Crown of Blood: The Deadly Inheritance of Lady Jane Grey - Nicola Tallis
Crown of Blood: The Deadly Inheritance of Lady Jane Grey - Nicola Tallis
Non-Fiction
Pages: 384
Most people know the story of Lady Jane Grey, the 'Nine Days Queen' - actually thirteen but who's counting? She is perhaps one of the most tragic victims of the Tudor era - a girl who was only ever a pawn for the ambitions of unscrupulous men seeking power. She never wanted the throne, never sought it, and paid with her life for the mistakes of others. No wonder the sentimental Victorians swooned over her. Sadly, it seems Nicola Tallis does too.
I wanted to like this book. I wanted to learn more about Jane herself, who has always been a shadowy figure behind the catchy nickname, and in many respects this book delivered. Tallis has certainly done her homework: her research is impeccable, what little of it there is to find is all here, and she does a fine job of laying out the complexities of Henry VIII's inheritance. But I felt there was just too much imaginative speculation, too much historical licence that was almost verging on fiction, and melodramatic fiction at that. Jane's actions and words may be a matter of record, but her thoughts and feelings and impulses are not, and too often Tallis would present as fact things that can only ever be speculation - Jane's feelings at the sight of her husband's beheaded body, Frances' thoughts on her husband's traitorous actions, Jane's feelings towards her father.
I know that in many regards all history is a work of the imagination - to make a narrative live one has to imagine a little bit, to liven up the text and make the people real to the readers - otherwise it is just names and dates. But there's a line, and unfortunately this book (for me, at least) fell on the wrong side of the line. It read like Tallis set out to portray Jane as a tragic victim, and that's how the entire narrative is shaped. I can't help but compare it to Leanda de Lisle's 'The Sisters Who Would Be Queen', who credited Jane with far more will and agency and determination of her own fate than Tallis does. This book very much felt like a biography of the Jane of Nicola Tallis' imagination, with support from the historical record, rather than the other way around.
This entry was originally posted at http://denorios.dreamwidth.org/2031708.html. Please comment there using OpenID.