After Katharine Parr’s death, the infant Mary Seymour becomes a problem for relatives who lack the money or political will to support her. The story follows the uncertain fate of the last queen’s daughter through the ambitions and disgrace of the Seymour family. By focusing on a child who largely disappears from the record, it explores how dynastic importance could vanish when patronage failed.
Mary Seymour's disappearance from the historical record gives the fiction its central uncertainty. Rather than inventing a secure dynastic future for her, the story uses the weakness of the Seymour network after Thomas Seymour's fall to show how quickly even a queen's child could lose political value, household protection and documentary visibility in Tudor England.
Philippa Gregory
32 books
Elizabeth Fremantle
7 books
C. W. Gortner
8 books
Margaret George
6 books
David Field
46 books