Sex with the Queen by Elizabeth Herman

[msmcknittington]

This is, quite possibly, the worst non-fiction book I have ever read. A comment on a previous post in the comm reminded me of it, and I thought I should share. Forewarning, like a literary lighthouse

Comments

[msmcknittington]

Yes to everything you said about Edward II! The heteronormativity and homophobicness in this book is so appalling. I generally don't anticipate finding such blatant -isms in non-fiction, because non-fiction is supposed try to avoid biases like that, but the way things are recounted here is really polarizing and sensationalized that it's kind of like reading bad slashfic. You know how sometimes there's a character who's in a heterosexual relationship with another character, and the second character gets turned into a horrible, awful person so that the first has motive for cheating? Yeah. It's historical RPF masquerading as non-fiction.

In general, I really hate speculating on the sex lives of dead people. Not just because it's intrusive and not anyone's business really and the dead person can't tell you to back off, but because the specifics of people's sex lives usually aren't historically important. I mean, in cases where people were executed for sodomy or other "transgressions" it's relevant, but whether or not Henry VIII liked woman-on-top is just not important. Or even provable.

She's ripping off The Boleyn Inheritance here--right down to Henry being offensively smelly and Katherine Howard HAAAAAATING sex with Henry and being forced to ride him so she didn't get crushed. It's no better in the novel, either.

Is she really? Ha ha ha! That book is not listed in the bibliography, either.