The Sisters of Henry VIII: The Tumultuous Lives of Margaret of Scotland and Mary of France

This book was in good condition and came in time. I read it and it was a good book. Thank you

A great summary of Henry VIII's sisters and helps close the link to James I of England and VI of Scotland. Easy read. Open the doors to much more reading material. Loved it.

This is my first Maria Perry book. Her research was/is great and very detailed. This is not just another dry history. She brings understanding along with facts to this story.

Perry writes about the lesser known subject of Henry VIII's two sisters, Margaret and Mary who became Queen of Scotland and Queen of France respectively. It's really a review of his whole family, which shows that his sisters, even as political pawns were much more involved in events than wife focused biographies and legends would generally show. There is some early discussion of their parents, Henry VII and his Queen, Elizabeth of York, which shows how they inherited the royal propensity for pagentry and how, Perry's descriptions are sumptuous, the emphasis on sartorial wealth and jewels was really the political rhetoric of the day. More than that, it seems also have been a business, and many conflicts and wars can be explained by the need for the Tudors to pay for all their nice clothes and jewels--even, or especially, they owed money--so that they can keep being royals. Perry is as assiduous about the financial details as she is avid about the fashion details, and even if you aren't quite sure what the numbers mean the story is always readable, imaginative and intriguing, leaving its share of Historical what-ifs. (What if Mary's long-term youthful betrothal to Charles V of Spain had been honored, for example?) As one might expect Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn get their fair share of mention, but the context of their tribulations seems at once more mundane and more majestic.

--Because this book, for the most part, except when the author decides to basically abandon a person or issue in it, is loaded with details. If you are interested in the life and times of Henry VIII, his relatives, friends and enemies, then you will likely forgive the author's apologist attitudes toward him (and her seemingly hyper-critical eye, in my view, of his sisters). If you are relatively thick-skinned about writers who do that, weaving their own opinions through the story they are telling, while supposedly presenting historical fact, you will find this book very interesting and fairly absorbing. There are a lot of minute details about banquets, clothes and social behavior, which are a lot of fun to read and know about, again, if you're interested in the first place. Which I am, so I liked this book.