MADreads

Blood and roses

February 6th, 2010 Katie H.

The Queen’s throne is in jeopardy.  Surrounded by advisors who may or may not be trustworthy, Elizabeth faces rebellion from overseas and rivals within her own court.  Faced with constant challenges to her claim to royalty, Elizabeth has to rely on her wits and her special powers to ensure the crown for herself and her sons.

Sons?  Philippa Gregory departs from her usual fictional intrigues of the Tudor Court to focus on the Virgin Queen’s great-grandmother: the Yorkist Queen Elizabeth.  With The White Queen, Gregory finds particularly fertile ground for her imagination.  The widow of a Lancastrian knight, Elizabeth Grey captures the heart of the Yorkist usurper King Edward IV.  Married in secret, their marriage is defined by the feuding houses of Lancaster and York, placing Elizabeth and her children in constant danger.  Like her other books, Gregory refreshes a well-worn story by bringing to life the women at the center of the upheavals.  Rejected by her husband’s family and eager to consolidate her position, Elizabeth and her mother use marriage and a bit of witchcraft to put her family in high places–and insure a generation of enemies.  As Elizabeth’s ambition grows, the danger to herself and her children mounts, leading her royal sons to a fate that remains unsolved to this day.

Like her other books, Gregory grounds her fiction in solid research (The White Queen includes a bibliography for further reading).  In some ways, that is the problem: Elizabeth’s life was so eventful that plot sometimes gains the advantage over character.  However, there’s enough momentum in the plot to keep readers’ interest, and the hope that future books in the trilogy will flesh out intriguing characters that might not get their full due in this installment.  The real treat here, like Gregory’s other court novels, is experiencing history through the eyes of England’s powerful and often fiercely ambitious women.

For those who want to explore more about this especially tumultous and addictive period in English history (or need some help sorting out the tangled threads of loyalty), check out some of the fiction or nonfiction titles on the subject.  Mystery lovers might try Josephine Tey’s classic The Daughter of Time, while those who like a little romance with their history might pick up Anne Easter Smith’s new trilogy on the era, starting with A Rose for the Crown. Gregory’s next installment, tentatively titled The Red Queen, hits shelves this August.

Entry Filed under: Historical Fiction