of 1511 until 1513, for example, the only subject of the plot is the looming war with France and Scotland. This is the period when Katharine's dear friend Margaret de la Pole was created Countess of Salisbury, a title held by her Yorkist forebears (perhaps with Katharine's encouragement?). The book establishes Katharine's sad plight after Arthur's death, and then skips forward to Henry VII's death, leaving out such interesting events as the meeting of Henry with Katharine's sister Juana and her brother-in-law Philip. Katharine would later be involved in Henry VII's attempt to marry the widowed Juana (over the vehement objections of Ferdinand). It omits, except by allusion, the marriage of Princess Margaret to James IV of Scotland and the proxy marriage of Henry VIII's sister Mary to Juana's son Charles, as Philip and Henry plot to combine against Ferdinand. So much going on that could have been described, and we have endless repetitions of Katharine's belief that she is fated to be Queen of England! By skipping from 1513 to 1529, we miss Henry's bout with smallpox (very worrisome to the still childless Katharine, wouldn't you think?), the switch to an alliance with France, sealed by the marriage of Henry VIII's sister to Louis XII of France, accompanied by rumors that Henry meant to set aside Katharine and marry a French princess. Mary Tudor was a loyal friend to Katharine, and her dramatic secret marriage to Charles Brandon after being widowed (with Katharine perhaps pleading that they be forgiven?) is completely absent. Katharine nearly caused an international incident by persuading Henry to break his vow not to shave until he met Francis I of France. We miss the birth and rearing of Katharine and Henry's daughter Mary, the birth and ennoblement of his illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy, the rumors that he will replace Mary as Henry's heir. How can the life of Katharine of Aragon become so dull?

I am not bothered by the assertion that Katharine and Arthur's marriage was consummated - when her marriage to the future Henry VIII was proposed, the English stated in their petition to the Pope that it was, and the Spanish claimed that it wasn't. (The Pope was not amused.) I'm willing to accept the premise as the basis for the story. It really only mattered because Henry later made the ad hoc claim that the Pope couldn't grant a dispensation in that case. There was some controversy at the time of her marriage to Henry, and apparently there were flaws in the dispensation, but only Henry's desire to leave the marriage made these significant. Manoel of Portugal married Katharine's sister Isabel; when she died leaving him a young son, he married her sister Maria, and that marriage stood.

Yes, I know that Katharine was very pious, but so were Richard III and Margaret Beaufort - politics encourages convenient morals. And Katharine is supposed to have done this partly in order to continue the good works that she and Arthur planned, but we never see her generous support of education, her attempts to introduce new craft industries, etc. We never really understand why the English public supported her, no matter what Henry said about their marriage. In service to the vision of Arthur as Katharine's One True Love, Katharine's famous devotion to Henry VIII is discounted. I found Henry VII's coarse leering at Katharine tiresome and crudely written; I don't think there is any historical basis for it.

Gregory tells us in her notes that she also wants to give a voice to the Moslems of el Andalus. She lays it on with a trowel. Katharine misses the privacy of the harem where woman can really trust one another and don't have to worry about their husbands cavorting with someone else(!?) Andalusia was a veritable paradise of refinement, learning and tolerance, her people pillars of virtue. Well, I've read that, but I've also read that the much vaunted tolerance was something of a myth, invented centuries later in order to shame Christian Europe into imitating it. I think she has seriously overdone it, and that sort of thing often backfires. I can only remember Jane Austen's assertion that pictures of perfection made her sick and wicked. In any case, if Gregory wants to give the Moors of Spain a voice, I suggest that she write a novel about them in all their human complexity, not simply tack them on as a romantic myth. Gregory says that el-Andalus has a lot to say to us as we struggle with tolerance and mutuality, but she never shows us how the Moors are supposed to have managed it.

Katharine's attitude towards the Moors is not so much ambivalent as cognitively dissonent. She alternates between calmly explaining their glorious culture and history to Arthur and becoming nearly hysterical at the thought of Moors. This erratic vacillation undermines one of Gregory's themes, i.e., Katharine learning to think independently of her parents. Katharine tells Arthur that the Spanish royalty are very much Arabs in private, have adopted, rather than adapted, Arab customs. This while they are destroying all the centers of learning and driving out all the uniquely competent doctors as minions of Satan. Even if they did indeed take a great deal from Moorish culture, I doubt that they would consciously see themselves as becoming Arab. One can understand that Katharine is enthusiastic about Englishmen joining a Spanish crusade against North Africa, but Katharine spends a fair amount of time worrying about the threats posed to England by the Moors. I think it would be pretty obvious that England's most pressing foreign concern was not likely to be an armada of the Barbary pirates appearing off the white cliffs of Dover. Ferdinand and Isabella's determination to drive out the Moors didn't cause them to neglect European politics.

