Alison Weir

The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn

payal — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

While the dramatic story of Anne Boleyn is familiar to many, very few actual facts are present in the typical retelling. In The Lady in the Tower, historian Alison Weir takes a day by day look at the life of Anne Boleyn and the social and political culture which influenced her fate.

In her time, Anne Boleyn was one of the most recognized women in the world. Anne was the first woman to be made Queen solely for love, rather than for political alliance or financial gain, and for this alone; she was the subject of much scandal. King Henry VIII had abandoned both social convention and the political protocol of the monarchy, defied the Pope and declared himself the head of the English Church, all in order to set aside his aging wife, Katherine of Aragon, and marry Anne, Katherine’s maid of honor.

Katherine had failed to produce an heir, and that task now fell to Anne. Anne’s position depended solely on the King’s love for her, which dwindled as one pregnancy after another failed to provide the King with the son he required. He needed a legitimate heir, and this required that he have a wife capable of bearing sons. As Katherine before her, Anne’s downfall began when the King’s eye began roving for a more suitable candidate.

Henry VIII had waited six years to marry Anne, yet after only three years of marriage, Anne was arrested on charges of adultery, incest, and treason and sentenced to death. The Lady in the Tower details the last four months of Anne’s life, from her conviction until her death on May 19, 1536, and the changes wrought on the political climate by her execution.

While exceptionally well researched, the record is exhaustive, and the scholarly tone offers little in the way of entertainment. Based largely on excerpts of letters and formal court correspondence, this book reads more like a very long and well annotated thesis paper than anything meant for widespread publication. The bibliography alone shows the results of what was likely years of document collection and cataloguing. This book is clearly not intended for the casual reader, as following the narrative requires general knowledge of the events and persons involved. I have a great interest in the Tudor era, and this book was still often poisonously dull.

The Lady in the Tower would be an extremely helpful resource if you were writing about the subject, but for the general reader, I cannot see that there would be any appeal.

Written by: Melissa Ruiz, March 3rd 2011

Captive Queen: A Novel of Eleanor of Aquitaine

admin — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Alison Weir

Ballantine Books

Alison Weir is first a historian, and it shows in Captive Queen. She studied Eleanor of Aquitaine in the 1970s and 1990s and realized one day that “the nature of medieval biography, particularly of women, is the piecing together of fragments of information and making sense of them. It can be a frustrating task, as there are often gaps that you know you can never fill.”

Captive Queen explores Eleanor’s life from just before her marriage to Henry FitzEmpress (later Henry II, King of England) until just after Henry’s death in 1189. There is also an epilogue that covers her death in 1204. At the beginning, there’s a map of lower England and Aquitaine, Normandy, Brittany, and France, which are all parts of present-day France. Also included is a helpful flowchart of Eleanor and Henry’s genealogy, which I referred to numerous times when I was trying to remember minor characters.

The novel itself is split into five parts, each representing a stage in Eleanor’s life and marriage to Henry. The first part is a rosy depiction of Eleanor’s early life with Henry. At the time of their wedding, he was eighteen and she was twenty-nine and already had two daughters. They were married just two months after the annulment of her marriage to the King of France, Louis VII. Eleanor’s marriage to King Henry was tumultuous: she fought with Henry often about his rule of her lands. At the same time, however, it was steamy; it wasn’t even twenty pages in before the first bedroom scene occurs. Still, it’s clear she wanted a partnership of equals, not a man to rule over her as husband and lord, which was the norm at the time, especially for women in royalty.

The following four parts accentuate her desire to be included in affairs of state, rule her lands equitably, and be treated as more than “the wife of King Henry and mother of his children.” The second part covers her apparent rivalry with Thomas Becket. In the third part, Weir writes about Eleanor and Henry’s sons: Young Henry, Richard (who would become Richard the Lionheart), Geoffrey, and John (later to become King John, best known for signing the Magna Carta and for being a primary antagonist in most Robin Hood legends).

After encouraging her sons to rebel (unsuccessfully) against their father, Henry placed Eleanor under house arrest for more than fifteen years, most notably in Sarum, Wiltshire (the earliest settlement of present-day Salisbury, England). There, she received very little news from outside the confines of her imprisonment but was finally freed upon Henry’s death in 1189. In the novel, she says to her gaoler, “Master Berneval, I command you, in the name of King Richard, to set me at liberty at once.” And he does.

Two things irked me about Captive Queen, and neither are the author’s fault. The first is Henry’s repeated insistence (and everyone else’s assumption) that women are meant to be child-bearers and nothing more. Eleanor herself even notes that she is most proud of her daughters when they produce children—hopefully sons—for their husbands. The second is that Eleanor’s life revolves around the men in it, no matter how much she wants to rule her lands herself or how intelligent and magnanimous she is in acting as Henry’s regent. The first thing is the unfortunate sexist reality Eleanor had to deal with during her lifetime. The second is related; Weir’s frustration at being able to find only a very few fragments of Eleanor’s life basically forced her to study the men surrounding Eleanor and often make conjectures about her based on what was written about them.

