Big Book Summer Challenge - The Winter King, Perdita, and Lionheart

I am happy to report that I have three books finished that qualify for the Big Book Summer Challenge, hosted by Sue of Book by Book.

The Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England, by Thomas Penn. I've read a fair amount about Henry VIII and his children, but I knew very little about his father, Henry VII. 

This was a great book, chock full of interesting aspects of Renaissance Europe, English/Scottish history, and very readable. It was also a real treat to read about Catherine of Aragon while watching The Spanish Princess, which is based on a Philippa Gregory novel, who plays fast and loose with history, but it was still fun to watch the show while reading the history.

Henry VII, his mother Margaret Beaufort, and young Henry VIII, as portrayed in The Spanish Princess

The Winter King gets its title from the idea that Henry VIII as a young man represented such promise for England--young, handsome, personable, educated, devout, athletic--in other words, he was the Spring of a new dynasty that would bring peace and prosperity to a country that had been consumed by civil wars (the War of the Roses) for generations. Winter comes before Spring, hence HVII was the Winter king, older, less handsome, not personable but crafty and cunning, not athletic--he usurped the thone and was never beloved, though he was feared and grudingly respected. 

Perdita: The Literary, Theatrical, Scandalous Life of Mary Robinson, by Paula Byrne, was absolutely wonderful. Another non-fiction, it was the JASNA Denver/Boulder bookclub selection for our July meeting, and it was great fun to discuss it with other Janeites who enjoy learning about Georgian and Regency history. 

Mary was a Bristol-born beauty who was married at age 15, became an actress mentored and trained by the great David Garrick, captured the attention of the teenaged Prince of Wales (later George IV) and became his mistress, left the stage, had affairs with a variety of men, and became a fashion icon until her mid-twenties. It was then that she contracted rhuematic fever, which made her lame for the rest of her life. She then embarked on a literary career, wrote poetry, essays, gothic novels, was close friends with William Godwin (Mary Wollstonecraft's widowed husband) and Coleridge, and wrote her memoirs in which she told her side of the story and which her daughter finished after her death at the young age of 43.

Mary was a fascinating person and every bit as much of a celebrity in her day as Princess Diana was in the 1980s and 1990s. Sadly, her literary efforts sunk to oblivion during the Victorian era and only resurfaced in the 1990s. Now scholars give Mary credit for her contributions to poetry, particularly in the innovative use of metre that influenced her contempories such as Coleridge and his ilk.

There's an absolutely great lecture on YouTube in which the presenter discusses Mary Robinson in detail, covering much of the same material in the biography, though not to the same depth.

My third big book is a novel, Lionheart, by Sharon Kay Penman, who passed away in January of this year. Lionheart is the fourth in Penman's chronicles of the early Plantagent kings, this one focused on Richard I, son of Henry II and Eleanor of Acquitaine. It takes place mostly in Otremer, or the Holy Land, and recounts Richard's role in the Third Crusade in which European Christian forces tried to recapture Jerusalem from Saladin.

Unlike Philippa Gregory, Penman exhibits a slavish devotion to historical accuracy and this book reflects that devotion in that there are a lot of characters and a lot of relationships, feuds, and ambitions to keep straight, but I loved it!

I especially loved reading about Joanna, Richard's youngest sister and Queen of Sicily, as well as Berengaria of Navarre, whom Richard married enroute to the Holy Land. Both women accompany him and the Crusaders and seeing the world through their eyes was a nice contrast to the seemingly endless battles.

I also absolutely loved two of Richard's kinsmen, Morgan (Welsh cousin and son of the marvelous Ranulf of the earlier books) and Henri, son of Richard's sister Marie. They were personable, interesting, and charming.

I learned so much about medieval warfare, the politics of the Crusades, Saladin and his army, the geography and landscape of Otremer. Penman is such an excellent storyteller, giving her characters such authentic voices without imbuing them with modern sensibilities.

Next up in the series is A King's Ransom, which presumbably is about Richard's capture and imprisonment on his way home from the Crusade.

I have a couple more big books on the horizon, so I might get a couple more under my belt before Labor Day.

Happy reading.

The Devil's Brood

 

I love Sharon Kay Penman's historical novels, but they are long and so I usually can only fit in one a year. However, it's been since January 2017 since I've indulged so it was a real treat to dive into The Devil's Brood, referring to the warring, scheming, selfish sons of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. As Henry muses at one point, everyone wants a son and heir but daughters are much easier!

