Elizabeth I

.

Tudor England is one of the few topics I was taught about in high school which has retained my interest over the decades.  Elizabeth is my favorite.....

I bought this book for a dollar at the library book sale, and read it when Wilbur and I moseyed (just before All Creatures Great and Small, which you saw in a recent moseying pic).

As you can tell from "the struggle for the throne," its focus is on things that happened before Elizabeth became queen.

It's a scholarly book, packed with footnotes.  The author has scrutinized sources, and has disregarded some (formerly) commonly-used sources which are now known to contain fictional information written decades after the time they describe.  (It was interesting to read that things I'd read before, in other books, have now been discredited.)

The author is a fan of Liz's, as am I.  He analyzes what happens to her as she grows up -- her mother beheaded when she was three, the birth of her baby brother, the death of Henry VIII which put her sickly young brother on the throne, her (much) older sister (Bloody) Mary's ascension to the throne, Mary's suspicions that Elizabeth was trying to unseat her, and Mary's death -- and speculates as to how her character developed in reaction to her history.

I hate when historical books say "She felt this" because, seriously, unless we really KNOW she did because, say, we have her letters, don't go putting words in her mouth.  In my humble.  This book stays firmly on the "she may have felt" side.

I recommend the book.



Last week I finished this.

According to Wikipedia, "Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex (c. 1485 – 28 July 1540) was an English statesman who served as chief minister of King Henry VIII of England from 1532 to 1540."

This fictionalized account covers the reign of Henry VIII from Henry's decision to dump Katherine of Aragon and marry Elizabeth's mother (Anne Boleyn), to near the end of the time Henry was still happy with Anne.

Cromwell was an interesting guy, and the various people in his household are portrayed as interesting, too.  The royals, well -- they are mostly trouble.  Cromwell is portrayed as a decent person, trying to be civil and kind to everyone, but forced by Henry to be on the cutting edge of events that caused hurt to lots of people (Katherine and her daughter, Mary, are two).

I found myself annoyed by two aspects of the book.  One is style choices.  The book (despite many flashbacks) is all in the present tense.  For me, this makes it harder to keep track of what happened when.  The other choice of this sort I found irritating is that she always uses "he" for Cromwell, when he says or thinks or feels something, rather than saying "Cromwell."  I tried to go with this, but, in the end, felt it was affected.  It definitely made it harder to figure out who was in the foreground at any given moment.  (Failing to understand how deliberate obfuscation can be desirable...............  Yet more evidence of my basic shallowness, no doubt.)

My second objection is the same problem I have with the Lord of the Rings movies, and the Harry Potter movies.  It's all fraughtness.  Here we are, in this interesting and exotic locale, but we never get to just sit quietly and enjoy it.  It's just one crisis after another. This book is 500-plus pages, so I can see why she had to keep moving right along (and I'm sure the same argument holds for those movies), but I won't choose to spend much time in places where all is upset, and peace reigns for only for the odd moment, squeezed in between reams of angst.

I'm a hard reader to please.  I have very narrow preferences.  This author clearly knows how to use the English language.  That's good.  Her protagonist is a good guy, with skills and talents.  Also good.  It's interesting to have a background look into the lives of people I know well from other reading (even keeping a firm eye on the fact that this is a fictional account).

Unfortunately, many bad things happen in the course of the book.  Since we know the ending of the trilogy (or, at least, of Thomas Cromwell!), I don't think I'll read the next two books in the series.  Maybe I'll read the second one.  Or maybe not.  I don't like to read fiction about events set in motion by jerks.  Henry VIII was definitely a jerk.  The whole business of some people being born "better" than everyone else, which gave them license to be, well, not to put too fine a point on it, *worse* than 'most everyone else.....  I know it was true, but I don't sympathize, and I don't want to read about it in fiction.

It's interesting how often I find a "best selling!" and/or prize-winning book is not something I can really enjoy.........

.