The Other Queen
Philippa Gregory
Reviewed by Megan Chance
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, was captured, imprisoned in England, and held for sixteen years until she was finally executed. The years Mary spent in captivity are at the center of Gregory’s new novel.
Mary, still a queen and one whose future changed moment by moment, depending upon Elizabeth’s state of mind, was kept by George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, and his self-made wife, Bess, at their home, and never were two people more tried by a house guest. Instructed to keep Mary as befitting a queen, while at the same time holding her prisoner, the Talbots went bankrupt, suffered from suspicion of treason at the Elizabethan court, and were constantly watched and judged by William Cecil, Queen Elizabeth’s advisor, a man whose rapid rise to power threatened the lords (including Shrewsbury) who had traditionally advised their queen. The political machinations of Cecil, the (predominantly) Northern lords, and Mary herself, are very suspensefully rendered. Mary's inability to keep from plotting against the Queen of England, even as Elizabeth and she made an agreement to return her to her throne, ultimately prove her undoing.
A tale of captivity can often be a boring one — how many variations are available to describe the life of a prisoner, after all? — and Gregory relieves that tendency to sameness by writing this story in three first person points of view, those of Shrewsbury, Bess, and Mary herself. While this is very effective at building tension, the sometimes too-quickly revolving viewpoints keep the reader at a distance, especially in the first third of the novel, and a great deal of redundancy tends to slow the pace. However, the quickly growing tension not just of the Shrewsburys’ worsening financial situation and Mary’s plotting, but of the strain on George and Bess’s marriage as Mary draws George ever closer, lures the reader steadily in.
Though Mary is the center of the story, Bess and George are its heart, and watching their marriage crumble beneath the strain of keeping the beautiful queen prisoner is in fact the most effective and heartbreaking part of the novel. Bess, determined to hold on to the fortune she came to her marriage with, tries desperately to trust her husband even as she watches him tumble into a snare of his own making, and one she is powerless to save him from — one woven of his need to cling to his honor and to fealty sworn to one queen while he falls helplessly in love with the other.
In the end, what Gregory does so effectively is bring historical figures to life, and make them human. Their flaws and their loyalties form the structure of the novel, and are its greatest strength. She shows very well what happens when fatal flaws lead to tragedy, when loyalties are superseded by lies and suspicion, and the result is that the queens and lords she writes about become not just characters in history, but men and women who suffered and loved as we do. They too were faced with a rapidly changing world; the problems that dogged them were the same problems that dogged mankind before them and that will no doubt continue to dog us in the future: abuse of power, the pitfalls of giving in to fear, the cost of being loyal to those who do not deserve loyalty, but most of all, the truth that it is not the big revelations which destroy the fragile web of love and respect that bind us to each other, but the smallest of disappointments.
About the Reviewer:
Megan Chance is the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of several novels. Her first book won Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA award for excellence in Romantic Fiction, and since then, her novels have received several awards and award nominations. The Best Reviews has said she writes “Fascinating historical fiction.” A former television news photographer with a BA from Western Washington University, Megan Chance lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two daughters. Visit her website at www.meganchance.com.
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