THE COMPELLING NOVEL FROM SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER PHILILPPA GREGORY ‘Margaret’s story is shocking, deeply moving… the depiction of Henry VIII’s transformation from indulged golden boy to sinister tyrant is perfect pitched’ Sunday Express They trust her to watch the House of Tudor rise… Only she knows it will fall. Heir to the Plantagenets, Margaret Pole, is a rival claimant to the Tudor … to the Plantagenets, Margaret Pole, is a rival claimant to the Tudor throne. Buried in marriage to a loyal Tudor supporter, she becomes guardian to Arthur, the young Prince of Wales, and his beautiful bride, Katherine of Aragon.
But her destiny is not for a life in the shadows. Tragedy throws Margaret into poverty, yet the king’s death restores her to a place at young Henry VIII’s court, as a lady in waiting to Queen Katherine.
As the Tudor court sours, Margaret has to choose between her allegiance to the increasingly tyrannical King Henry, or to her friend, his abandoned queen. And Margaret is hiding a deadly secret… that a curse was cast on the Tudor line, and she is watching it come to pass.
Praise for Philippa Gregory:
‘Meticulously researched and deeply entertaining, this story of betrayal and divided loyalties is Gregory on top form’ Good Housekeeping
‘Gregory has popularised Tudor history perhaps more than any other living fiction writer… all of her books feature strong, complex women, doing their best to improve their lives in worlds dominated by men’ Sunday Times
‘Engrossing’ Sunday Express
‘Popular historical fiction at its finest, immaculately researched and superbly told’ The Times
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Margaret Pole is a fascinating woman! I’d read a bit about her in the earlier novels and online, but Philippa Gregory has brought the lady to life in The King’s Curse, the 7th book in her Plantagenet and Tudor historical fiction series. To date, I’ve read the previous 6 and number 8, so I had to catch up and get back to reading the rest in order. I’m a big fan of this period in English history, and I must admit, it inspired me to read a lot more about the history of territorial disputes between England and France.
It’s horrific to think about how some people were treated five centuries ago, especially to see the blind eyes and ears Henry VIII hid behind when it came to kidnapping, torturing, and killing people he assumed had been treasonous. After all her service, he failed to properly take care of this woman… and while she did support some who were against the king, it was all for her queen, and never outright and direct. She was loyal and always tried to do what she thought was necessary to help him. And to watch what happened to her sons, grandsons, cousins, and more! Ugh… what an intense period in history.
Gregory thoroughly drew me in with this story. It covered 40 years of Margaret’s life, and I felt for her when she was troubled, smiled when she came out victorious. So much drama and so little change. I’m impressed how Gregory covers similar time periods across all her books but changes the perspective of a character so it’s never repetitive. I am determined to finish this series in 2021, and then I will either start one of her other series or I might look at other books on the same royal lines from this time period. It’s utterly fascinating, and I constantly stop to look at genealogical maps to ensure I’m remembering all the connections. Highly recommended!
Philippa Gregory has done it again, found a compelling, forgotten woman, in the shape of Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, and woven a whole tale around this character.
Margaret of Salisbury had an impeccable pedigree. She was the elder child of George, Duke of Clarence, brother to both Edward IV and Richard III. Her mother was Isabel Neville, daughter and co-heiress with her sister Anne, of Warwick the Kingmaker. Margaret was comfortable at court and knew most of its players. She was a cousin to Queen Elizabeth of York (wife to Henry VII and mother of Henry VIII.) She became close friends with Henry VIII’s first wife Catherine of Aragon. So she is an excellent choice for the ending of Gregory’s series on the Cousin’s War (aka The Wars of the Roses).
