I’ve had a fascination with Anne Boleyn for almost as long as I can remember. I read just about everything I can find about her, including fiction, enjoying some more than others. One of my favorites in recent years, The Other Boleyn Girl, is being made into a movie starring Natalie Portman as Anne. I am cautiously optimistic, although my favorite film about Anne Boleyn remains Anne of the Thousand Days.

I quite enjoy Philippa Gregory’s books, for escapist-style historical fiction (emphasis on the fiction), and so was excited when a few months back, I saw there was a sort of sequel to TOBG coming out this month. The Boleyn Inheritance picks up shortly after the death of Jane Seymour, the woman who supplanted Anne as Henry the Eighth’s wife. Gregory relates the tale through the eyes of three pivotal women: Anne of Cleves (Henry’s fourth wife), Katherine Howard (a maid-in-waiting who becomes Henry’s fifth wife), and Jane Boleyn, (the woman who helped send her husband and Anne Boleyn to the gallows).

Anne of Cleves, arguably the luckiest of Henry’s wives (with the possible exception of Catherine Parr, who just managed to outlive him), is at first an awkward foreigner trying to find her place amid the cuthroat court. We see her progression as she displays courage and intelligence, ultimately breaking free of Henry and living a mostly autonomous existence. Katherine Howard is depicted as an insipid, foolish girl who is never given the chance to mature into a woman, a girl who captures the interest of Henry and must follow in the path set by her conniving uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. But perhaps the most interesting character is Jane Boleyn, a conflicted woman who denies her own involvement in the deaths of others, convinced that she did all she could to save her husband and sister-in-law. She acts as Norfolk’s spy and lackey, while feigning friendship to those she would betray.

Gregory does an excellent job of depicting the atmosphere that surrounded King Henry’s court – one of corruption and treachery – and the man himself, poisoned by absolute power and instilling fear in all who know him.

My only quibble with the novel is in an incidental but obvious error. At one point, Katherine remarks to Anne that Jane Seymour’s motto was ‘the most happy‘ – however, that was Anne Boleyn’s maxim; Jane Seymour’s was ‘bound to obey and serve‘. Unless that was an attempt to show another example of Katherine’s stupidity, then it strikes me as a glaring oversight, especially for sticklers like me.