During most of the novel, Eleanor is Henry's prisoner, which is pretty horrible in and of itself, but she did betray him and plotted with her sons against him and while Henry was able to forgive them, he could never forgive her. For only a few years was she in discomfort, but her real misery (apart from freedom to travel and reign) was that she was kept in rainy, dismal England and was so homesick for lovely, warm, sun-splashed south of France.

Having visited Normandy, Brittany, and Paris in 2018, I felt so much more comfortable with the geography of the book than when I read Time and Chance, which chronicles the early years of HII and Eleanor's marriage -- up to when Becket was murdered in the cathedral. And most of this book does take place in France rather than England. I actually did visit some of the places mentioned--Mont St Michel, Rouen, Rennes, Bayeaux, Caen, and, of course, Paris. 

Penman did a particularly good job of bringing into focus Hal, the Young King, the oldest son to survive into adulthood and whom HII foolishly crowned, so there were actually two Kings of England at one time. Why he thought this would make for a happy home life remains a mystery! Hal reminded me so much of Shakespeare's Prince Hal before he became Henry V. 

I also enjoyed reading about Geoffrey -- the son after Richard and before John. He was the Duke of Brittany, and actually seems the most able ruler of all the sons. He wasn't necessarily a nice guy, but he was smart and capable.

Both Richard and John almost seemed a bit cardboard compared to the richness in character Penman gave to Hal and Geoffrey. But then, Richard is center stage for the next two books in the series so I think I'll get to know him pretty well in time.

Clocking in at 730 pages, I felt like one of the family, with ample time to get to know all the main characters as well as the extensive cast of servants, knights, confidants, and relatives. Yes, this book is chock full of history and details about life in Medieval Europe, but at its heart it is the story of a dysfunctional family led by two people who are soulmates and yet find ways to tear each other apart year after year. 

Now, I'm eager to read Lionheart, next in the Plantagenet series, about Richard I and the Third Crusade.

And you guessed it, this book qualifies for the Big Book Summer reading challenge.

Time and Chance - Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Becket

I love historical fiction and Sharon Kay Penman is one of my favorite historical fiction authors. Her books are well-written, her characters interesting and three-dimensional but of their time not ours, and she is a first rate storyteller.

I just finished Time and Chance, the second in her series about the early centuries of the last millenium, and it picks up just where its predecessor, When Christ and His Angels Slept, left off. Henry II of England and Eleanor of Acquitance are the 12th century power couple--passionately in love, soulmates and astute leaders, strong willed, intelligent, and attractive.  They also have lots of children--heirs and spares as well as daughters to marry off advantageously

Time and Chance tells the story of their estrangement--it describes how this well-matched couple started along the path that took them  to the point where they end up at each other's throats.  The fly in the ointment, or perhaps the poison in the well, is none other than Thomas Becket.  He was Henry's closest friend and confident, hunting companion and man about town. And then Henry decided to make him Archbishop of Canterbury, against Eleanor's wise counsel, and Becket became Henry's greatest enemy, causing him years of strife and anguish, trouble and anxiety.

Penman does a wonderful job of leaving the personality and motivation for Becket's about-face ambiguous.  She implies a jealous ambition, a mental instability, and a personality disorder, but we never get inside Becket's mind to know what is going on there.  We only see how his actions and sanctimonious approach to his job undercut Henry's peace of mind, which leads to his seeking solace with the fair Rosamond, and the destruction of his relationship with Eleanor.

I absolutely loved Time and Chance, not just the main story line, but also the wonderfully rich cast of other characters.  I loved hearing the further adventures of Ranulf, the bastard son of Henry I, half-brother of Maud, Henry II's mother, whose allegiances are divided between his loyalty to his English (and Angevine) nephew and his mother's Welsh family.  I also enjoyed reading about the Welsh king and his extended feuding family. Having a lot of sons doesn't necessarily make for a happy home in the 12th century, which is really the subject of the next book in the series, Devil's Brood, which details the further disintegration of Henry II's family as Eleanor and their sons plot against the king.

I think this series would make a fantastic mini-series, along the lines of The White Queen.  Of course, it's hard to imagine a better Eleanor than Katherine Hepburn, but I'm sure there's an actress out there who could prove me wrong.

The White Queen

I admit that I approached reading The White Queen with more than a little hesitation.  First, I put myself firmly in the RIII fan club, having first encountered the theory that Shakespeare might have been a propagandist for the Tudors back when I was in college.  Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time and Sharon Kay Penman's The Sunne in Splendour simply fueled my conviction that RIII has been slandered for the past 500+ years.

