“The Constant Princess” - Philippa Gregory

 (Tudors and Plantagenets book 6) 

👑 Although this novel very much carries on where its predecessor left off, with Henry and Elizabeth’s distant marriage and the fate of the Tudor line, TCP opens just outside the magnificent Alhambra in Spain. Catalina of Aragon is a younger daughter of King Ferdinand and Isabella of Aragon and Castile. 

👑 While much of the intrigue in the prior novels centers on Gregory’s rendering of what happened to the princes locked in the Tower of London, the intrigue that begins here, revolves on the very much known history of the many wives of Henry VIII, of whom Catherine is the first.

👑 Gregory saw great opportunity in Catherine’s tale because history reduces her merely to a footnote as a wife of Henry VIII and mother of Queen Mary I. But her power play was even more audacious than that of Elizabeth Woodville. It was compounded by the fact that she was a foreign princess in the Tudor court, only 15 years old, and lacking powerful allies in England to advise her (Elizabeth had Jacquetta and the Rivers clan). Widowed in her teens, she connives to remain in England though she is unceremoniously shunted to the outskirts of the Tudor court, and reduced to living frugally, and exerts charm and influence over the rash young Henry VIII right under his father’s and grandmother Margaret Beaufort’s noses!

👑 Recall from the last novel that Ferdinand and Isabella were hesitant to betroth their younger daughter to Henry and Elizabeth’s eldest son Arthur while the drama of the York Prince Richard and his cousin Edward, Duke of Warwick was thick in the air. 

👑 Young Arthur is wiser than both his father and grandmother in that he sees them for who they are and understands their position: Henry and Marge fear pretenders to the point of paranoia because Henry himself was one. Catalina marries sober Arthur and becomes Catherine Princess of Wales. Soon after, she is widowed and finds herself stranded, friendless in the Tudor court which is already full of intrigue. Grandma Marge took an instant dislike to young Catherine, and King Henry’s feelings were less than pure…

Catherine, without advisors, cooks up an audacious plan to maintain her relevance in England. She delivers a bold lie to the English court and has the gumption to see it through. While her value initially plummeted upon Arthur’s death, she finds one way to turn course, and so begins a chess match between King Henry VII and King Ferdinand. The lie haunts her always, but particularly so years later when self-indulgent Henry (her second husband) uses it to dissolve their marriage.

👑 Gregory brings much-needed dimension to the character of young Catalina. She arrives in a new country facing an English-speaking court and utterly bewildering customs and climate, at the age of 15. She is worldly and courageous. I had to applaud her haughtiness, unlike in Marge’s case where is seemed a veneer for her lacking personality. Marge senses her greatness and (unsurprisingly) takes an immediate dislike to Catherine, which is problematic in a Tudor Court where Marge is the most powerful woman. Wily Catherine recognizes this, and it’s great fun watching her neutralize the threat. Also, unlike Marge, it seems Catherine has a conscience.

Catherine is fierce and loyal from her first steps on English soil. She becomes a savvy tactician once the veil lifts from her eyes and she realizes that her beloved parents used her as nothing more than a bargaining chip. Once she saw their fallibility, she pressed onward for her destiny alone.

Though she is initially loathe to criticize her mother especially, she eventually sees the folly in her parents’ driving out of Jews and Moors from Spain and the massive loss of learning that would occur as a result.

We come to admire Catherine for her ability to evolve. Gregory shows us why though she ultimately lost favor with her husband, she was well-loved by the people.

👑 Gregory shows us why Catherine was very much beloved in England, and why her treatment by Henry VIII was unpopular amongst the citizenry. Interestingly, she remained always a fighter. The New York Times has an interesting article on her use of ciphers in her jewelry as an act of defiance.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/07/arts/ciphers-henry-viii-catherine.html?referringSource=articleShare

👑 I greatly enjoyed the homage to the Moorish culture in this novel. While Ferdinand and Isabella conquer the Alhambra from the last Moorish ruler, they readily benefit from Moorish customs and innovations though they profess a staunch Roman Catholic faith. Gregory’s description of the Alhambra is written with the meticulous research of a travel writer. When Catherine is enduring her first interminable English winter, we can feel the difference between that and her Moorish upbringing.

👑 Toward the end of this novel, young Anne Boleyn has made herself the great love interest of the King. You can bet that the intrigue levels are going to go through the roof in the next novels in this series! Interestingly, Gregory wrote this novel after having written about Mary I (“The Queen’s Fool”) and Anne Boleyn (“The Other Boleyn Girl”).