Published: May 12th, 2020 (Ballantine Books) What happens next to this naïve and much-wronged girl is one of the saddest chapters in English history.Title: Katheryn Howard: The Scandalous Queen But Katheryn has a past of which Henry knows nothing, and which comes back increasingly to haunt her -even as she courts danger yet again. If she can bear him a son, her triumph will be complete. She comes to love the ailing, obese king, enduring his nightly embraces with fortitude and kindness. Henry tells the world his new bride is a rose without a thorn, and extols her beauty and her virtue, while Katheryn delights in the pleasures of being queen and the rich gifts her adoring husband showers upon her: the gorgeous gowns, the exquisite jewels, and the darling lap-dogs. But as instructed by her relations, she holds out for marriage and the wedding takes place a mere fortnight after the king’s union to Anna is annulled. Henry quickly becomes besotted and is soon laying siege to Katheryn’s virtue. A flirtatious, eager participant in the life of the royal court, Katheryn readily succumbs to the king’s attentions when she is intentionally pushed into his path by her ambitious family.
Like her cousin Anne Boleyn, Katheryn is a niece of the Duke of Norfolk, England’s premier Catholic peer, who is scheming to replace Anna of Kleve with a good Catholic queen. A prematurely aged and ailing forty-nine, with an ever-growing waistline, he casts an amorous eye on a pretty nineteen-year-old brunette, Katheryn Howard. In the spring of 1540, Henry VIII is desperate to be rid of his unappealing German queen, Anna of Kleve. “A vivid re-creation of a Tudor tragedy.”- Kirkus Reviews Bestselling author and acclaimed historian Alison Weir tells the tragic story of Henry VIII’s fifth wife, a nineteen-year-old beauty with a hidden past, in this fifth novel in the sweeping Six Tudor Queens series.
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