Sisters to the King Book

History is often as interesting for what gets left out as for what gets included. Maria Perry's Sisters to the King is a case in point. Most of us know something about Henry VIII; that he was quite large, that he had six wives--two of whom he had executed; that he split the Church over his divorce from Katharine of Aragon and declared himself "Defender of the Faith". What most of us don't know is that Henry had two sisters, Margaret and Mary. And the reason we don't know is because both women have been written out of the popular histories. And yet, as Perry makes clear, both women were thought to be far more important figures in their lifetimes than any of Henry's six wives. Margaret was married off to James IV of Scotland at the age of 13. He was subsequently killed by Henry's armies and her children were snatched from her. Mary was one of the great beauties of her day and was married off in another political marriage to the ageing King of France. Despite the prevailing male-dominated cultural climate--wives were frequently not even allowed to sit down to eat at the same table as their husbands--Margaret and Mary were not doormats. After the death of their first husbands both women defied convention and stood up to their brother by choosing to marry their second husbands for love. Mary waltzed off with the Duke of Suffolk and Margaret with the Earl of Angus. Even when Angus proved faithless, she stood up for herself by seeking a divorce. And when her third husband, the Earl of Methven turned out to be in the same mould as Angus, she divorced him, too. Perry steers a skilful passage between the personal and the political and creates a vivid sense of time and place. Mary and Margaret become real people negotiating the minefields of Tudor culture and politics and along the way Perry uncovers new insights into such unresolved questions as, for example, whether Katherine of Aragon's first marriage to Arthur, Henry's elder brother, was ever consummated. The main problem with the book is that Perry doesn't seem to have decided whether she was writing an academic text or a popular history. The front jacket rather proclaims it as the latter, but the wealth of detail, the assumed knowledge and the somewhat donnish prose suggest it to be the former. Even so, Sisters to the King is a formidable book, which amply repays the readers investment. But be warned: you have to put a lot of effort in up front. --John CraceRead More