The Queen's Fool

I used to enjoy Gregory's novels more, but now I've pretty much had it with English royalty in general and the Tudors in particular. While I appreciated her including a Jewish heroine in "The Queen's Fool," her inaccurate description of 16th-century Judaism was a real turn-off. As a Jewish historical novelist whose heroines are also Jewish, I expect other authors to do their research on this delicate subject. Good historical fiction can teach readers a great deal about history, particularly about the lives of women. But if done poorly, stereotypes are reinforced and innocent people [or peoples] defamed.

Jag älskar Philippa Gregorys böcker om det Engelska hovlivet, I drottningens närhet är lite svagare än Den andra systern Bolleyn, men fortfarande en mycket bra bok. : Spanska inkvisionen brände Hannahs mamma på bål och hon flyr till England. När Maria blir drottning av England uppmärksammar hon Hannah och väljer henne till sin förtrogna .

This is another historical fiction/romance by Gregory set in the Tudor era. Unlike the other two of hers I’ve read so far, the main character in this one is not based on a real person. Gregory chose to tell the story of Henry VIII’s oldest daughter Mary through fictional Hannah Green (nee Verde), age 14 in 1553, a Spanish Jew who earlier escaped the Inquisition with her father after her mother is burned at the stake.

Hannah dresses as a boy and serves as apprentice to her printer father in London, and they pretend to be Christians. Real historical characters Robert Dudley and John Dee visit the shop and Hannah has a vision of an angel. They recognize her as having “the Sight” and take her to King Edward VI to serve as a “holy show more fool.” On her website, Gregory says she got the idea for Hannah from a real female fool, Thomasina, who served both Queens Mary and Elizabeth. To date, I can find little information about Thomasina (except that she was a dwarf or midget), nor much on “holy fools,” other than the definition “One who subverts convention or orthodoxy or varies from social conformity in order to reveal spiritual or moral truth,” which was Hannah’s purpose in court due to having “the Sight.”

Hannah goes on to serve Edward’s successor, his half-sister Mary, and is sometimes sent by her to serve/spy on her half-sister, Elizabeth. Meanwhile, Hannah still considers herself a servant of Dudley (on whom she has a huge crush) and spies for him on Mary, and practices scrying for his friend Dee, trying to “see” the future for all these people.

There are really two stories within this book. Besides the court intrigue, it’s a coming-of-age story for Hannah who is 19 by the end of the book. She is betrothed to another Jew-in-hiding, Daniel Carpenter (whose family changed their name from Disraeli, which immediately made me think of late-1800s British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who was also of Jewish origin). Hannah has a major scare while at court and decides to leave England with her father and Daniel, and they go to Calais to escape possible persecution. They are there when the French retake Calais in January 1558, but Hannah manages to escape back to England on Dudley’s ship.

I found Hannah’s story of being a Jew in the Renaissance to be more interesting than that of the Tudor court characters (Mary, Elizabeth, and Dudley), the best part being her time in Calais, away from the court. The other story was less believable. Gregory does a wonderful job in making Queen Mary into a sympathetic character – separation from her mother, loss of prestige, and near-exile as a youth; a cheating husband; phantom pregnancies. Yet it’s hard to believe a young Jewish girl whose mother was burned in the Spanish Inquisition could be so admiring and forgiving of the “Bloody Mary” who also burned Protestants and Jews (and I’m Catholic!). I realize Hannah’s position and gift of “Sight” were a plot device to enable her to move so easily among the three Tudor characters, but her also being a young Jewish woman made this rather implausible.

Nevertheless, the story (unabridged on 17 discs, over 500 pages in print) sucked me in. British actress Bianca Amato does a fine job with the different voices and characters on the audiobook. Despite (or perhaps because of) their flaws (Mary is zealous and obsessive, Elizabeth is coy with men and conniving, Dudley is a traitor and a rake, and Hannah is truly foolish at times, but also matures), the characters are likeable, and I learned more about Tudor history. Recommended.

