Hi, love your tumblr, specially when you defend Jane B. I'd like to know your top 10 of novels set in Tudor times and why.
This has been in my inbox for so long and I’ve really been meaning to get to it but sadly Sad Adventures With the Trash Dad Bioshock Infinite exists and Anna got succored into playing the manliest pair of hands I’ve ever seen.
She’s also been working on a Burial at Sea Elizabeth skirt for a cosplay shoot with her niece
Anyway I finally beat the goddamn game last night (I also guessed the ending about ¼ of the way in so I wasn’t really surprised just sad) so now I can bask in my glory of beating a first person shooter game by answering your question.
Anna’s Top 10 Tudor novels and why
First let’s go over what I look for in a Tudor novel.
1) Interesting/unique representations of historical figures. If you’ve read your fair share of Tudor novels you know that there are stereotypes that many authors tend to fall back on in these novels-Anne is either a headstrong opinionated heroine or she’s a vile harpy/homewrecker, Katherine is the sainted wronged wife (Also always 40+ years old and looking kind of frumpy), George is the flashy douche bro brother, Jane Parker the scheming bitch, Jane Seymour is the mild mannered reluctant heroine who is shoved into a position she does not want, Cromwell is always the double dealing fast talking money grabbing evil henchman ect ect-it’s alright to encounter these stereotypes every now and then, and sometimes they work well for the story, but when you read book after book after book with these representations being shoved at you again and again-it gets grating. Give me something new. Give me a George who takes his positions and jobs perhaps a little too seriously, who would be as quick to debate theology with you as he would to sit down and play cards and gamble. Or give me a George who CAN be cruel and sometimes is, but treats his wife with only the greatest respect. Give me a George who has plenty of flaws, but being an alcoholic (or any more so then anyone else in Tudor court), wife beater, and a notorious womanizer isn’t one of them. The same of course goes for any of the others, I want to see something new! I want to see a different perspective! I want the story to be told differently for once. That’s what is gonna grab my attention and draw me into your book.
2) No clear villains and heroes. There are of course one or two books I still unabashedly love that do this (looking at you the Uncommon Marriage) because they pulled it off REALLY well (read: differently) but for the most part I hate when in Tudor (or any historical novel that deals with actual historical figures and not made up characters in a historical setting) there is this clear “this person is clearly the heroine, they do nothing wrong and have little to no flaws, you need to root for this person and literally only this person, and everyone who isn’t nice to this person is clearly the devil” and of course the all obvious antagonist who has nothing but ill intent on their mind and reads a lot like they walked out of a Tolkien or C.S Lewis novel. Remember that these are historical figures-REAL PEOPLE- we are all full of flaws and virtues- no is really FULLY one or the other.
3) The story is well written-just a basic to enjoy any story
that being said the following list has books that meet this criteria-with one exception that I just love because it’s so bad its good (and it’s bad in a unique way)
10. The Autobiography of Henry VII (with notes by his Fool Will Sommers)- Margaret George
9. The King’s Damsel- Kate Emerson
8. Loving Will Shakespeare- Carolyn Meyer (because a book written from Anne Hathaway’s POV that doesn’t make her into a horrible shrewish wife always win big points with me)
7. Portrait of An Unknown Woman-Vanora Bennett (a good historical fiction to challenge Mantel’s fucked up version of Thomas Moore, that even as an Anglican I was highly offended by)
6. To Die For- Sandra Byrd
5. Brazen-Katherine Longshore
4. The Queen’s Mistake-Diane Haeger
3. I, Elizabeth-Rosalind Miles
2. Tarnish-Katherine Longshore
1. The Uncommon Marriage-Peter Albery
