If you have no husband and no son, then you have no position. You have only what you were born to.
Rating: 3/5
Trigger Warnings:
Spoiler Alert! If you haven’t read the book, this review will contain spoilers so it’s up to you if you continue…
So, despite having already read about Henry VIII’s last wife, I thought I’d go back and read about his first; my first thought is on how different the two books are. Whilst the Katherine Parr was studious, educated, and wanted to question the conflict surrounding religion, Katherine of Aragon, her faith at the forefront of her mind, was determined, focused, and the military aspect of her Queenship always seemed to be on her mind.
Personally, I enjoyed The Taming of the Queen more than The Constant Princess. This was a result of both the different writing styles and the different stories. The warlike aspects of Catalina’s story were definitely less interesting to me than the religious discussion of Katherine Parr’s, but both were equally interesting aspects of Henry to explore, especially at different points in his life.
Speaking of, looking at Henry at these two drastically different times of life sometimes felt like I was reading about two completely different people. You could see the man he was going to become, and some of his behaviours in The Taming of the Queen seem to have come from the way Catalina taught him in The Constant Princess. I know a lot of this review is just comparing the two books but I think it’s really interesting that I’ve read the first and the last because I’m wondering if the books in between bridge that gap and help in both the writing style and the personality changes - though I do enjoy the way different writing style also leads to very different characteristics of the two Catherines.
This book, despite being clearly split into different periods of Catalina’s life by Gregory, was very much split into two halves: Arthur, and Henry. Both were super interesting, but one was the story of Catalina’s youth - her love and her naivety - and one was her maturity. Her time with Arthur was wonderful to read about, she was happy and in love, and their dreams for England were beautiful. On the other hand, she was naive. Her time with Henry showed the strong female I had been expecting from Gregory’s writing. By writing from the Queens’ points of view, Gregory has this different take on Tudor life; the period is about domineering men and she shows this quiet strength that the women have and I love it. Catalina was a little intense at times, in her belief that her destiny was to be Queen of England, but she was definitely admirable, and - sorry, but the word can’t be avoided - constant.
I think the only thing I didn’t particularly enjoy was the jump right at the end. It went from Catalina in her victory, and then jumped 16 years to her on trial (I think) and essentially lining her up for divorce. I get that there wasn’t many ways to end the book - especially if each book ends with the end of the relationship between Henry and the respective queens - but I just didn’t like it. It was very abrupt, despite knowing how close I was to the end of the book, and without knowing the history of Henry VII and his wives, that end is a major cliffhanger. Maybe that’s the point? It’s not like we see them get divorced, we only see that years later something has changed but Catalina is defiant as ever, and had these been some kind of fictional story, that ending would definitely have encouraged me to pick up the next book and find out what was to happen to her.
Considering how positive this review was, my rating is kinda low. This isn’t cuz I didn’t like The Constant Princess, I did enjoy it, but it was also difficult to get through at times. Lengthy books really aren’t my thing and because it switched between Catalina’s pov and an omniscient narrator, the accounts overlapped and if this was too much for me I’d put the book down because I didn’t want to reread something from a slightly different point of view. I preferred the writing of The Taming of the Queen, though I hated Henry so much in that whilst in this he vaguely irritated me, and whilst I’d love to see how he changed throughout, no promises I’ll be reading more Gregory any time soon - especially not with uni restarting in a couple of weeks. 500 pages are just a little much on top of all that assigned reading!
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