The Tudor Wife

I love to read, as a child my father would say that I would read absolutely anything, including the back of a cereal packet if I got desperate, and he was right.  I was quite voracious in my appetite for books, I think by the time I was 12 I had worked my way through the kids section of our local library, Jubilee Gardens in Southall and was working my way quite happily through the adults section.  I think the ladies at the counter were often quite shocked to see me trundling up to the counter 2 or 3 times a week with my allocated 10 books.

I've just finished "The Tudor Wife" by Emily Purdy. Brandypurdy.com/ Essentially this is a historical fiction novel, it's the retelling of the Anne Boleyn and Henry the VIIIth story, following Henry's chase of the very unwilling Anne, a very well known historical event but this time told through the eyes of Jane Parker who became Lady Jane Rochester when she married George Boleyn, Anne's beloved brother.

I found Jane to be a thoroughly unlikeable character, right from the start she comes across as an obsessive character, the subject of her obsession being George Boleyn, in modern day terms she would have been thought of as a stalker or even a bunny boiler such is her need to control and own George. Jane doesn't seem to understand that George's lack of love for her is George's fault and seeing the closeness of the relationship George and his sister Anne have decides that Anne is to blame for her not being able to make George love her and takes her chance then to revenge herself upon Anne whenever she can.

Given that the historical facts do indeed show that Jane Parker was one of the chief witnesses that Henry and Cromwell used to get rid of Anne, she is the principle witness and accusor in the trials that brought about Anne's death, accusing Anne not only of having affairs with courtiers but even going so far as to accuse her sister in law of having an incestuous relationship with her brother George. It is quite easy to imagine this story being quite accurate. 

Jane herself comes to quite an unpleasant end being beheaded herself in the same way she helped to have Anne's head lopped off  and when that part arrived in the book... at the end... funnily enough... I found it very difficult to raise any semblance of sorrow for the character.  My first thought was "well you had that coming love!"