Lady Mary Book Review
Lady Mary by Lucy Worsley
Thank you to Bloomsbury and Netgalley for an ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.
The time will come for bravery…
Princess Mary has grown up with expectations on her shoulders. Daughter to two of the most powerful monarchs in Europe, Queen Catherine of Aragon and King Henry VIII of England, Mary is expected to bring marriage alliances to her family, forging connections that will help her father, and England, remain the most influential in the world. But Mary is reluctant– all she wants is for her family to stay together.
Unfortunately, Mary is only a princess, a girl, and so she’s not about to get what she wants. Instead, hoping for a male heir and apparently in love with the Lady Anne Boleyn, Henry decides to divorce the faithful Catherine of Aragon, creating a schism across England that threatens to divide families, and loyalties, forever. In the chaos, Mary’s fate is uncertain as her father tries to claim his marriage, and Mary herself, were illegitimate. Now separated from her mother, and clinging desperately to any support she can muster, Mary is forced to watch as her father remarries, and she’s sent to become a servant to her new half-sister, Princess Elizabeth. But Mary is a princess too, a rightful heir of England, and she’s prepared to fight for her recognition, no matter what the cost.
The Tudor dynasty has always been one of my favourite periods of English history to study. I covered from Edward IV to James I in my A-level classes, so I was quite eager to get my hands on a copy of this novel from Netgalley, curious to see how well the story worked when told from a YA viewpoint.
Unfortunately… it didn’t quite work for me. I’d read a veeeeerrrryyyy similar story when I was in high school, a narrative of the divorce from the perspective of Princess Mary, entitled Mary, Bloody, Mary. Lady Mary is essentially the same, with a different approach to Mary’s character, a different voice, and a glimpse at Henry’s marriage to Queen Jane thrown in for good measure.
“I am a daughter of Spain, who never feels pain.”
Beyond that, the main problem I had was with the voice itself, which came across as fairly… young. At the beginning of the novel, Mary is nine years-old, which means the childish voice makes sense. However, the book continues to follow Mary right through to her mid-twenties, meaning it starts to look less like a deliberate choice and more like an unhappy accident. It mostly came across in a lot of exposition, such as in this section:
“She heard the tentative tread of gravel behind her, and turned around with a sigh. What was it now? It was Nan’s husband, Sir John, or to give him his full name, Sir John Hussey.”
I mean, it was fun, and informative, but I really felt like there were lots of moments when readers could have been given information a lot more subtly. It got old quite fast, especially considering I knew quite a lot of the names and events going on around Mary, and I just couldn’t get into the childish language as Mary first questions something, then answers her own question. It’s not a style I’m all that keen on, and while I get that it may work for some readers, especially those unfamiliar with Tudor history, I think the language style makes it much less enticing for older YA readers. There were other examples of this peppered throughout the text too. If I had a pound for every time I read the ‘daughter of Spain, never feels pain,‘ line, I could have probably bought myself several new hardbacks. In addition to this, I wanted to cringe everytime I noticed Mary referring to Anne Boleyn as ‘the wicked lady.’ Yes, I get that she is responsible for tearing Mary’s family apart, but it just seemed like a really petty and pointless response from a character who is meant to be dignified and feisty.
Of course, there were some redeeming factors in Lady Mary too. Worsley is a history graduate, and she’s clearly done a lot of research in preparation for writing this book. It definitely comes across, and I was pleasantly surprised by all the names and settings that popped up throughout the novel. There were a few nit-picky mistakes, most likely choices made with a modern audience in mind, such as when she refers to Catherine as a ‘teenager’ [a word not used in this period, and Catherine’s blue eyes [in every painting, Catherine has brown eyes]. However, for the most part the story seemed accurate. I also really liked the portrayal of Mary and her mother, both of whom are often overlooked in the annals of history, or [in the case of Mary] vilified. Worsely seems to have really hit the nail on the head with both characters. Catherine comes across as fierce and headstrong, by turn adoring of her husband, and then calling him as weak as ‘soft curds of cheese.’ Her religious fervour is stark here, but it is also tempered by her belief that she’s sacrificing herself for her daughter, as well as her Catholicism. There’s a true sense of her betrayal here, which I thought worked very well.
“Life as a princess was rather like being a piece of fine furniture, to be admired, cooed over, then swiftly forgotten.”
You can’t help but feel for Mary throughout the novel, as she is jostled from one place to another without ever being truly in control of her destiny. She has moments of brilliant intelligence, and she does what she can in each desperate situation, but, as Lady Mary reminds us, history is rarely so kind to daughters and princesses. She comes across as very stubborn, moral and forthright, and I think it’s probably a fairly accurate representation of Mary I in her earlier years. This is also tempered by her kindness, and her capacity to do good, even if, at times this is portrayed in a very naive way, with Mary wondering if perhaps it would be quite nice to do manual labour all the time, and choosing to give an old coat to a beggar, rather than throwing it away. These seem like nice gestures, but really they reveal someone so high on the hierarchy that they can’t see the world at their feet. I guess that makes a lot of sense, considering she’s royalty, but even so, it left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
Overall, I’d give Lady Mary a 5/10. It’s not a bad read, and for anyone studying Tudor history, it’s quite a nice way to ease yourself into the subject, but I found the writing style quite childish, and it chafed a bit too much for me.
Lady Mary will be released April 5th in the UK. You can preorder the book on Amazon UK here, or at Waterstones [who are doing signed copy preoders] here.
And if you’re looking for more YA historical fiction recommendations, here are some of mine:
Mary, Bloody Mary by Carolyn Meyer
Things a Bright Girl Can Do by Sally Nicholls
Alex and Eliza by Melissa de la Cruz
