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As I said I would, I finished Alison Weir's Katherine of Aragon. I have to say that the last third of the book suffers less than the first two thirds from Weir not giving Katherine a personality. There is so much emotion squeezed in as Henry becomes more and more vindictive, that it isn't nearly as noticeable. But over all it does feel like something is missing. There could have been so much more depth to the whole work, if the reader wasn't faced with an empty shell of a main character. It's difficult to be sympathetic with Katherine even when she is losing child after child, because she is such a stranger to the reader, even though we are seeing everything through her eyes. As I said, in the last section of the book this is less of a glaring problem. But there could have been much more depth of feeling for Katherine if there had been some way of relating to her earlier on.
The book touches all the bases of the history, but I think it fails in that it doesn't give you a sense of the disaster, that is looming over England as Katherine's marriage falls apart. At one point Katherine is offered a very pragmatic solution to the whole affair. We know both from the book and from history that Henry could be very generous when he got his way. Basically, it was suggested to Katherine that she could enter a convent, live out her life comfortably and have her daughter Mary's rights preserved. Katherine's reply in the book is basically, "I don't wanna," and Weir goes on with the next episode. It may be the most important moment of Henry VIII's entire reign. After this point Henry decides he can't rely on the dithering Pope of the moment to judge in his favor and starts to seriously consider breaking England away from Roman religious control. So much religious strife that happened as a result, Henry's destruction of the monasteries, the radical Protestantism of Edward VI's advisers, Jane's pathetic reign, Mary's brutality, Elizabeth's crack down on radical Catholics, every religious problem the country faced up to and including the invasion of Scotland by last of the Stewart pretenders 200 years after Henry VIII, might have been avoided and certainly would have been different, if Katherine could have said yes at that critical moment. Even if Weir wouldn't agree with me about the importance of that moment, I think we deserved a reason in her book why Katherine could not seriously consider the offer. Basically if we knew Katherine well enough there would be no problem with what seems like a quick answer to a monumental question to me with 400 plus years of hindsight.
The book touches all the bases of the history, but I think it fails in that it doesn't give you a sense of the disaster, that is looming over England as Katherine's marriage falls apart. At one point Katherine is offered a very pragmatic solution to the whole affair. We know both from the book and from history that Henry could be very generous when he got his way. Basically, it was suggested to Katherine that she could enter a convent, live out her life comfortably and have her daughter Mary's rights preserved. Katherine's reply in the book is basically, "I don't wanna," and Weir goes on with the next episode. It may be the most important moment of Henry VIII's entire reign. After this point Henry decides he can't rely on the dithering Pope of the moment to judge in his favor and starts to seriously consider breaking England away from Roman religious control. So much religious strife that happened as a result, Henry's destruction of the monasteries, the radical Protestantism of Edward VI's advisers, Jane's pathetic reign, Mary's brutality, Elizabeth's crack down on radical Catholics, every religious problem the country faced up to and including the invasion of Scotland by last of the Stewart pretenders 200 years after Henry VIII, might have been avoided and certainly would have been different, if Katherine could have said yes at that critical moment. Even if Weir wouldn't agree with me about the importance of that moment, I think we deserved a reason in her book why Katherine could not seriously consider the offer. Basically if we knew Katherine well enough there would be no problem with what seems like a quick answer to a monumental question to me with 400 plus years of hindsight.
.