Daughter of York, by Anne Easter Smith

The other day, I was wandering around my apartment, looking for my next read.  When you have as many books as I do, it’s like channel surfing through a mega-sized cable package; am I interested in learning about camp followers through history? do I want to read about a woman in 19^th century France? or is it an Brontë kind of day?  It’s like is flicking through 300+ channels and saying “there’s nothing on.”  But then I remembered a set of books by Anne Easter Smith about the English War of the Roses, and I decided that my next read would be Daughter of York, about Margaret, King Edward IV’s sister.

Easter Smith’s wheelhouse is telling the stories of women in 15^th century England.  The first book of hers that I read was A Rose for the Crown, about Richard III’s mistress.  So far, the main theme that emerges from Easter Smith’s writings for me has been that women had a shit time of it.  In this case, Margaret is sold (oh, I’m sorry, married) to a foreign ruler (Charles of Burgundy), regardless of the fact that she’s fallen in love with an English lord of her brother’s court.  Now, as a historian, I get it – women in powerful families were regularly used to secure the family’s advancement.  This was particularly true of women from ruling houses, whose marriages were designed to secure trading rights, or good relations, or a cessation of hostilities or war.  But when you approach history through Easter Smith’s humanizing stories, it becomes really hard to be okay with the practice.

Daughter of York, in particular, makes it hard to be tolerant of this (mainly) historical practice, and I think that’s because of how engaging and relatable Easter Smith wrote Margaret, and particularly her love for Sir Anthony Woodville.  It was heartbreaking to read the passages where Anthony had to escort the woman he loved to her wedding, or Margaret’s experience with marital rape, or their multiple partings when their paths crossed throughout their lives.  Of course, all of these events are Easter Smith’s fictionalized account of a life lived (backed, where possible, with historical fact of travel and locations), but it’s a sign of a skilled author that she’s able to make her reader forget that her main character was a real person with a completely unknowable personal experience – Easter Smith paints a picture that I’m willing and able to buy as complete fact.  

What I didn’t like about this book, and Easter Smith acknowledges the problem in her author’s note, is that the book ends on a positive note.  I’ll try to avoid specific spoilers, but I read the last page and though to myself that all was right in the world and there was some justice in the universe.  Then you turn the page to the author’s note with the historical (not fictionalized) account of what happens next and my jaw dropped.  There was no happily ever after for Margaret; in fact, there were some shit times coming her way.  Easter Smith acknowledges that there were more universal injustices coming for her protagonist, but didn’t give a great explanation of why she chose the ending she did.  I suppose, in a setting where the author gets to choose how her story ends, giving her characters a happy ending is the ideal, but for me, it was as if the author’s note created a schism, and suddenly there was the fictional Margaret and the real world Margaret – up to that point, there was just the real world Margaret.  So, I guess as a historian I should thank Easter Smith for brining me back to reality, but the reader in my really wasn’t happy.  But then again, a hats off to Easter Smith for creating that dynamic to begin with.

So, final verdict?  I’d say this is a great book for fans of historical fiction, and for fans of fictionalized biographies, so I’d recommend it.  Daughter of York is a clearly well researched work, with engaging characters, and a fast moving plot, and it’s a great way to spend your time.  Easter Smith’s theme of focusing her writing on the experiences of women close to power is an interesting one, and I’ll be reading her other books in the future.

Children of England: The Heirs of Kings Henry VIII, 1547-1558, by Alison Weir

With all the hoopla surrounding the royal birth, I was inspired this week to read up on some British history and, sitting on my shelves for quite some time was Children of England: The Heirs of Kings Henry VIII, 1547-1558, by Alison Weir.  This seemed like a great time to get to it.

Alison Weir is a fabulous historian and author who has done what few can and have done; she’s bridged the gap between professional and public writing.  It’s the dream of all historians to be able to write and publish books that are both snapped up by the general reading public and are well received by their peers.  Weir seems to have cracked the code and done just that.  Not only is she a well-respected non-fiction writer, but she’s also written several fiction books that are also popular.

In Children of England, Weir sets out to tell the story of the relationships between Edward IV, Jane Grey, Mary I, and Elizabeth I, who are the children and heirs to Henry VIII and his politics.

Mary was the daughter of Henry and Katherine of Aragon, and was the only surviving child of that marriage.  When Henry realized sons would be forthcoming, he divorced Katherine and married Anne Boleyn, who gave him Elizabeth; more children (including sons) might have come along, but Henry was fed up with Anne and divorced her and had her beheaded.  Edward, the long-sought after son, was the fruit of Henry’s next marriage to Jane Seymour.  Jane Grey, however wasn’t a child of Henry’s – she was the daughter of the daughter of Henry’s sister, and was raised a devout Protestant. 

When Henry died, he left behind a will that had been ratified by Parliament; Edward was his successor, but Mary and then Elizabeth would follow him if Edward didn’t have any children, and in Elizabeth’s case, if Mary didn’t have any children.  It was all very dicey as Edward with a devout Protestant, Mary was a fervent Catholic, and Elizabeth was just trying to stay alive.  When Edward died before he could marry, the Protestant faction at court scrambled to find someone to step into the monarch’s role that wouldn’t tank the Protestant reformation that had been going on in England; the natural choice would be Jane Grey, who had a claim to the Tudor blood line and was legitimate (unlike Mary and Elizabeth, who had been declared bastards when their father divorced their mothers).  The Protestant faction at court put Jane on the throne for nine days following the death of Edward, but Mary was able to raise an army in her defense and re-took the throne quickly; when Mary died without heirs (not from lack of trying, and a couple of false positives), Elizabeth came to power.

That is a potted history of the situation.  In her work, Weir states that she’ll be looking at the relationship(s) between the four heir of Henry to see how they related and interacted with one another, and how that influenced their decisions and action.  While she does this for the first two-thirds of the work, her assessment of the personal dynamics ends after Mary comes to the throne.  In my mind, the relationship between Mary and Elizabeth after Mary comes to power but before her death is critically important – it sets up rational for many of the early policies of Elizabeth’s reign and the Golden Age in England.  And yet, in favour of a religious/political assessment of Mary’s reign, Weir overlooks it.  It was a serious misstep, in my opinion.

But, for the rest of the work, and even during that last third when she assesses Mary’s personal life, Weir delivers an interesting and engaging assessment of the personal histories of three ‘blink and you miss them’ monarchs, and one of England’s most successful queens.  The stories that Weir is able to extract from a disparate collection of sources (such as court reports, personal journals, and diplomatic letters) brings a level of personalization and almost gossip to the lives of her subjects, and humanizes them.  It’s interesting and a well-written account of the lives of four of England’s monarchs.

So, final verdict?  I’d say read this book.  For a historical biography, it demonstrates exactly why Weir is so well received in both professional and public spheres – it’s interesting and engaging, it rarely lags, and it does a good job at giving as personal an account as possible of four very important figures in Tudor history.  I enjoyed it, and I’ll be going back to Weir as an author for both fiction and non-fiction works for years to come.