My Thoughts on "The King's Curse"

I'm going to be honest, I wasn't going to write a blog post about this book, I don't write a post about every book that I read, but I had a little bit I wanted to share about this book.  With that being said, this post turned out to be significantly longer than I originally anticipated.  I did a little bit of research and included some history, so brace yourself for a history lesson along with a review of The King's Curse by Philippa Gregory.

Cover of The King's Curse by Philippa Gregory

It's been a while since I've read anything by Philippa Gregory, about six years according to my Goodreads account, but that hasn't stopped me from buying her books still so when I do want to read her books, I have them at the ready.  The King's Curse follows the story of Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury through her life.  It's important to have a little bit of historical context about who Margaret was and the War of the Roses.

The root cause of the War of the Roses can be traced all the way back to Edward III, who had five sons.  Unfortunately, Edward's oldest son, also called Edward, died the year before his father, passing the throne on to Edward's grandson, Richard II (his oldest son's son).  Are we confused yet?  If Richard II died without an heir, the throne would pass to his female cousin, whose father was the second oldest son of Edward III.  Edward, however, threw a wrench in these plans from the grave by issuing a decree before his passing stating that the heir had to be male.  This didn't happen, however, instead the Duke of Lancaster, whose father was Edward III's third oldest son, returned from exile, gained support of the nobles and deposed Richard, thereby becoming Henry IV of England.  This established the House of Lancaster, which was one side of the War of the Roses.  Is everyone still with me?  Good, because it's about to get a little more complicated.

The House of York, the other side of the War of the Roses, also traces itself back to Edward III.  Its founder was Edward's fourth oldest son.  To make matters even more complicated, it was not this tie that made them think that they had a claim to the throne.  Instead, they claimed that Lionel, Edward III's second oldest son, had a great granddaughter who married the Duke of York's son, thereby superseding the claim of Edward's third son.

Henry V died young, leaving his infant son, Henry VI as king with a divided council of regents to look over the kingdom, all the while the Duke of York, Richard, claimed he should be the rightful king on the throne.

Now, where in the world does Margaret Pole fit into this mess?  Her uncle was Edward IV of England.  Edward IV was the oldest son of the Duke of York, who claimed to be the rightful heir to the throne after his father died.  He even began putting together an army to overthrow the Lancaster king and take the throne for himself.  Edward married Elizabeth Woodville, and they had two sons, Edward and Richard.  When Edward IV died, he named his son as the next king of England, while his (Edward IV's) brother, Richard, would look over the throne until Edward V was old enough to rule himself (he was only 12 years old at the time).  Like many men at the time, Richard wanted the throne for himself.  He told his sister-in-law that he would put the young boys in the Tower of London to keep them safe during the fighting.  They were never seen alive again.  Richard III named himself King of England, only to be defeated by Henry VII as Bosworth Field, thus ending the War of the Roses, and establishing the Tudor line on the throne.

Edward IV and Richard III had another brother, George, who was Margaret Pole's father.  He and his son, Margaret's brother, were executed at the Tower of London once Henry VII came to the throne, as he was afraid that they had a claim to the throne and would be a threat to him.  I know, this is all incredibly confusing.  I watered this down to only the most important information, there's so much more that goes into the War of the Roses.

That's a lot of information, which Bryan learned the hard way.  While I was reading the book, he asked me what I was reading.  I showed him the cover, and he asked me what the book was about.  I told him that it was complicated.  He asked again, so I figured he really wanted to know.  It didn't take long for him to regret his decision.  About ten minutes and one family tree from inside the book, I think I thoroughly confused him.  He did tell me that I'm cute when I get excited, so I liked that a lot.  I think he also learned not to press the issue when I tell him the book I'm reading is complicated.  We'll see if he remembers that in the future.

This book covered about forty years, which is a lot of time to cover in just 500 pages.  For that reason, it jumps ahead a lot, which was something I had to get used to as I read.  An entire year might be summarized in just a paragraph or two.  This allowed Philippa Gregory to really focus on the most important events in Margaret's life.  On the other hand, it did get a bit annoying when the book would jump ahead, and it made it difficult to keep track of exactly how much time had passed.  I frequently had to go back and check the dates at the beginning of each chapter to make sure I was keeping track of everything.

