Writing
Tudor Women
By Judith
Arnopp
I am often asked
why I chose to write about Tudor women and the honest answer is, I didn’t;
Tudor women chose me. I’d been told so many times that the Tudor era has been
done to death that when I first began to write professionally, I took that
advice on board and set my books in the early medieval/Anglo Saxon period. It
wasn’t long before I was asked if I’d written anything set in Henry VIII’s reign
and the more readers asked that question, the more I wondered why I hadn’t. I
have always loved the Tudors, since I was teenager (eons ago) and I was so glad
to return to an era I genuinely loved.
There are some big
authors writing in this period and it is important that a writer find their own
place in an already busy market. Unfortunately, I am not Hilary Mantel and
neither am I Philippa Gregory. I am myself. So, instead of being intimidated by
the competition, I just sat down and wrote the Tudor court as I imagined it. In
my books I attempt to answer the questions I had always wanted to ask as a
reader. You know those irritating toddlers that ask ‘Why? Why? Why?’ – I am a
bit like that.
History has often
been unkind to the women my books feature, fiction has been unkinder still. We
know the barest facts of their actions, and almost nothing of their inner
thoughts and feelings. Contemporary opinion has to be treated warily; one must
ask who wrote the record, why they wrote it … who they wrote it for. Every
writer in every age has an agenda – even today history is a fluid, changing
thing that ebbs and flows as society alters. As a writer, I try not to reach a
foregone conclusion about my protagonist before I pick up my pen. I read widely
before I begin, taking on board as many historical views as possible. The main
question in my head as I begin the journey is, ‘how did it feel?’
I don’t have a
‘favourite’ Tudor woman and my representation of them alters from book to book,
depending on who is telling the tale. It is all about perspective. In A Song of Sixpence, Elizabeth of York’s
view of the events at Henry VII’s court is quite different from Margaret
Beaufort’s in The Beaufort Chronicle because,
although they were both there, they would have perceived things differently.
Just as Anne Boleyn’s experience of the King’s Secret Matter is the opposite of
Mary Tudor’s. Neither perspective is wrong, they are just on opposing sides.
I am less
interested in gowns and palaces and more concerned with the whys and wherefores,
the psyche of my characters, if you like. When I began writing The Beaufort Chronicle I had no idea if
the Margaret Beaufort I was creating was going to be good or bad – I rather
hope she is something in between.
As the story opened
up, the experiences we went through together shaped Margaret’s character. I
came to understand her much better. The world she lived in was very different
to ours, the choices she made, far outside my experience, or the experiences of
any of us. The resulting character is neither kind nor saintly but neither is
she evil, or particularly ambitious. She grows from a frightened girl into a
loving mother; a grieving mother who campaigns to bring her son out of exile.
It is not until she finds herself faced with the possibility of claiming the
throne for Henry that she moves against Richard III. Ultimately, Margaret
becomes the most powerful woman in England and I think she deserved it.
She fought,
worried, and when the tide of war was against her, she tried to keep her chin
above water. My Margaret is terse, critical and vitally intelligent, far more
intelligent than most of the men around her. Her charity, her education, her
piety are often disregarded or sneered at in the world of historical fiction.
She is often portrayed as obsessed, a little mad but the course of my research
revealed nothing to suggest she did more than survive. The Margaret I
discovered was just better at life than her enemies.
Anne Boleyn is
another woman of the era who has been painted with a heavy hand. She appears variously
in fiction; sometimes as a witch, an ambitious floosy who stole the king from
his beloved wife, and sometimes as a saintly, reluctant girl who could not
resist the overtures of the king or the machinations of her family. The Anne
that emerged from my studies for The Kiss
of the Concubine is something in between; she is clever, wise and reluctant
at first to marry Henry until she is left with no choice and so chooses to make
the best of it. Her end, of course, is well-known but the questions remained.
How did it feel to
be young and witty and energetic in the restrictive household of Catherine of
Aragon? Anne was a lover of music and dance, she loved to perform, she loved to
hunt; she loved life and lived it to the full. How did it feel to be condemned
to death for crimes you did not commit? I can’t imagine I would face death as
bravely as she did. I don’t think it is fair on Anne to remember her only for
her end. She should be given credit for her intelligence, her wit, for her
championing of church reform, and of course, for giving us Queen Elizabeth.
The Kiss of the Concubine is written from
Anne’s point of view, her first person voice explains each episode of her life
with Henry, and the woman who emerges is confident and strong – strong enough
to manipulate the king until she was overpowered by her enemies.
I am currently
writing The Heretic Wind, the story
of Mary Tudor, the daughter of Henry and Catherine of Aragon, and her view of
Anne is quite different, as you might expect. Mary is seldom viewed
sympathetically but, of all the women I have written about so far, I think she
is the most tragic, and since I’d always judged her quite harshly, I hadn’t
expected that.
If you leave aside the religious bigotry and
cruel treatment of heretics that she dealt in her later life, and look at her
life from the beginning, from her perspective, it is little wonder that she grew
into the woman she became.
The main aspect of her character that stands
out for me is her isolation. Mary had no friends, no equal. She had faithful
servants in Susan Clarencius and Jane Dormer but they were not her equal – they
serve her, they love her but they can never quite understand. Throughout her
entire life she experienced loss after loss; her father’s rejection, the
separation from Catherine of Aragon, the loss of her title, status, the death
of her mother, the horrific deaths to a
string of step-mothers, the fight for her crown, and finally her doomed
marriage to Philip of Spain and the humiliation of duplicate phantom pregnancies. She endured
relentless misery and after over a year of imagining her pain, her hopelessness,
disappointment and her fury, I am exhausted. Next time, I must choose a less
traumatising Tudor head to inhabit.
Judith Arnopp
Judith Arnopp is the author of eleven historical
fiction novels including:
The Heretic Wind:
the life of Mary Tudor, Queen of England will be published soon.
All books
available as paperback, kindle and some are available as audiobooks on Audible.
For more
information please visit:
author.to/juditharnoppbooks
What an interesting article, Judith. I'm looking forward to reading The Heretic Wind to get your perspective on Mary.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I agree with your take on Mary Tudor.
ReplyDeleteThank you both. I asked my readers who I should write about and Mary Tudor's name came out top. I was a bit daunted at first but now, I think we are beginning to understand each other even if we are not exactly 'friends'. :)
ReplyDelete