It’s beyond dispute that Anne did have (at least) three brothers, but the only one who has even a passing mention past babyhood is George, and there is absolutely no indication that her brothers Thomas and Henry lived past early childhood, much less to become a courtier and an Oxford student, as they are at the beginning of this book. I have read it numerous times over the last few months and each time I am both disappointed and amazed at its dullness, its infuriating lack of emotional follow-up (a close family member died, how tragic! Now let’s never mention him again) and lack of basic accuracy with regard to key facts - this last continuing even into the author’s afterword, where she carefully explains what’s imaginary in some cases and completely fails to mention other dubious if not downright invented “facts” which remain in the novel to trip up the unwary.įirst among these is the “fact” that Anne had three brothers who survived to adulthood, something which is taken seriously by Alison Weir and nobody else, and which is based on extremely sketchy evidence. It’s not that the author doesn’t have intriguing ideas about her characters, she does - but she always backs away at the last moment when faced with the prospect of actually developing them into something substantial. While her non-fiction books are dodgy and poorly sourced enough that switching to fiction was probably a wise move, ironically, her fiction suffers greatly from her tendency to cling to the established record (or her take on it, which isn’t always the same thing.) This extremely disappointing novel, which weighs in at a substantial 530 pages, leaves the reader with a frustrating sense of being perpetually stuck in first gear. Alison Weir has written numerous popular histories centered around the Tudor era and recently has expanded to writing novels based on the same.

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