Summer Book #13

A Dangerous Inheritance: A Novel of Tudor Rivals and the Secret of the Tower by Alison Weir

Being fascinated by the Tudor Dynasty for a decade or so, Alison Weir was one of the authors whose biographies I read to become more familiar with the Tudors. Her books are well researched, and the nonfiction keeps the reader as entertained as the fiction books do. So, when she started writing historical fiction, I knew I would enjoy her books. Yes, there's a lot of untruths in her fiction, but I can overlook that because I know that sometimes you have to fabricate to fill in the gaps.

For me, this book was a tale of two Katherines, with a little Elizabeth I, my favorite Tudor, thrown in. The first Katherine we read about is Katherine Grey, younger sister of Lady Jane Grey, the nine days queen who was executed for treason during the reign of Mary I. The same day Jane married Guildford Dudley, Katherine married Harry, son of the Earl of Pembroke. She was 12. They were not allowed to consummate their marriage, not because Katherine was so young, but because the Earl wanted to see how things would play out once King Edward VI died. In the short time they were married, Katherine found evidence of another Katherine at her husband's family house.

So, Edward VI dies, Lady Jane is proclaimed queen against her will for nine days, and then Mary takes the throne. Pembroke sends Katherine away, and wants her marriage to his son annulled. Katherine serves first Mary, then Elizabeth, but since she is a princess of the blood, Elizabeth doesn't like her much. Katherine falls in love, and marries without royal permission. She ends up pregnant and jailed in the tower of London. She ultimately has two sons, and dies in captivity. From the time she found evidence of this other Katherine, she was fascinated by the story of the two princes in the tower.

This other Katherine, or Kate, as it turns out, is Katherine Plantagenet, the bastard daughter of Richard III. Kate loves her father very much, and doesn't want to believe all the awful things that have been said about him, particularly that he had her cousins, the princes in the tower, put to death so that he could become king. She fell in love with her cousin, but was not allowed to marry him. Instead, she was married off to the Earl of Huntingdon in Wales. At first, he treats her well, but then her father dies, and he's now saddled with the bastard daughter of a traitor. He doesn't treat her so well after that. She is pregnant when they are summoned to court for the coronation of Henry VII, and loses that baby, a son, because she was manhandled by the king's guards when they abducted her on his orders, accusing her of treason. She and her husband are sent back to Wales, where her husband, though he despises her, impregnates her again. Toward the end of her pregnancy, her cousin starts a rebellion against the king, and on his dead body, a letter from Kate is found. He husband is not pleased, and Kate is to be arrested once she gives birth. She gives birth to a dead son, and she herself dies. She never did find out whether her father was responsible for the deaths of the princes.

I am not that familiar with the princes in the tower. I know they were the sons of Elizabeth Woodville and Edward V, and were imprisoned in the tower by their uncle Richard. There is a great deal of supposition, mostly due to Shakespeare's play, that Richard had the princes killed so that he could be king. He also tried to have them declared bastards. There is also supposition that Henry VII had them killed because as long as they lived, they were the rightful heirs to the throne, and he was just a pretender. No one knows for certain what happened to them. Either they were killed, or they were somehow smuggled out and lived out the rest of their days in obscurity.