Anne of Cleves – She Reads Novels

The title of Nicola Cornick’s latest novel, The Fourth Queen, refers, as you may have guessed, to the fourth wife of Henry VIII – Anne of Cleves. However, although she does feature in the book, this is really the story of a fictional character, Marris North, the former prioress of Winterhill Priory, who loses her home and her position in 1539 due to the dissolution of the monasteries. When Marris falls in love with Sir William Sharington, the commissioner sent to oversee the closure of the priory, he finds new roles for Marris and her sisters at court in the household of the new Queen Anne (called Anna in the book). Sadly, Anna’s marriage is not a success and when she finds herself in trouble she approaches Marris for help in concealing a secret that could put them both in danger.

Like all the other Nicola Cornick novels I’ve read, this one also has a present day storyline and in this case it follows Jenna Bergin, a woman in her thirties who owns a bookshop in Wantage, not far from Winterhill Hall and the ruined priory. For as long as she can remember, Jenna has been able to remember a former life as Marris North, while her younger sister, Bree, also believes she is the reincarnation of Marris’s sister, Bridget. When Jenna learns that an archaeological dig is taking place at Winterhill, she becomes concerned that Anna’s secret is going to be uncovered after all these years – and she decides that she’ll do whatever it takes to stop that from happening.

I liked the portrayal of Anne of Cleves in this book; of all Henry VIII’s wives, she’s the one who tends to get the least attention, which is understandable as their marriage only lasted a few months before being annulled and was less dramatic than some of the others. She’s shown here as a kind-hearted, loyal, sensible woman who can also be naïve and unworldly at times. Her big secret is something that was rumoured at the time but there’s no evidence that it actually happened; if true, it could have changed history so it’s an interesting idea to explore in a novel. I also liked Marris but found her less convincing as a character as she seemed to adapt far too quickly to the loss of the priory and no longer being a nun. In case you’re wondering, Winterhill Priory never existed but is based on Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire, which really was dissolved in 1539 and bought by Sir William Sharington.

In the modern day, Jenna shares a lot of Marris’s character traits and her relationship with Bree mirrors the one between Marris and Bridget. I haven’t mentioned yet that there’s a third sister: Molly, or Rose as she was in her former life. Although Molly is aware of her reincarnation, she doesn’t embrace it the way her sisters do and when you see how her story plays out, both as her present and past self, it’s easy to understand why. There are one or two other characters who also existed in both timelines, but I won’t give any more details as I don’t want to spoil too much (although you’ll probably guess one of them almost as soon as they appear). If you’re someone who doesn’t believe in reincarnation, you’ll need to just suspend your disbelief here and not ask too many questions!

This isn’t one of my favourite Nicola Cornick books, but when you’ve read a lot of an author’s books (this is my eighth) it’s inevitable that you’ll like some more than others. I did enjoy it, particularly the historical sections, and will be looking out for her next one.

Thanks to Boldwood Books for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is the fourth book in Alison Weir’s Six Tudor Queens series which aims to retell in fictional form the stories of all six of Henry VIII’s wives. I enjoyed the previous three – on Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour – but I was particularly looking forward to reading this one, on Henry’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. Before I began, all I really knew about Anne was that Thomas Cromwell was instrumental in arranging her marriage to Henry, that the King was disappointed when he saw her in the flesh as she didn’t live up to the Hans Holbein portrait he had seen, and that after their divorce she lived in comfort and was given the honour of being described as the King’s ‘beloved sister’. I knew there must be more to Anne’s story than this and I hoped to learn more about her from this new novel.

Alison Weir refers to Anne as Anna, so I will do the same for the rest of this post. She also uses the spelling Kleve rather than the Anglicised version, Cleves, and tells us that this should be pronounced to rhyme with ‘waver’. The duchy of Kleve, in what is now Germany, is the setting for the first section of the novel, which describes Anna’s life prior to her marriage. Her journey to England and brief time as Henry’s wife follows, and finally an account of the period after the divorce, taking us all the way through to her death in 1557 at the age of forty-one.

Anne of Cleves, by Hans Holbein the Younger

I’ve always considered Anna to be much luckier than most of Henry’s other wives: she wasn’t beheaded, she didn’t die in childbirth while providing the king with an heir, and unlike the other divorced wife, Katherine of Aragon, she was treated with respect and generosity (at least while the king still lived). Of course, this doesn’t mean that life was always easy for her – it can’t have been very nice, after all, to have to leave your family and friends behind and travel abroad to marry a man you’ve never met, only to be rejected by your bridegroom almost on first sight. As portrayed here by Alison Weir, she is a sensible, pleasant and good-natured woman and I did have a lot of sympathy for her, but her story is certainly less tragic and turbulent than some of the other wives’.

Bearing in mind that this is a novel with around 500 pages and that there isn’t really a lot of factual information available on Anna von Kleve, I felt that there was too much padding and at times I found the book quite tedious and repetitive. Because Weir takes us right up to the time of Anna’s death, towards the end of the book a lot of attention is given to the next two queens, Katheryn Howard and Catherine Parr, as well as various incidents and plots that took place during the reigns of Edward VI, Lady Jane Grey and Queen Mary. Unfortunately, by this point Anna is living away from court on her various estates, so she has little personal involvement and most of these events are described from afar which made them less exciting to read about than they should have been.

To flesh out Anna’s story and make it more interesting, Weir has imagined a romance for her in Kleve before she marries the king and this has repercussions that affect the rest of her life. I won’t go into too much detail, but looking at other reviews of this book, some readers liked this imaginary storyline while others hated it. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility as Henry did allegedly tell people that he ‘doubted Anna’s virginity’, but that could have just been an excuse for not consummating the marriage and demanding a divorce. However, even if it was true, there is no evidence to suggest who her previous lover may have been, so this aspect of the novel is entirely fictional.

Although this is my least favourite book in the series so far, I have a copy of the next one, Katheryn Howard, the Tainted Queen, on my NetGalley shelf and am anticipating a more entertaining read – and hopefully, given Katheryn’s much more dramatic life, one that needs to rely less heavily on fiction.

Thanks to Headline for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.