Title: Queen's Gambit Series: Tudor Trilogy #1
Author: Elizabeth Fremantle
Published: August 6, 2013
Genre(s): Historical Fiction
Page Count: 424
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Widowed for the second time at age thirty-one Katherine Parr falls deeply for the dashing courtier Thomas Seymour and hopes at last to marry for love. However, obliged to return to court, she attracts the attentions of the ailing, egotistical, and dangerously powerful Henry VIII, who dispatches his love rival, Seymour, to the Continent. No one is in a position to refuse a royal proposal so, haunted by the fates of his previous wives - two executions, two annulments, one death in childbirth - Katherine must wed Henry and become his sixth queen.
Katherine has to employ all her instincts to navigate the treachery of the court, drawing a tight circle of women around her, including her stepdaughter, Meg, traumatized by events from their past that are shrouded in secrecy, and their loyal servant Dot, who knows and sees more than she understands. With the Catholic faction on the rise once more, reformers being burned for heresy, and those close to the king vying for position, Katherine's survival seems unlikely. Yet as she treads the razor's edge of court intrigue, she never quite gives up on love.
Well-researched, insightful historical fiction is always a welcome addition to my library, and Elizabeth Fremantle’s debut novel, Queen’s Gambit is certainly that. All of Henry VIII’s wives are interest subjects, but I think Katherine Parr can often be missed, since everyone tends pale in comparison to Anne Boleyn and even Catherine of Aragon. This book, then, recounts a good portion of Katherine Parr’s life, beginning shortly before she becomes queen and concluding at her untimely death at age 36, and illuminates a lot of the inner workers of Henry’s final wife.
In terms of research and portrayal of the Tudor court, I can find absolutely no fault with Fremantle. This book is rich in detail and creates a vivid portrait of what Henry VIII’s court must have been like in his later years. Queen’s Gambit is rich in scandal and intrigue, manipulation and conspiracy. A glance in the back of the book reveals a fairly comprehensive bibliography, which I was very pleased to see.
In terms of new revelations concerning Katherine’s life, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I learned anything new or had a change of heart while reading this book. I’m not the biggest fan of Katherine Parr (my homegirl Anne of Cleves didn’t like her, so I have an admitted bias), and Fremantle didn’t exactly pull me onto the Team Katherine bandwagon. Also, I can’t say that I learned any new historical facts about Katherine or anyone else surrounding her. However, those things don’t mean I didn’t appreciate or enjoy Queen’s Gambit—I did. The author had her own interpretation of history, and I enjoyed reading it (especially her less-than-favorable spin on Elizabeth Tudor). I also enjoyed the fact that this book was focused solely on Katherine; in all my other readings she’s been a peripheral figure.
One thing that I really did like about this book was how Fremantle didn’t create any fictional personas for this story. Ever character who appears in these pages was a real person, though obviously the author took maybe a few sentences in a church registry and expanded that into a fully-developed side character. For instance, Queen’s Gambit has a secondary narrator, Dot, who is a sort of foster-daughter to Katherine who observes things and also gets into a romantic entanglement; Dot was actually a real person who served the queen and married the same man she did in the book. To me, that speaks of a level of research and attention to detail that many wouldn’t have attempted.
The only real downside to Queen’s Gambit was Fremantle’s prose. In short: it was difficult. The book is written in third-person present tense, and frequently switches from narrator to narrator without a marked scene break. Normally I don’t care much about what tense a book is in, but historical fiction is generally written in past tense, so present tense was already an oddity. Add in the fact that this book frequently switches from present tense to past tense to relay events that happened off-page, and I started getting a headache. While Fremantle wasn’t necessarily being inconsistent, I really think it just would have been easier to stick with past tense, since half of the book is already that was already.
Complaints of writing technicalities aside, I did enjoy this book and find it to be historical fiction that’s appropriate for both readers who know nothing about the Tudor era and those who are familiar with Katherine Parr’s life. Queen’s Gambit is written in a way that shows every sign of painstaking research on Elizabeth Fremantle’s part, and in this genre that’s huge. Overall, I consider this to be a praiseworthy historical fiction novel.
