The Secret Bride

I finished The Secret Bride today. This was about Henry VIII's sister Mary, who was married off to the aging King of France by her brother. At the time that it was negotiated, Mary bargained with Henry that she would make this first marriage without complaint, if after she was widowed she was allowed to choose her second husband herself. Henry agreed, but never really meant for her to able to do that, I guess.

Mary was married to the King of France for only 3 months before he died, and shortly after his death she married the Duke of Suffolk, Henry's best friend, Charles Brandon.

Coincidentally, it's Charles' and Mary's granddaughter, Jane, that is put on the throne by the protestants after Henry's only legitimate son, Edward, dies.

So, what did I think of the book? I liked it. But at this point I've read so much about Henry VIII that I kind of take issue with different representations of him. This one was fairly in line with what I thought about him, though it proposes that Henry did love Katherine when they were getting married, after Arthur's death. Haegar sort of skims over Mary's (Henry's daughter) birth, which I found odd. But she explains it away in the authors note at the end of the novel.

Also, being such a fan of The Other Boleyn Girl, I get irritated when no one talks about Mary (Bolyen, so many of these people had the same names!). She gets one mention in the novel as being among Mary's attendants when she is Queen of France (as was Anne).

I have several other books to read now, but mostly what this book made me want to do was watch the episode of the Tudors when Mary announces to the King that she's married to Brandon. The Tudors skips over Mary except for maybe 2 episodes, and has her die very early on. In reality, she died several years into the Anne Boleyn episode, and was married to Brandon before Mary was born. But whatever.

Final verdict ... if you're interested in the Tudors it's worth a read. If not, it's a good love story, even if I think that while Mary may have been in love with Brandon, I still think marrying the King's sister was more an act of ambition than love.

But hey that's just me.