It’s clear in reading that Alison Weir did a lot of research before penning Captive Queen as a fiction. After all, she writes, “What is the point of a historical novel... based on a real person if the author does not take pains to make it authentic as possible?” For fans of medieval Europe, this book is a must read. Just beware that the author made it as authentic as possible, right down to the sexism of the time period.

Written by: Viannah Duncan, July 18th 2010

The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn

admin — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 09:00:00 +0000

By Alison Weir

Ballantine Books

Having been drawn to the history of midwifery and peasants/working classes, I’ve always shied away from studying aristocrats. When I first picked up The Lady in the Tower, I was a bit apprehensive. Over 350 pages in length (not including the bibliography, source notes, or illustrations), it appeared to be a daunting reading task. Despite my worries, the work turned out to be thoroughly engaging and interesting.

From Anne Boleyn to Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell, Alison Weir examines the medieval context that they existed in, handing over no prejudices, just facts (as well as omitted evidence). Whether Anne slept with five men behind Henry’s back, well, that is for the reader to interpret. Contrary to popular knowledge, Weir states that Henry was not behind Anne’s fall, since he clearly could have done away with her as he did his previous queen, Katherine.

On top of all the primary source investigation, Weir utilizes a historical methodology which covers interpretations in different eras down through the ages. She explains that yes, the masses saw Anne in a better light during her daughter Elizabeth I’s reign. Later in the Victorian era Anne’s image was romanticized, so Weir effectively notes the easy sway of public opinion.

Today, however, Weir observes past records and argues that it was near impossible for a queen in Anne’s time to find the privacy to take up with five different lovers (including her own brother). The role of modern science explains issues like miscarriages and Katherine’s death (cancer), which the superstitious and god-fearing people of sixteenth century England were not privy to. Weir’s work incorporates archaeological examination of the burial area where Anne’s beheaded body was approximately laid to rest.

Weir does a great job of keeping the context in focus, while keeping the narrative compelling. The only disappointment of the book, as an advance copy, was that the illustrations were not included. The only historical figure that I could not muster sympathy for was Thomas Cromwell (the man who spearheaded the king's disposal of Anne, and who also later faced his own execution), but don’t let me be the judge or hand-picked jury on the final verdict of Cromwell’s character.

This account of the Tudors has really piqued my curiosity to go beyond the surface of the occasional pedigree chart or Hollywood movie for Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII came alive in the pages.

Written by: Nicolette Westfall, January 16th 2010

Mistress of the Monarchy: The Life of Katherine Swynford, Duchess of Lancaster

admin — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 10:48:00 +0000

By Alison Weir

Random House

Mistress of the Monarchy is a biography of Katherine Swynford, the Duchess of Lancaster. Swynford was the long-time mistress and eventual third wife of John of Gaunt. She also became the ancestor of every English monarch since 1461 as well as such notable personages such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Franklin Roosevelt, Princess Diana, Sir Winston Churchill, and George Bush.

Author Alison Weir is a prolific historian who has authored many books, non-fiction and novels, about members of the royal family. Weir did a meticulous job in researching this book, but despite her efforts, little information about Katherine has survived. So she describes those who surrounded Katherine, including her brother-in-law Thomas Chaucer, and the particularities of the time.

The most interesting aspect of the book is the insight she provides into life in the 1300s. The cultural trends she describes, from the tendency to marry young (Katherine married between twelve and thirteen years of age and had her first child one year later) to the debilitating effects of the Black Death gives readers a vivid insight into the challenging environment people lived in at that time. Weir describes the vast wealth and luxury of the noble class, the resentment of the common people, the difficulties of battle, relations between states and high-ranking people, moral codes, lawlessness at the borders, the importance of religion and the roles of women.

The main details readers can infer about Katherine is that she was beautiful, intelligent, accomplished, discreet, good with children, didn’t abuse her influence and kept on good relations with people. While the book opens with an intriguing scene in which John of Gaunt rode around estates with mistress, holding her bridle in public (a public sign of his possession of her) and in the presence of his own wife, Weir doesn’t return to this sense of confrontational scandal later in the book. Besides the fact that the affair and the later marriage were scandalous, the focus remains on Katherine’s discretion and devotion.

Given the lack of information available about Katherine, the title used in the UK version, Katherine Swynford: The Story of John of Gaunt and His Scandalous Duchess, gives a more accurate impression of the book. The figure of John of Gaunt comes through more clearly than does Katherine, as do his first two wives and his dealings with various heads of state. Readers see his love for his first wife, his propensity toward promiscuity, his religious repentance and renewed devotion to his second wife, his bravado in battle, his relations with his relatives and children.

The strength of the book lies in the detailed historical research, the sense of place and time and the resurrection of a forgotten matriarch. Occasionally, the voice loses its vigor, descending into extensive genealogical information or architectural descriptions. Since Katherine’s main contribution to history was her romantic liaison and her descendants and the available details of her personal life are few, there is little narrative arc or tension to propel readers through the book. For those with an interest in the middle ages or in royal history, this is a valuable reconstruction of an overlooked woman and a fascinating historical period.

Written by: Jessica Jacobson, April 12th 2009