Alison Weir’s Six Tudor Queens sequence retells the lives of Henry VIII’s six wives as connected historical novels, beginning with Katherine of Aragon and continuing through Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Katherine Parr. Each book centres the woman who is often reduced in conventional accounts to the circumstances of her marriage, divorce or death, following her family background, education, friendships, ambitions and private religious beliefs before and during her years at the Tudor court.
Read together, the novels trace Henry’s reign from the optimism of his first marriage to the instability created by repeated succession crises and religious change. The same political events appear differently depending on which queen experiences them, so the sequence builds a cumulative picture of court faction, dynastic pressure and the limited choices available to royal women whose personal lives could alter the government and religion of the kingdom.
Philippa Gregory
32 books
Elizabeth Fremantle
7 books
C. W. Gortner
8 books
Margaret George
6 books
David Field
46 books