Audiobook16 hours
Katheryn Howard, the Scandalous Queen
Written by Alison Weir
Narrated by Rosalyn Landor
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this audiobook
Bestselling author and acclaimed historian Alison Weir tells the tragic story of Henry VIII’s fifth wife, a nineteen-year-old beauty with a hidden past, in this fifth novel in the sweeping Six Tudor Queens series.
In the spring of 1540, Henry VIII is desperate to be rid of his unappealing German queen, Anna of Kleve. A prematurely aged and ailing forty-nine, with an ever-growing waistline, he casts an amorous eye on a pretty nineteen-year-old brunette, Katheryn Howard. Like her cousin Anne Boleyn, Katheryn is a niece of the Duke of Norfolk, England’s premier Catholic peer, who is scheming to replace Anna of Kleve with a good Catholic queen. A fun-loving, eager participant in the life of the royal court, Katheryn readily succumbs to the king’s attentions when she is intentionally pushed into his path by her ambitious family.
Henry quickly becomes besotted and is soon laying siege to Katheryn’s virtue. But as instructed by her relations, she holds out for marriage and the wedding takes place a mere fortnight after the king’s union to Anna is annulled. Henry tells the world his new bride is a rose without a thorn, and extols her beauty and her virtue, while Katheryn delights in the pleasures of being queen and the rich gifts her adoring husband showers upon her: the gorgeous gowns, the exquisite jewels, and the darling lap-dogs. She comes to love the ailing, obese king, enduring his nightly embraces with fortitude and kindness. If she can bear him a son, her triumph will be complete. But Katheryn has a past of which Henry knows nothing, and which comes back increasingly to haunt her—even as she courts danger yet again. What happens next to this naïve and much-wronged girl is one of the saddest chapters in English history.
In the spring of 1540, Henry VIII is desperate to be rid of his unappealing German queen, Anna of Kleve. A prematurely aged and ailing forty-nine, with an ever-growing waistline, he casts an amorous eye on a pretty nineteen-year-old brunette, Katheryn Howard. Like her cousin Anne Boleyn, Katheryn is a niece of the Duke of Norfolk, England’s premier Catholic peer, who is scheming to replace Anna of Kleve with a good Catholic queen. A fun-loving, eager participant in the life of the royal court, Katheryn readily succumbs to the king’s attentions when she is intentionally pushed into his path by her ambitious family.
Henry quickly becomes besotted and is soon laying siege to Katheryn’s virtue. But as instructed by her relations, she holds out for marriage and the wedding takes place a mere fortnight after the king’s union to Anna is annulled. Henry tells the world his new bride is a rose without a thorn, and extols her beauty and her virtue, while Katheryn delights in the pleasures of being queen and the rich gifts her adoring husband showers upon her: the gorgeous gowns, the exquisite jewels, and the darling lap-dogs. She comes to love the ailing, obese king, enduring his nightly embraces with fortitude and kindness. If she can bear him a son, her triumph will be complete. But Katheryn has a past of which Henry knows nothing, and which comes back increasingly to haunt her—even as she courts danger yet again. What happens next to this naïve and much-wronged girl is one of the saddest chapters in English history.
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Related to Katheryn Howard, the Scandalous Queen
Titles in the series (5)
Jane Seymour: The Haunted Queen Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anna of Kleve, The Princess in the Portrait Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Katheryn Howard, the Scandalous Queen Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for Katheryn Howard, the Scandalous Queen
Rating: 4.08999996 out of 5 stars
4/5
50 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The last few chapters of this book haunt me. I truly feel Katheryn’s distress. To know you’re about to die... do you sleep? Do you eat? The first half of The Scandalous Queen establishes Katheryn as a beautiful, fun-loving girl, whose past catches up to her; the latter half tugs the heart strings, because you really get a sense of how young she is: late teens, longing for court adventure and the rush of love, preyed upon by three older men, and then executed for it.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Allison Weir’s deep research continues to produce novels that show the characters of Henry the VIII’s wives. Yes, we know what happened to them, but in fleshing out the story, historian Weir can take them out of the history books and make them into real flesh and blood women. This book is no exception.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Alison Weir is one of my favorite authors and I have read all of her books including the other four books in this series on the six wives of Henry VIII. So many books have been written about these women fact and fiction and yet I am still not tired of reading about them. This latest offering by Ms. Weir is historical fiction about Kathryn Howard, Henry's fifth and I think saddest wife. The book begins when Kathryn is seven years old and her mother has just died in childbirth. Her father, Edmund Howard, a spendthrift has spent his wife's fortune and now must farm his many children out to relatives as he cannot support them. Katherine is first sent to her maternal aunt and then after two years she is sent to the Great house of Lambeth, the home of her step grandmother, the dowager Duchess of Norfolk. At Lambeth Kathryn is to be educated to be a lady and wait for her family to arrange a marriage for her. At Lambeth many young girls are sent to be educated as was the custom but oversight and discipline is lax and the girls get the wrong kind of education. Kathryn was pretty, young, foolish, but also kind hearted and generous. Kathryn's family is politically powerful and they see an opportunity to use her to seize power with disastrous results for Kathryn they hide her past from Henry. I liked this book the best so far about Henry's wives with the book about Katherine of Aragon as my second favorite. I was fortunate to receive this book from Netgalley in exchange for a review.