I suppose that anyone who is a big fan of Philippa Gregory will want to at least try this. Those who like richly detailed recreations of the past and vivid imaginative constructions of historal people may be disappointed. Gregory's version of Arthur and Katherine's marriage is really the only interesting variation in this very familiar tale.

I recommend two much better novels by Norah Lofts: Crown of Aloes (Isabella of Castile) and The King's Pleasure (Katharine of Aragon). The young adult novel Patience, Princess Catherine: A Young Royals Book (Young Royals) by Carolyn Meyer is a much more vivid picture of her life from just before her departure from Spain to just after her marriage to Henry. The story is bookended by Katharine's defiance of Henry after his marriage to Anne Boleyn many years later, but the historical notes are better.

I'm a big fan of Philippa Gregory's books, I have most of them in my library. But, this book seems a bit of a slapdash effort. The plot plods along and is repetitive...if I were married to someone who reminded ME every 12 seconds that she was a Princess of Spain I'd want a divorce, too!
Ms. Gregory gets a lot of grief from Historians (capital H) for her other books taking liberties with the lives of historical figures but I don't begrudge that...if I'm being honest with myself I think I read these kind of historical novels to feel more intellectual than if I read books with Fabio and his ilk on the cover. But, having said that, this book feels totally contrary to almost all accepted fact about Katherine of Aragon. That may be by Ms. Gregory's design, but I found it more glaring and harder to get past than her playing fast and loose with Ann Boylen's life in "The Other Boleyn Girl." I can hear the Team Boleyn faction saying, "See, we told you so."

"The Constant Princess" was written by Philippa Gregory, the author of many excellent books including "The Other Boleyn Girl" and "The Virgin's Lover." I expected it to be a lot better than it actually is.

This book is about Catalina, the daughter of Spain's King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Catalina has been betrothed to Prince Arthur, son of the King of England, ever since she was a young girl. Catalina grows up and fulfills her destiny by marrying Arthur when she is 15 years old. Their marriage is uncertain at first, but soon the newlyweds fall in love and plan their future together. Their happiness is cut short when Arthur falls ill and dies several months after the wedding. Catalina is forced to grieve for her husband in secret so she can find a way to honor the deathbed promise she made to him, which was to marry his younger brother instead so that Catalina can still become Queen of England.

It takes many years of waiting (and fending off the unwanted advances of her father-in-law) before Catalina finally gets her way. She marries the headstrong Henry VIII and becomes Queen Katherine of England. Never letting go of her love for Arthur, Katherine carries on with her life and struggles to carry a child to term, maintain her husband's affections, and rule a country.

There are parts of this book that are very interesting, but a lot of the content is repetitive and dull. Catalina is an admirable character, but her whole "I am the Infanta of Spain!" song and dance gets really annoying after a while, as does her constant whining about her "destiny." Also, the portion of the book devoted to Catalina and Arthur's romance is supposed to be very touching, but I think it contains way too many chapters detailing the two of them telling stories and singing songs in bed. How boring. Finally, the whole concept of Henry VIII's father lusting after Catalina seemed a bit farfetched to me, and that aspect of the story took away from the rest of the book.

This is the fourth book of Gregory's that I've read so far, and it is definitely my least favorite. If you're interested in learning more about Katherine of Aragon, I'm sure you will appreciate bits and pieces of the story, but it just isn't as gripping of a novel as Gregory's other works.

I usually enjoy Gregory's writing but with this book and her last, The Virgin's Lover, I am beginning to wonder if her need to churn something out is overcoming her research. Gregory takes the truly interesting story of Catalina of Aragon and gives it a spin that is highly improbable according to historical facts. At times the story is out and out false: Catalina (also known as Katherine) never had a "phantom" pregnancy; that was her tragic daughter, Mary I. Highly illogical as well is the idea that Catalina deliberately lied about being a virgin at her marriage to Henry since every record known paints her as an extremely pious woman who would never willingly imperil her mortal soul. These were just a few of the sticking points that detracted from my enjoyment of this novel. I tried to suspend belief and go along with the idea that it *might* have happened this way, but Catalina's character is just so opposite to anything I've ever read or studied that it was very difficult for me. I wanted to like this book; Gregory's style is accessible and engaging. As a novel, I at times could find myself caught up, but more often than not, the over-the-top behavior as depicted by Gregory just pulled me out of the story. My main concern is that a novice history lover will take this book as fact and allow it to color his opinion of Henry the 8th and his first wife.

I look forward to Gregory's return to the style and flair that made The Other Boleyn Girl so captivating.