Sadly, only one of her three characters manages to do that.Īfter Anne loses her head, Henry gains a son, from third wife Jane Seymour, who in turn is replaced, after her death, by fourth wife Anne of Cleves. At their root, they're about women who are trying to have some control over their lives and find a teeny bit of contentment. The fashions and substandard hygienic standards of those times aside, Gregory's stories are surprisingly relevant today. Gregory tackles the tumultuous times following Anne's demise, when a dissatisfied, mercurial Henry hunts for that one elusive woman who will make him happy. Anne was, after all, the second of Henry VIII's six wives but the first he put to death for, ultimately, not providing him with a male heir. Now she returns to stellar form with The Boleyn Inheritance, about three women who dealt with Queen Anne's paranoid legacy. Since then, she has worked her way through monarchs both big such as the Virgin Queen herself, Elizabeth I and boring, as in a snoozer of a novel about King James. Six years ago, Gregory hit the royal mother lode with The Other Boleyn Girl, a look at England's controversial, conniving Anne Boleyn through the eyes of her little-known sister, Mary. If the publishing world were to crown its pre-eminent writer of princely, populist historical fiction, the throne would go to British author Philippa Gregory.
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