From the bestselling author of The Other Boleyn Girl, Philippa Gregory, comes a wonderfully atmospheric evocation of the court of Henry VIII and his final queens.
The king will decide who will live and who will die; he has the power of God now.
1539. Henry VIII must take his fourth wife and the dangerous prize is won by Anne of Cleves. A German princess by birth, Anne is to be Henry's pawn in the Protestant alliance against Rome, but the marriage falters from the start. Henry finds nothing to admire in his new queen, setting himself against his advisors and nobles to pay court to young Katherine Howard.
The new queen begins to sense a trap closing around her. And Jane Boleyn, summoned to the inner circle once more by her uncle the Duke of Norfolk, finds a fractious court haunted by the Boleyn legacy of death and deceit.
Nothing is certain in a kingdom ruled by an increasingly tyrannical king.
Review
Praise for 'The Constant Princess':
'One of Gregory's great strengths as a novelist is her ability to take familiar historical figures and flesh them into living breathing human beings. "The Constant Princess" is a worthy successor to her previous novels about the Tudors and deserves to be a bestseller.' Daily Express
'Gregory's research is impeccable which makes her imaginative fiction all the more convincing.' Daily Mail
'Gregory is great at conjuring a Tudor film-set of gorgeous gowns and golden-plattered dining.' Telegraph
Synopsis
From the bestselling author of 'The Other Boleyn Girl' comes a wonderfully atmospheric evocation of the court of Henry VIII, and the one woman who destroyed two of his queens. The year is 1539 and the court of Henry VIII is increasingly fearful at the moods of the ageing sick king. With only a baby in the cradle for an heir, Henry has to take another wife and the dangerous prize of the crown of England is won by Anne of Cleves. She has her own good reasons for agreeing to marry a man old enough to be her father, in a country where to her both language and habits are foreign. Although fascinated by the glamour of her new surroundings, she senses a trap closing around her. Katherine is confident that she can follow in the steps of her cousin Anne Boleyn to dazzle her way to the throne but her kinswoman Jane Boleyn, haunted by the past, knows that Anne's path led to Tower Green and to an adulterer's death. The story of these three young women, trying to make their own way through the most volatile court in Europe at a time of religious upheaval and political uncertainty, is Philippa Gregory's most compelling novel yet.