The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Let me begin this review with my final verdict before I analyse anything else about it: It could have been a LOT better!

For those who worship Philippa Gregory because "she's a historian!" : Don't you think that for a historian writing historical fiction she is way too presumptuous?

Well, I certainly thought so even though I do grant writers poetic license to bend a few facts in order to make the story readable. However, to turn a figure like Katherine of Aragon into nothing more than a whiny, idiotic girl, who has no mind of her own, is going a little too far, I think!

Katherine of Aragaon, despite all her faults was the strongest and bravest Queen that the dim-wit Henry VIII married and if you look back at her depiction in this book, all she has been shown as is a stupid, snivelling, pathetic cow (excuse my French!) who shows courage only to do what she was told by her mother, her father, her dying husband; whose emotions change like the weather of England and who basically had two major misconceptions:
1)Her mother was God
2)She was God's favourite child

Nowhere in the book is she portrayed as a woman who actually went through the pain of being married off in a deal, who lost her husband and was kept as a captive. Instead, she's just this teenager with the crazy dream of becoming the Queen of England, no matter what it took! Even in the end, when the King's Great Matter is discussed, she's not the devoted wife who braved a war in her pregnancy, she's just a woman, who has lived her dream and inwardly accepts her defeat to Anne Boleyn because, "She is just as ambitious as I was!"

Of course none of us know what the real Katherine was like and nor can we ever find out. As a result, all we have left for reconstruction, is our presumptions.

My question here is: Could we not have done better, Ms Gregory? Could we not have had a not so whiny Katharine and somehow portrayed her in an inspiring light despite all her faults and foibles? If not, I guess this book was certainly not meant for me!

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