Gregory is known for her unorthodox takes on history, and this novel is no exception. She found an eerie corollary between the actions of some of the characters in her previous novels (LADY OF THE RIVERS and THE WHITE QUEEN ) and modern-day science. I will let her explain it to you in the following, taken from her Author’s Note:
“There has been much work on the loss of Henry VIII’s babies. Current…research from Catrina Banks Whitley and Kyra Kramer suggests that Henry may have had the rare Kell positive blood type, which can cause miscarriages, stillbirths, and infant deaths when the mother has the more common Kell negative blood type. Whitley and Kramer also suggest that Henry’s later symptoms of paranoia and anger may have been caused by McLeod syndrome—a disease found only in Kell positive individuals. McLeod syndrome usually develops when sufferers are aged around forty and cause physical degeneration and personality changes resulting in paranoia, depression and irrational behavior.
“…Whitley and Kramer trace Kell syndrome back to Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford, the suspected witch and mother of Elizabeth Woodville. Sometimes, uncannily, fiction creates a metaphor for an historical truth: in a fictional scene in the novel, Elizabeth, together with her daughter Elizabeth of York, curse the murderer of her sons, swearing that they shall lose their son and their grandsons, while in real life her genes—unknown and undetectable at the time—entered the Tudor line through her daughter and may have caused the deaths of four Tudor babies to Katherine of Aragon and three to Anne Boleyn.” (582)
Reading this gave me the shivers. Five stars. #philippagregory #thekingscurse
As a fan of both historical fiction and Philippa Gregory, I expected to like this book. I did NOT expect to like it as much as I did. Because this book actually surprised me!
I’ve read many versions of the story of Henry VIII and his six wives. But these have been consistently from the perspective of either Henry or one of his wives. In THE KING’S CURSE you’ll find a different perspective.
The main character is Margaret Pole, a first cousin of Henry’s mother and a members of the royal family that preceded the Tudors. Because of her royal blood, Margaret naturally plays an important role in the Tudor court, assigned various roles that bring her close to Henry’s older brother Arthur, to his wife Catherine of Aragon, and to his firstborn daughter Mary.
But in the telling of Margaret’s 40 year story, the author skillfully presents the unfolding events of Henry’s reign, as they must have appeared to those outside the royal family, to people who had no idea how it would all turn out. Just think how many “firsts” Henry is responsible for? Questioning the sacrament of marriage, putting a sitting queen on trial, taking on the Catholic Church, enacting multiple new laws about the succession — just to name a few.
Gregory provides rich details about how Henry’s decisions impacted the everyday lives of the English and she also offers some believable speculation on how contemporaries might have processed Henry’s edicts. For example, she imagines courtiers contemplating questions like,
• Can anyone question the legitimacy of a marriage and if so, who could rightfully decide such an issue?
• Why is the King assuming greater power over the church and nobility and would we be right to challenge him?
• What will happen to travel and who will care for the sick and poor if the monasteries are closed?
It’s all fascinating to consider and I applaud the author’s ability to present this remarkable sequence of dramatic events in England’s history and show how each might have been seen at the time.
This one was depressing. And I’m beginning to see the Tudor line as every bit as evil as the Nazis in their own way.
Although I found Margaret Pole to be one of the characters in this series I like least, she certainly didn’t come close to the horrifying Margaret Beaufort, who spawned the likes of Tudor kings and their reigns of blood and terror. My issue with Margaret Pole was the way she never owned one side or the other, but played just enough of both to remain secretly indignant and fearfully alive. As for Philippa Gregory, she is certainly, at times, a bit repetitive, though while some reviews have implied she’s insulting the intelligence of her readers, I think she is just a bit overzealous in clarifying her point. I like that she takes the position of one character to narrate the events, which means the point of view is always biased and limited to that individual. One of the things I liked best, earlier in the series, was the overlap of time, so that the same story could be told from another perspective. Since, I believe, this was the final book in this series (at least to date), I suppose that counterbalance won’t happen here, but then again, there is her Tudor Court series, so perhaps there will be some of this same sort of shift in view. I’m looking forward to finding out, as I intend to move into that series next. All in all, I found the entire Cousins’ War series to be riveting, and I appreciate Gregory’s note at the end that points out where she took liberties to create a work of fiction centered around historical facts.
Love all her books from about the Tudors and also enjoyed the Order of Darkness series, been wanting for book 4 and can’t wait until it is out! The Wide Acre Trilogy was good as well and what got me into all her books!