Then, there is the whole issue of Philippa Gregory playing fast and loose with historical facts to suit the story she wants to tell.  Much as I admire her storytelling skills, I do like historical fiction to be accurate.

I pushed all that aside when I discovered that there was a TV series based on the Cousins War series by Gregory and that it would be shown in the U.S. starting in August.  I knew I would have to watch it and so wanted to read The White Queen first.

I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I now have a much better appreciation for Elizabeth Woodville--who she might have been, and what motivated her--and her whole family.  I never lost sight of the fact that The White Queen is told from Elizabeth's POV, which enabled me to still hold fast to my image of  RIII as a much-maligned good guy (ala Penman's version).  When Elizabeth rants about Richard I can remind myself that she didn't like him, trust him, or know him.

In a way, that is one of the things that made The White Queen work for me.  Elizabeth, the protagonist, is an unreliable narrator.  Her past, her ambition, her fears, her prejudices, her loyalties all distort her perspective so that the reader gets her version of events, which may or may not be exactly the way they happened.  As a character, she is a witness to history, not a historian.  This is brilliant on the part of Gregory and is actually aligned with my own view of history and storytelling...everyone has their own side of the story to tell, and they're all valid.  Well, maybe George, Duke of Clarence, doesn't really have a valid reason to gripe, but that's George!

I also loved the magical elements that Gregory added.  Magic and witchcraft interspered with battles and politics made the whole experience more like The Mists of Avalon, especially when you realize that being descended from the river goddess Melusine is actually more important in the long run (e.g., inheriting the ability to see the future, make charms, and curse) than being descended from Edward III.  Taking that a step further, it is a matriarchal line that descends from Jacquetta to Elizabeth I and even to James I and the Stuart kings.  The men fight the battles but the women determine who sits on the throne. Pretty heady stuff when you think about it.

I just picked up a copy of The Red Queen from the library and am eager to see whether Gregory can work her magic again and make me sympathetic to Margaret Beaufort, my least favorite character in The White Queen and mother of nasty Henry Tudor.

Sunne in Splendour

Way back in the Dark Ages when I was in college, I took an English history class in which we read and discussed To Prove a Villain: The Case of King Richard the Third.  Sadly, I lost this book in the great basement flood that stole most of my college textbooks, so I haven't reread it in years but I remember the revelation that propaganda wasn't a modern invention and victors rewrite history.

In 2010 I finally got around to reading Josephine Tey's marvelous detective story, The Daughter of Time, and at the end of 2012 slowly read Sharon Kay Penman's outstanding novel, The Sunne in Splendour. I read it slowly partly because I initially was following a read-a-long schedule from another blogger, and partly because I loved it so much that I wanted to stay in the fictional world Penman created and hang out with Dickon, Anne, Ned, and the rest of the characters for as long as possible.

The Sunne in Splendour tells the story of the War of the Roses, wherein the House of York and the House of Lancaster slaughter each other for thirty years, fighting for control of England (1455 to 1485, or Richard II to Richard III with Henrys IV, V, and VI and Edward IV and V in between).  There's no question that the world depicted in Sunne in Splendour is brutal, but the story told in the novel is warm and bright.

I consider The Sunne in Splendour to be one of the high water marks in historical fiction. Although the story flies in the face of the myth-made-fact "truths" about Richard III, as perpetuated by Sir Thomas More and Shakespeare in particular, I never found myself questioning the historical basis of the novel as I do with other lesser forms of the genre (e.g., sub in "Phillipa Gregory" here).  From the speech patterns to the clothes, food, armour, lodgings, daily rituals, and kingly accoutrements, the world and characters of Sunne in Splendour always feel right and whole and consistent. I'm no expert on Renaissance England, but I don't doubt that Penman gets it right, and as a lover of history as well as novels, this is important to me.

With regards to the story, there's so much to love--Richard as a young boy, idolizing his older brothers, championing his younger cousins, including Anne Neville, the girl who turns out to be his soulmate and helpmate, friend and lover.  I loved seeing him amongst his family, many of whom turned out to be difficult to love, but who earned his loyalty.

I can't really do justice to this wonderful novel--it's well-written, engaging, touching, and authentic.  A hearty thumbs up with a plan to reread before too long.  But first, I have to check some of Penman's other novels--she's too good not to become one of my favorites!