Additionally, some of the dialogue felt incredibly awkward and forced.  When I write (which hasn't been in a while), I struggled with dialogue too, but it's important to make sure it doesn't sound too scripted.  I found that a lot of these scenes were when Margaret was talking to her sons about some plans they had for how to handle the king.  Thankfully, these scenes weren't too common, but there were several.  For such a well-renowned author with over thirty published novels, this shouldn't be a problem for Philippa Gregory.

While poking around on Goodreads, I came across a review for this book, and the reviewer complained that they kept talking about the alleged curse, which they found annoying.  I wanted to shake the reviewer, of course they're going to talk about the curse, the title of the book is The King's Curse.  This brings me to where the title of the book came from.  Philippa Gregory has a habit of taking established facts from history and adding a little bit of a twist.  For example, in The Other Boleyn Girl, Philippa takes the fact that Anne Boleyn's brother, George, was arrested for having an incestuous relationship with his sister.  Philippa takes that and twists it in the book where Anne tried to sleep with her brother because she kept having miscarriages, and she was desperate to give Henry VIII a son.  In The King's Curse, Margaret pole frequently talks about a curse allegedly placed on the family of whoever killed her cousins, the Princes in the Tower.  According to the curse, the son and grandson of whoever killed the Princes in the Tower.  The way the book is written, it leaves it ambiguous as to who really killed the princes (because, to this day, we're not entirely sure who did).  It could have been Richard III, as his son and grandson died prematurely, or it could have been Henry VII, whose son and grandson also died prematurely.

For a woman at the time, Margaret Pole had an absolutely fascinating life.  Descended from royalty, she first lived in exile during the reign of Henry VII, who feared her family would attempt to claim her precarious throne from him.  Henry VII also executed her brother simply because he could be a threat to his throne.  Margaret wasn't completely banished from the royal court, as she helped Catherine of Aragon get settled when she first arrived from Spain and even looked after Arthur, Henry VII's first son, who he intended to be his heir until he died in his teens.

Painting of Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury

After Arthur's death, Catherine of Aragon longed to marry her husband's younger brother, Henry (who will become Henry VIII).  The question is whether or not Catherine and Arthur consummated their marriage, which is something that continues later when Henry wants to divorce Catherine and marry Anne Boleyn.  This drags on until Henry VII dies.  Henry VIII becomes king and immediately marries Catherine.  It takes a while, but they eventually have a daughter, Mary (later Mary I of England, also known as Bloody Mary).  Margaret steps up and helps raise and look after Mary, which is why she has such strong Catholic sympathies throughout her life.

Since this is a historical fiction novel, I knew what happened in the end, but I still was intrigued to see how it happened.  Margaret Pole is executed at the end in an extremely gruesome fashion, but more about that later.  Her fall from grace came from the fact that her son, Reginald Pole, was an outspoken critic of Henry VIII and the fact that he decided to break with the Catholic Church.  Additionally, Margaret was a closet Catholic herself and supposedly supported the Pilgrimage of Grace, which was an attempt by Catholics in northern England to overthrow Henry VIII and reestablish a Catholic monarchy.  Since Henry VIII couldn't get to Reginald Pole, he decided to execute his mother instead.  Something the book glosses over extensively is the fact that Margaret was in the Tower of London for nearly two years.  Those two years are covered in just a few short pages in the book.  It was almost as if Philippa Gregory gave up and just wanted to wrap up the book and get it over with.  I didn't even realize she was imprisoned for two years until I read about her online to write this blog post.

Despite her achievements in her life, Margaret Pole is really known for her death.  Like I said before, her death was extremely gruesome.  When a person is beheaded, they put their head on the chopping block, and when they're ready, they stretch out their arms, signalling to the executioner they're ready to die.  At first, Margaret followed this procedure, until the last minute, when she jumped up and started to flee from the executioner.  The executioner followed after her, hacking away until she finally died.  It is rumored that Margaret's ghost can still be seen running across the green at the Tower of London, recreating her brutal and violent last moments.

Overall, I thought this was a fairly okay book.  Not one of my favorite Philippa Gregory books but still one that I enjoyed.  I think it would be interesting to read right before or right after The Other Boleyn Girl, as it focuses on the same events, just from a completely different perspective as outsiders who are very much against Anne Boleyn.  So, if you were to read The King's Curse, I would either precede with The Other Boleyn Girl or follow up with it.

I honestly didn't expect this post to be this long, but I had a lot I wanted to say about the history surrounding the book.  If you can't tell, I absolutely love Tudor history.  This is the first time I've read a Tudor-era book in quite some time.  I hope you enjoyed the history and didn't get too confused.