“The Taming of the Queen” - Philippa Gregory

 (Tudors book 11)

👑 TOTQ focuses on the final wife of Henry VIII. We know she survives (only just!), but as with the novels about her predecessors, this is an interesting read because Kateryn Parr is mostly eclipsed by Anne Boleyn and Catherine of Aragon in history books and artworks.

👑 This was another engaging read. Henry VIII is well and truly unraveling physically and mentally. Meanwhile the nation is boiling over in a heated battle between the old ways (Catholicism) and reform (Lutherans) with each side angling to convince an addled Henry how to form the Anglican Church which he heads. The concept of transubstantiation was a major point of contention.

👑 On the subject of theology, Kateryn educates herself thoroughly. Anne Boleyn had done so too, but she used theology as a weapon to oust Catherine of Aragon. Kateryn is using it to advance the cause of reform. She is encouraged by Henry for years to study theology and translate Latin, until suddenly he feels she thinks she’s outsmarted him, and his ego is hurt. Then he lashes out in an all-too-familiar manner.

👑 We saw it in the prior book but now utterly gone is the handsome Henry of early in his reign. He is replaced in a very Dorian Grey way by an obese, putrid, decaying (literally), gluttonous, constipated man. His appearance matches the avarice and madness within.

👑 Through hushed conversations between courtiers like Thomas Seymour with Kateryn Parr, Gregory demonstrates Henry’s descent into unchecked tyranny. He’s sending his goon squad after anyone who opposes him without second thought leave aside trial. But his own positions are as changeable as the weather. These are indeed dark times. And good lord, it’s all a bit too on the nose.

🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨  Art history-related potential plot twist ahead🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨

👑 I say potential, because it might be a known fact to some. This pertains to the Nicholas de Vent portrait shown below.

An excerpt from TTOQ best describes the painting: “massive near-life-size portrait of the royal family in the style of the late Hans Holbein in the doorways he is going to paint the two Fools: Will Somers with his little monkey, and Mary’s female Fool. On the right will be Elizabeth, on the left will be Mary, and center stage, also in deep Lancaster red, will be the prince, darling Edward. But the face is not mine. The painter did not have to try to capture what he called my luminous beauty. Instead he shows the sharp outline of Jane Seymour’s hood and beneath it the bovine blankness of Jane Seymour, the dead queen, who sits at the king’s left hand.”

👑 Duplicitous Henry has been praising Kateryn’s learning, calling her his partner, and having her sit for this much-lauded family portrait. All the while he is commissioning the ultimate public insult by making the portrait a tribute to his conveniently dead, sainted dead 3rd wife.  Jane Seymour who produced a male heir, and died shortly thereafter before she could put a toe out of line to displease Henry.

👑 The role of the court fool (his or hers) is interesting. In Henry’s tempestuous court, it seems almost as dangerous as being the queen.

👑 NB I often wonder how writers of historical fiction tackle stories where the outcomes are well known. Gregory answered the question in her author’s note. She says: 

I have experienced this challenge since The Other Boleyn Girl and I found, since then, that by writing the book in the first person present tense I get an immediacy and a point of view which is that of the character and which obscures the knowledge of what is going to happen.