Book Review: "Queens and Kings" by Lucy Worsley (Pt.1)

For the sake of going through this properly, I would like to split up this review into the parts that the book is also split up into. This will be part 1, covering the beginning of the book all the way to the end of chapter 8.

Lucy Worsley was on television on the day this book was released which made me remember to buy it (unfortunately, I had not pre-ordered it as I had forgotten to do so). I have so far read pretty much all of her other books, dedicating lengthy multi-part reviews to her longer works like Jane Austen at Home and Queen Victoria. Her books which are more of a light-hearted affair such as If Walls Could Talk may only have one review, but are just as brilliantly written. Dare I say it that Lucy Worsley may be rivalling The Palace by Gareth Russell in its formidable stories of Hampton Court? It may not be the same exactly, but Queens and Kings definitely starts in the palace of Henry VIII and looks into the lives of the women who populated it at the very top of the English structure: the famed six wives.

Lucy Worsley seeks to dispel the weird mythologies that surround the wives and present them as less than simply 'wives' but women in their own right and most of all: queens. Catherine of Aragon's section starts with the backstory of how exactly she came to be in the marriage to Henry VIII she had found herself in and how, marred by miscarriages, she eventually fell out of his favour. The image that many give her of the 'dutiful wife' according to Worsley, is only half correct and that is a generous giving. In fact, we learn that Catherine of Aragon was a woman of intellect and poise, a woman who respected faith and learning, a woman who was a Queen of England yes, but still deeply and most definitely Spanish at heart. The author seeks to get the reader to reimagine this woman as less of a wife but more of a Spanish Princess, someone who was both a progressive and a conversationalist of the traditional female kind.

This is most definitely at odds with the way in which the public normally constructs their image of Anne Boleyn. Lucy Worsley takes us through the way in which Anne put herself into the spotlight. Now, Hayley Nolan's book on Anne Boleyn entitled 500 Years of Lies says a very similar thing: that Anne Boleyn was usually the smartest person in the room and that is why she eventually became the subject of Henry's wrath. It was a turbulent love affair that caused her marriage and an accusation of one that ended her life. Many books have been written about Anne Boleyn in which Lucy Worsley often counters the images of her presented (as she will also do, but with more direct condemnation in her chapter on Catherine Howard). Instead, Worsley presents Anne as a woman of education and power, someone who was deeply aware of court politics long before Henry VIII entered the picture.

Jane Seymour was the Queen that presented Henry with a son but ultimately died in childbirth. Yet again, we already know this but what we do not know (and we learn from Worsley) is that Jane was already in the courts during the time of Anne's execution. We are told of Henry's public image of mourning for Jane as he steals himself away from the eye of others - yet in reality, he probably isn't mourning that deeply since he requires a wife yet again. Anne of Cleves entering the picture was brief yes, but one of the parts of this section that has become my favourite is when Lucy Worsley lists off authors and their books (mostly books by women) in which there is a condemnation of the life of Catherine Howard. According to them she is a temptress. According to Worsley she is a victim of CSA. I am inclined after much reading (especially Gareth Russell's Young and Damned and Fair) to believe that she was indeed, a victim of adult men from an age so young it is horrifying and worrying. That poor little girl!

We end on the note of Catherine Parr yes, but I am honestly looking forward to the future of this book, covering the Queens and their roles and dismantling the mythologies that surround them that are often a result of patriarchal propagandists. Lucy Worsley has done it again!