Pre-loved.
Royal Format.
The year is 1539 and the court of Henry VIII is increasingly fearful at the moods of the ageing sick king. With only a baby in the cradle for an heir, Henry has to take another wife and the dangerous prize of the crown of England is won by Anne of Cleves.
She has her own good reasons for agreeing to marry a man old enough to be her father, in a country where both language and habits are foreign. Although fascinated by the glamour of her new surroundings, she senses the trap closing around her.
Her maid in waiting, Katherine Howard, is ordered by her ambitious family to follow in the steps of her cousin Anne Boleyn and flirt her way to the throne of England; but her kinswoman and advisor Jane Boleyn is haunted by the past, and the Boleyn inheritance of suspicion, betrayal and death.
The stories of these three young women, trying to survive the most volatile and dangerous court in Europe at a time of religious upheaval and political uncertainty, is Philippa Gregory’s most intense and compelling novel yet.