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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
(3.5 stars) "That old crone of a soothsayer in Winchester spake the truth.", February 26, 2009
This review is from: The King's Grace: A Novel (Paperback)
Top billing in Anne Easter Smith's latest novel is given to Grace Plantagenet, a woman barely recorded by history who is a blank slate upon which the author builds a feasible tale of Perkin Warbeck, the young man who claims to be one of the Princes in the Tower. Heirs of Edward IV, the princes, Edward V and his younger brother, Richard, the Duke of York, have disappeared into myth, their fate left for historians to debate. Some claim they were murdered by Richard III, or perhaps dispatched by Henry VII, grist for much speculation. Smith enters the fray through the unassuming Grace Plantagenet, a young woman brought into Elizabeth Woodville's household, wife of Edward IV. When scandalous information surfaces about the status of Bess Woodville's marriage to Edward, the marriage is declared invalid, the progeny of the union illegitimate. Greedy, ambitious and unpopular, Woodville goes into sanctuary after Edward's death, but is forced to release her sons into Richard's keeping. After Richard's death at the Battle of Bosworth, Woodville's daughter, Elizabeth of York, marries Henry VII, the taint of her illegitimacy removed by the new kin.
The Yorkist's cause remains viable, Henry Tudor reviled by those who would see their power restored. Margaret of York is deeply involved in the plotting in Burgundy, where a young boy resides under her care from 1478-1485, classically educated and groomed for his future role as the returning Richard of York. Meanwhile, Grace Plantagenet, the vehicle for moving the plot, joins Woodville's household, a favorite of the mother of Henry's new queen. As a family intimate, Grace is privy to the York machinations to unseat Henry Tudor and the early days of his marriage to Elizabeth of York. All too soon, Henry's mother, Margaret Beaufort, will overshadow her son's queen and become his most trusted confidante, Elizabeth languishing in the background. And when Woodville is accused of treachery against the crown, she is sent to the Abbey of Bermondsey, taking the faithful Grace with her (where the girl remains for the next three years). Later, joining her half-sister, Cecily's (wife of Viscount Jack Welles, Henry's step-uncle) household, Grace witnesses the unfolding drama of Perkin Warbeck claims, Henry's greatest fear realized.
Nurtured by Margaret of York, Warbeck is the true focus of this novel, his growing threat to Tudor's rule, a threat that lasts for eight long years. Behind the scenes, Grace comforts Woodville (made much more tolerable than usually described), continues a lovelorn infatuation with a first cousin, attends her half-sisters in Henry's court and even travels to Burgundy on a secret mission. Grace's tentative, yet obstinate nature is revealed in her obsession with her Yorkist cousin, even after marriage. Grace is a creature ruled by her emotions, whether sympathy for an unsympathetic Woodville or ambivalence toward her husband, who tolerates Grace's outrageous behavior and her involvement with Perkin Warbeck's adventures. Smith's novel is a patchwork of odd pieces, some more carefully stitched than others. Still, that's the goal of historical novelists, creating plausible scenarios from bits of history, a balance of fact and fiction, in this case the fate of Perkin Warbeck, the Yorkist hope for restoring the throne to York while wreaking revenge on an arrogant Henry Tudor. Luan Gaines/2009.
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22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Banal and predictable, March 8, 2009
This review is from: The King's Grace: A Novel (Paperback)
Anne Easter Smith is no Sharon Penman, despite the superficial similarities in crafting epic-length historical fiction based on the events of the Middle Ages in England. In Penman's hands, the turbulent years that followed the defeat of Richard III at Bosworth and the gradual disappearance of the Yorkist cause as the Tudor dynasty brought peace and prosperity to England, could have been transformed into a lively book. Instead, the story of Grace Plantangenet's coming of age in this era ends up a rather limp read.
All that is known of the real-life Grace Plantagenet is her name, and that she was an illegitimate daughter of Edward IV who was some kind of attendant on his queen, Elizabeth Woodville, at the latter's death and funeral. On that basis, Smith has been free to imagine an entire life for Grace, revolving around the conspiracies of the early years of the Tudor reign that saw several serious rebellions against Henry VII's embryonic dynasty. Even as Henry's wife Elizabeth, daughter to Edward IV, gave birth to one child after another to carry the Tudor name into history, pretenders to the crown challenged the right of those children to inherit -- in the name of her vanished brothers, the famous Princes in the Tower.
That's a lot of literary luxury which Smith could exploit. But she manages to make the Tudors and the remaining Plantagenets feel like little more than the modern-day dysfunctional family (with the added twist that its head could not only lock you up in your room but take you out and behead you in public for misbehavior). Grace's rebellious streak -- she is willing to cling to her belief in the Yorkist cause long past the point when her half-sisters have given up -- doesn't gibe with what Smith portrays of her personality. How could a young woman willing to docilely wait on an ailing and cantankerous queen, shut up in a monastery, simultaneously be the same kind of person willing to challenge a king? And why is she so willing to believe in that cause in the first place? (The implicit argument that she will find an answer to her own crisis of identity is thin and unconvincing.) Smith never really provides any compelling rationale for Grace's apparent certainty that Perkin Warbeck is really her young half-brother Richard, while the later volte face is a bit laughable. Anyone who read Smith's previous book focusing on Margaret of York ( Daughter of York: A Novel) will find that Margaret has gone from being a sympathetic, wise ruler to a rather manipulative power player who doesn't care who is hurt by her machinations.
It's unfortunate that this period of time seems to be lacking in good historical fiction. Sandra Worth's recent historical novel focusing on Elizabeth of York is downright bad; this, for all its faults, is reasonably true to history and (for those with an above average tolerance for unnecessarily florid language along the likes of "certes" and "spake") quite readable. It's just not nearly as good as it could be. For a sense of what this book could have been, I'd urge reading The King's Grey Mare. This novel focuses on Elizabeth Woodville, partly through the eyes of the same Grace Plantagenet who (in another parallel with Smith's book) falls in love with Richard III's illegitimate son, John of Gloucester. But Jarman's characters are richer and her writing far superior. A good book about Elizabeth of York is the somewhat dated Tudor Rose (Shadows of the Crown series), which should be reissued soon along with Margaret Campbell Barnes's other novels. When compared to the heroines of either novel, Smith's Grace Plantangenet looks, despite all her adventures, like a rather naive and slightly dim-witted young woman and her creator a writer who has yet to find a way to make her plots, characters and writing live up to their potential.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Through the eyes of Grace Plantagenet, March 16, 2009
This review is from: The King's Grace: A Novel (Paperback)
Grace Plantagenet about whom little is known historically has been fleshed out for this new story of intrique in the court of Henry VII, notably the claims of the faux pretender, Perkin Warbeck. Grace Plantagenet was the illegitimate daughter of Edward IV and half sister of Queen Elizabeth Consort of Henry VII as well as the "Princes in the Tower." Events are seen primarly through Grace's eyes as she ages from young girl to wife and mother. Grace Plantagenet lives in the household of Elizabeth, Consort of Edward IV--Elizabeth is presented in a more sympathetic light than in other Tudor era novels.
There are twists and turns in the plot and a rather unexpected ending. And a lot of romance: Grace is in love with her cousin John Plantagenet but eventually achieves a happy marriage with Tom Gower. There are occasional scenes of "bodice ripping" involving Grace and Tom.
One quibble, the word "Certes" is used on practically every other page when characters converse with each other. Certes meaning certainly back then. But it is an over used term.
Overall this is a good read and offers another point of view of the story of Perkin Warbeck.
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