A Golden Sorrow: volume 1: Humble and Loyal - Katherine of Aragon [Paperback]

Masterful. If all historical novels were written with this much flair and beauty the genre would top the best sellers list weekly. I could NOT put it down. Can't wait to get her next one!

This is a mediocre but not terrible historical novel, written in the first person "fake memoir" style that, in spite of its limitations, is beloved by some historical novelists, and in which a dying person tells the story of her life.

It's obviously rather shallowly researched. The mistakes commence on p. 5:

"I loved to watch her as she [Katherine of Aragon's mother] painted the view from the Alhambra or illuminated some religious book with delicate strokes of gold, blue and crimson, her face creased in concentration. When I was older I became aware that her Hapsburg nose was a little too long for perfection, her chin receded slightly and her lips pouted, but she was lit by an inner glow of tranquillity which masked all defects and I thought her beautiful."

Isabel of Castile was not a Habsburg. She was a Trastamara. The Habsburg dynasty gobbled up Spain when Isabel's only son, eldest daughter and eldest grandson all died in swift succession, leaving as heiress of Spain her second daughter, Juana, who was married to a Habsburg, Philip of Burgundy. There's also this mistake (p. 18):

"And I remember another incident, one March day when I was four and we were at Medina del Campo."

This goes on to refer to the Treaty of Medina del Campo, which was signed in March 1489. Katherine of Aragon was born in December 1485, making her three years and three months at the time this treaty was signed. This may look like nit-picking on the part of the reader - or it may look like carelessness on the part of the author.

On p. 69 there's a big blunder:

"This action was followed by a spate of rumours. Henry was to marry Marguerite de Valois, daughter of Duke Alphonse of Bavaria; Henry was to marry a French princess; I was to be shipped back to Spain."

Marguerite de Valois was a sister of the future Francis I of France. She was therefore not Bavarian; she was a member of the House of Valois, the ruling house of France. There's another mistake on p. 109:

"Henry chose his sister, Mary, to stand as godmother. She had recently returned to England after the death of her husband, King Louis of France."

This is dated to 1511. Henry VIII's sister Mary didn't marry Louis XII of France until 1514. Then, weirdly, in the next chapter there's this (p. 121):

"A visit from Henry's sister, Margaret, distracted me from my troubles. I sent her one of my own white horses for her state entry and Henry gave her Baynard's Castle for the duration of her stay. There were the usual jousts and banquets and a picnic in Greenwich Park. It was pleasant to exchange woman talk and later in the year I looked forward to welcoming Henry's other sister, Mary, back to England."

Immediately afterward, there is a scene in which Mary and her second husband, Charles Brandon, return from France and unexpectedly announce that they are married, provoking a scene of clichéd rage from Henry VIII. Anyone who is reasonably familiar with the life of Henry VIII or his sister Mary will know that they did marry secretly, but obtained Henry's forgiveness before they returned to England. And why did the author not notice the discrepancy of having Mary widowed both in 1511 and 1514?

The chronology involves another case of deception or blunder. Although Henry VIII only began proceedings to annul his marriage in 1527, the author has him tell Katherine that he intends to divorce her in June 1525 instead of June 1527:

"Lightning strikes when you least expect it. Henry had been gentle towards me since the hunting accident but a few weeks later - 23rd June 1525 - the date is etched into my brain - he came once more to my chamber."

He then announces that they are living in sin, and that God is punishing them by denying them sons, two years before this really happened.

There are further mistakes: the Italian sculptor Pietro Torrigiano is twice referred to as "Pietro Torrigani" (p. 79 and 99), the Spanish ambassador Dr de Puebla is referred to as "Dr Pueblo" (p. 43) and Anne Boleyn's father Lord Rochford is referred to as "Lord Rochester" (p. 162). There are also grammatical mistakes, eg "As always, with Henry he took other's [sic] ideas and convinced himself that they had originated with him" (p. 136) and regular misuse of "I" instead of "me", eg "The farce was repeated by Claude and I" (p. 144). The face was repeated by "I"? Not "me"? Numerals are also sometimes written in numbers ("I employ 500 servants and 300 guards"), which is very odd for fiction, and there's a case of what looks like a missing word: "He was well above average with a splendid build" (p. 77). Was that supposed to be "well above average height"?

I would say that, if this book had been published by a mainstream publisher instead of being self-published, these sort of things would have been fixed, but no, they probably wouldn't have been. Too often, books read as if the text has been dumped in and published without proper editing, or sometimes without any editing at all, so that this isn't what's most irritating about the book - I'm used to it. It's the messing with chronology that irritated me most, such as pretending that Henry VIII told Katherine that he intended to divorce her in 1525 not 1527.

Some historical novelists just don't get it. So much history is published these days that there's a good chance that people who read historical fiction will also read history, and that they therefore know their facts. When a historical novelist fudges facts - writes that someone was dark instead of fair, or that someone was hanged instead of beheaded, or beheaded with an axe instead of a sword - the clued-in reader doesn't think, "Oh well, that's not how it happened, but the author's entitled to pretend otherwise." Such a reader thinks, "That's a blunder! Don't these people bother to do their research? How can they know less than their readers do?" Using artistic licence or telescoping things a bit is one thing, but deliberate fudging of facts is another. Historical novelists can either get their act together and refrain from foisting outright lies and mistakes on the reader, or suffer their books being repeatedly trashed on Amazon.

Three stars - just. There's far worse historical fiction than this out there, but that doesn't mean that readers should lower the bar, and over-rate stuff that's neither good nor truly awful, but rather perfectly readable and then perfectly forgettable.

› Go to Amazon U.S. to see both reviews  4.0 out of 5 stars