ETA: Contrasted with The Virgin’s Lover, I found some characters the same and some were different in this book. Dudley is the same in both. Elizabeth comes across as more weak and foolish (especially at first) once she’s on the throne than when she is scheming to get on it. The biggest contrast was with Dudley’s wife Amy. In The Virgin’s Lover, she is a sympathetic character, the cheated-on, neglected wife who may also be physically ill. In The Queen’s Fool, she is haughty, cold, hysterical, and any illness is more mental than physical. Quite a contrast! I guess it’s all point of view. The Virgin’s Lover is told partly from Amy’s view, while in The Queen’s Fool, we only see Amy though Hannah’s rather biased eyes (since she still admires Dudley). show less

A bit of a mixed bag here. I liked her characterization of Mary - mostly. I didn't really like Hannah - again, mostly. The story had a fantastic concept - a woman with the "sight" who would then be in a perfect position to be present with Edward, Mary and Elizabeth but ALSO show us life as an outsider. It also had moments where the writing "sang" (when Philippa Gregory is "on", she's really "on"). But it didn't fully deliver on the promise because the characters were inconsistent in their strengths, weaknesses and goals. Philippa Gregory books are a little like crappy cakes: you know they're not really good for you, but you eat them anyway. This was not my first PG book; it will not be my last....

There were definitely things I liked about this book such as the portrayal of Queen Mary, life at and away from the court, and the "secret" life of the Jews. The background of the book seems very accurate and well researched and consistent with other books of this time period. However, the narrator Hannah Green just does not seem believable. The fact that Hannah seems to easily find herself in the position to be "selected" to become the queen's fool is a bit of a stretch. Her relationship with Daniel while still maintaining the role of an intimate friend of both Mary and Elizabeth seems also very improbable.

This is the only book I've read by Philippa Gregory; I'm not sure I'll pick up another one. This was a light entertaining read, but show more it does not stand up to the works of Jean Plaidy show less

Book number twelve in the Tudor saga, The Queen’s Fool seems to me to be one of Gregory’s weaker efforts, or perhaps I am growing tired of her at last. I love historical fiction that contains MORE of the historical and LESS of the fiction. I have loved Gregory at times because I felt her fictional accounts fit so perfectly into the narrative that we know to be true, into the facts that surround the tale. I cannot say that I felt she did a good job here, though, as I walked away thinking that the story was completely ludicrous in view of the known facts and that, rather than offering me a believable interpretation of the people, she had offered an interpretation that I would judge has less than an hair’s breadth of being true. show more

I’m not sure I can buy Bloody Mary Tudor as a sweet girl who was trying to save the souls of one and all by burning them at the stake. Wouldn’t it make a bit more sense that this woman, who was treated so poorly by her father and his cronies, while being no doubt influenced by her mother’s unwavering adherence to Catholicism, might have had a bit of a vengeful streak in her that would have made burning people and lopping off heads an easier task? I kept asking myself unanswerable questions: Would you continue to love a person and put them above your own safety and that of your father if they signed an order to have you interrogated by the Inquisition? Can a person truly serve two masters faithfully? I know, it makes for a character who can relate first hand what is going on in both camps, but really, wouldn’t your true feelings lean one way or the other? And, finally, history tells us Elizabeth I was a strong and independent woman. I just can’t buy this slutty, femme fatale version of her. If she had been this woman, could she have survived to have reigned and would these men have respected her judgment as history tells us they did?

So, given these failings, how can I give it a 3-star rating? Well, Gregory knows her craft well enough to spin a tale that you want to see through to fruition. She makes you stay, even at those moments when you are shaking your head and saying, “I don’t think so.” I’ll give her a star for that alone. With another author, I would probably have been out of there less than half way in.

I have two more novels to read in this series of books about the Plantagenets and Tudors. Since I have not read them in complete order, I have already read the next book in line, The Virgin’s Lover, which is the continuation of this book into the life and reign of Elizabeth I. I thought it also a weaker novel than her norm. Perhaps Gregory is tired, perhaps I am tired, or perhaps she doesn’t like Elizabeth and feels moved to malign her?I am hoping that the last two will revert to the quality of some of the earlier ones. The book about Katherine Parr should be more interesting if handled well, since I am not as familiar with her and might not notice the historical inconsistencies quite as much. The last will be The Last Tudor, which by its title promises to be the last in this long, long line. I admit I will not be unhappy to have it done. show less

I liked this book so much, that I found it hard to put down/part with it when it was time to do something else but reading.

Usually I'm not very fond of any kind of romance books, but somehow Gregory has found a way to write about the English court that I'm interested in and fond of.

A book about royalty, court life, betrayal, love, war, refuge seeking, religion. I think that if I find another novel by her in this series, I won't leave it alone :-)