My review of The Sisters Who Would Be Queen, by Leanda de Lisle

The Sisters Who Would Be Queen

by Leanda de Lisle

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Leanda de Lisle undertook a bold and lofty endeavour penning this. She triumphs gloriously.

Most Tudor readers know about the usurping 'nine days queen' Lady Jane Grey who, after her fleeting, reluctant reign, was beheaded under the rightful Queen [Bloody] Mary I. Jane, languishing in the Tower of London, might have lived had the ageing Queen Mary's unsettled marriage negotiations with Philip of Spain not looked diplomatically grimmer the more lenient she was towards poor Jane.

Philip's Catholic envoys wanted Protestant Jane's head off, which left Queen Mary's hands tied. Young Jane has been depicted in varying lights by recent biographers less sympathetic than those before who had handed her down to history as an innocent victim of others' dynastic scheming (primarily, that of her parents). 

Many Tudor aficionados, however, until this book, knew only scant details of Jane's two sisters who suffered so appallingly under Mary I's successor, Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch and irrefutable villainess of this piece.

The childless 'Virgin Queen' Elizabeth's reign became fraught with nervous speculation on her successor. Enter the two 'other' Grey sisters Katherine and Mary, maternal granddaughters of Henry VIII's younger sister Mary, 'the French queen'. (The latter had, on her husband Louis XII of France's death, married Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk and produced four children, one being Francis, mother of these three Grey sisters).

All three Grey sisters were treated abysmally because of their positioning in the meandering line of Tudor succession. They are masterfully drawn as distinctly individualised characters: Jane Grey - headstrong, intelligent, yet martyred - was driven by her faith and principles, while torn by her sense of duty. The beautiful, romantically impetuous Katherine Grey was ruled by her heart, not her head. The plainer, diminutive Mary Grey, the least educated or threatening, just kept her head down aiming only to survive her piteous ride. 

The reader is lulled into empathy. We are left deeply moved, immensely informed and ravenous for more of this superb writer's magic. 

Never wanting to put this book down, I was saddened to reach its last page. And that's what great writing is about. A splendid achievement by a formidable writer and historian.