From #1 New York Times bestselling author Philippa Gregory, the little-known story of three Tudor women who are united in sisterhood and yet compelled to be rivals when they fulfill their destinies as queens.As sisters they share an everlasting bond; as queens they can break each other’s hearts… oldest princess, Margaret, takes her measure. With one look, each knows the other for a rival, an ally, a pawn, destined—with Margaret’s younger sister Mary—to a unique sisterhood. The three sisters will become the queens of England, Scotland, and France.
United by family loyalties and affections, the three queens find themselves set against each other. Katherine commands an army against Margaret and kills her husband James IV of Scotland. But Margaret’s boy becomes heir to the Tudor throne when Katherine loses her son.
Mary steals the widowed Margaret’s proposed husband, but when Mary is widowed it is her secret marriage for love that is the envy of the others. As they experience betrayals, dangers, loss, and passion, the three sisters find that the only constant in their perilous lives is their special bond, more powerful than any man, even a king.
more
Another winner in the saga of the Tudor times
Excellent
Well worth reading if you like historical novels
History of the queens of England, France & Scotland…from a very different perspective.
I love how she writes about that era.
Another must-read for Gregory fans!
Another great installment from Philippa Gregory with Three Sisters, Three Queens, the 8th of 15 books in her Plantagenet and Tudor series. She weaves wonderful details into the setting and character descriptions, and while I always worry when I dive in that it’ll be more than I need, it also always keeps me invested. As typical from prior ones, the books are about 15% too long, meaning I begin to lose a bit of interest given some duplication of sentiments or scenes. That said, it’s minor, and I will keep reading the remainder of the ones in this series.
In this installment, Margaret, the sister of King Henry VIII, is betrothed to the much older King James of Scotland. Her younger sister, Mary, entertains several suitors before marrying another king who passes away. And Henry’s first wife, Katherine of Aragon, is the third sister, more a sister-in-law. Most of Margaret’s life is covered, at least from about 13 until her 40s before she too later dies. The focus is on the various men the women love, and the games they must play to survive. Times were tough, and while I’m sure Gregory over-exaggerated pieces, she likely under-exaggerated things too… a fine balance, even if some might be untrue. This is fiction, and if I wanted a completely 100% accurate account, I’d find a history book. Which I’ve done… so this is an opportunity to consider alternative ideas and options.
As a character, Margaret is flighty and temperamental. Many times, I wanted to take her aside and knock a bit of sense into her. (It’s okay, that was allowed in the 16th century – just kidding) I’m merely saying that she was childish and said too much. She hated her sisters. She loved her sisters. She confessed secrets to them, became angry when they used that information to their advantage, and then told them more secrets. She cursed them publicly, then begged for forgiveness, then plotted against them again. She used various men to advance her own person agenda, which was to put her son on the throne, understandably. In the end, I did not like the woman much at all. From reading biographies on Margaret, little is known about her, but she did have some of these tendencies. I can only imagine how she survived!
Looking forward to the next book, which turns to the Boleyn sisters and Henry’s foray into the first of his serial killing schemes against his wives… LOL
Rating:
Genre: Historical Fiction
This is the eighth book in the Plantagenet and Tudor novels. The story is about the sisterhood between Margaret, Dowager Queen of Scotland, Mary, The Queen of France, and Katherine of Aragon, The Queen of England. The Story is told from Margaret’s perspective.
The protagonist is the sister of the King of England, Henry VIII Tudor. Her character must be the weakest among all Phillipa Gregory’s protagonists. Though her mother Elizabeth of York was a weak character and annoying at times, unlike Margaret she was not jealous and foolish! The sisterhood that the three shared was not all love and warmth. Many times you’d see the protagonist acting like a jealous teenager when something good happened to her sister Mary or sister-in-law Katherine. Funnily she even said that as long as Katherine was in sorrow she’d loved her but as soon as something good was happening to her then she hated her!
Margaret had lots of ambitions like her grandmothers Margeret Beaufort and Elizabeth Woodville, two of Gregory’s strongest characters. But unlike them, she was not clever and did not measure her actions and decisions carefully. Many times I felt she acted foolishly when it came to dealing with her first husband, the King of Scotland, or her second husband, Archibald. With her second husband, there were lots of love and hate games going on. This marriage resulted in a baby girl and later a bitter divorce. I enjoyed the format of the book which is told from the perspective of Margaret and the letters she kept receiving from her sisters, Katherine and Mary. Though the main character might sound an unlikable one it is not Philippa Gregory’s fault in that because this is not a fictitious character and the author needed to match her fiction to the many changing facts about the decisions of the real-life person.
The sisterhood between the three women is not of blood even though Margaret and Mary were sisters. But this sisterhood was formed by the author because of the many factors that they shared and how that made their life events intertwined. All the three had arranged marriages and became widows and then remarried men of their choice. At one point, all three became queens. All the three were dependent on Henry VIII and were threatened by the rise of Anne Boleyn. Also, the three ladies at some point in time experienced debt and poverty. So there are many similarities between them which made the author write about them from the eyes of Margaret Tudor.
I will not recommend this book for someone who did not read anything for Philippa Gregory before. This is not suitable as a start to read for the author. The story sometimes can get repetitive with the main character’s endless jealousy and at times irritating due to her whining but still, it is a solidly written one when it comes to the major events that affected the three queens. For Philippa Gregory’s fans, it is highly recommended. They won’t be disappointed.
Love biographies!
In this novel Philippa Gregory portrays the voice of an unknown Tudor princess, Princess Margaret, the elder sister of King Henry VIII who married James IV of Scotland at the tender age of 13.
Her voice captured me and bore me through her life as she alternately triumphed and failed as Queen Regent, after her husband’s death in battle.
I had not expected such a novel to be funny, but Margaret’s voice – a unique blend of precocious knowingness and naïveté – was laugh-out-loud funny as this proud teenager, who molded herself after her formidable lady grandmother Margaret Beaufort (for whom she was named), misunderstood what was going on around her.
Five Stars. #philippagregory #3sisters3queens
So sick of the Tudors by the time this book was published. Made it through 3 chapters before returning the book.