After the travesty that was Abandon, I needed a palate-cleanser (can you blame me?). And having been left with a cliffhanger after reading The White Queen, I was eager to pick up it's sequel, Phillippa Gregory's The Red Queen.
As the heiress of the Lancaster family and cousin to King Henry VI, Margaret Beaufort is raised from birth to believe that she is destined for greatness. Exceptionally pious, she thinks herself holy and that God speaks to her of his great intentions for her, and for her son, Henry Tudor. But when the weak king of England is overthrown by members of the rival House of York, Margaret throws herself headlong into a fight for the crown that will forever go down in history as the Wars of the Roses. Only one house can win. Margaret is determined it will be hers.
This is not a terrible book. As with The White Queen, Gregory displays commendable research and very descriptive battle sequences. The book is not a sequel so much as a counterpart of the The White Queen -- it tells the same story from a different point of view. Margaret Beaufort is the Red Queen to Elizabeth Woodville's White. The characters are similar from the start: both are strong-minded women, fiercely loving mothers, each with an ambitious streak a mile wide that gives her the courage to push her son on the throne, above all else.
But again, the repetition. In The White Queen, we heard Elizabeth wax endlessly about her supposed lineage from the goddess Melusina and her powers of witchcraft. In The Red Queen, our heroine, Lady Margaret Beaufort, will kill you with ceaseless repetition of sanctity, piety, and the legend of Joan of Arc. Though Margaret doesn't believe she is descended from Joan (the two were contemporaries), she is inspired by her story...and you will read about it on every other page.
The massive flaw in this book isn't even the repetition though. It's the leading lady and narrator. Margaret Beaufort is -- and there's no nice way of saying this -- completely unlikeable. Although she prides herself on being holy, having the ear of God, and having "saint's knees" (what the hell?), Margaret's biggest fan is Margaret, and you know it. She constantly sings her own praises, starting at age six when she believes that she, like Joan of Arc, is beloved of God and special (why does nobody realize it though? Poor Margaret), and continuing throughout the book to the end. She is pretentious, stiff-necked, arrogant, and rude. Although she faces a similar plight as Elizabeth Woodville, her counterpart, in The White Queen (both women are separated from their beloved sons), it is impossible to feel sympathy for Margaret; she makes herself completely unsympathetic!
Finally, my last complaint: Spoilers here for those of you who haven't read either book and who don't know 15th century English history.
Why didn't Gregory finish the book? At the end of The White Queen, Elizabeth Woodville is reunited with her son Richard, who has been living in exile this whole time, and has returned to her under the alias "Perkin Warbeck." The book ends on that note, and I figured that Richard-alias-Perkin's fate would be addressed at the end of The Red Queen. NOPE. Nothing. And so the hapless reader, who is unaware of who Perkin Warbeck was and what happened to him, is left wondering how that whole side plot turned out. I thought Gregory took an interesting turn by hypothesizing that Perkin the pretender really WAS Richard. But why cut off that meaty little bit to the story? It makes no sense.
All in all, I wasn't really disappointed. I neither liked nor disliked The Red Queen. It certainly wasn't as bad as The Boleyn Inheritance, but I'm afraid it fell short of its prequel.
Rating: ** and 1/2
The massive flaw in this book isn't even the repetition though. It's the leading lady and narrator. Margaret Beaufort is -- and there's no nice way of saying this -- completely unlikeable. Although she prides herself on being holy, having the ear of God, and having "saint's knees" (what the hell?), Margaret's biggest fan is Margaret, and you know it. She constantly sings her own praises, starting at age six when she believes that she, like Joan of Arc, is beloved of God and special (why does nobody realize it though? Poor Margaret), and continuing throughout the book to the end. She is pretentious, stiff-necked, arrogant, and rude. Although she faces a similar plight as Elizabeth Woodville, her counterpart, in The White Queen (both women are separated from their beloved sons), it is impossible to feel sympathy for Margaret; she makes herself completely unsympathetic!
Finally, my last complaint: Spoilers here for those of you who haven't read either book and who don't know 15th century English history.
Why didn't Gregory finish the book? At the end of The White Queen, Elizabeth Woodville is reunited with her son Richard, who has been living in exile this whole time, and has returned to her under the alias "Perkin Warbeck." The book ends on that note, and I figured that Richard-alias-Perkin's fate would be addressed at the end of The Red Queen. NOPE. Nothing. And so the hapless reader, who is unaware of who Perkin Warbeck was and what happened to him, is left wondering how that whole side plot turned out. I thought Gregory took an interesting turn by hypothesizing that Perkin the pretender really WAS Richard. But why cut off that meaty little bit to the story? It makes no sense.
All in all, I wasn't really disappointed. I neither liked nor disliked The Red Queen. It certainly wasn't as bad as The Boleyn Inheritance, but I'm afraid it fell short of its prequel.
Rating: ** and 1/2
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