416 pages, Three Rivers Press, ISBN-13: 978-0307346193
To Hold the Crown: The Story of King Henry VII and Elizabeth of York (A Novel of the Tudors) – I wasn’t sure just how much of this title is really relevant, so I quoted the whole thing – is the first historical novel in Jean Plaidy’s “Tudor Saga” – although it was in fact published last, in 1982 (it’s also known as Uneasy Lies the Head). “Jean Plaidy” was one of the many pen names of Eleanor Alice Hibbert (née Burford), with a different one for each of the literary genres she wrote in: “Jean Plaidy” was for fictionalized histories of European royalty; “Victoria Holt” for gothic romances; “Philippa Carr” for multi-generational family sagas; “Eleanor Burford” for Romance novels, her Mills & Boon novels and the Mary Stuart Queen of Scots Series; as well as several other books written under “Elbur Ford”, “Kathleen Kellow”, “Ellalice Tate” and “Anna Percival” – in total over 200 books over her life, which ended in 1993. Talk about prolific.
I got this book from 2nd & Charles, using some of the $400 in credit I have there…not knowing that it was just one part of a sprawling, 11-book series that does, indeed, cover the madcap Tudors and their rule over the sceptred isle. I bought it because Henry VII – the First Tudor Monarch – gets such short shrift compared to his larger-than-life descendants, so that any book starring him would prove to be an insight into this most reclusive of kings. I also, in the back of my mind, had to decide if I wanted to read the other ten books in the series…but upon completion of this book that was a decided “NO”. Perhaps it was because Plaidy – or Hibbert, or whomever – was so damn prolific that this book suffers on any number of fronts, from lousy grammar in many places, to an overabundance of ellipses (seriously: 15 of the damn things in 8 sentences…on a single page!) to not capitalizing the beginning of a sentence nor putting a period at the end.
Besides all of that, I found the writing to be rather simplistic, tedious and repetitive; in attempting to express a concept – such as the fact that Elizabeth and her sisters got their good looks from their father, or that Elizabeth always sided with her husband, or just what the hell happened to her young brothers, or any number of other examples – Plaidy would describe it, then she would describe it again…and again…and again…it was like she thought the only way she could make her point stick in her reader’s mind was to shove it down their throat until they vomited, which seriously detracted from any enjoyment of the book. As you could well imagine. And don’t get me started on all the inner monologues in which one character after another gives detailed background information to the reader in which their recent past is chronicled, just in case you know nothing of Tudor history; fear not: they’ll tell you all you need to know in their heads, as people are wont to do.
The long-ass title is also not very accurate, seeing as how Elizabeth of York is in fact an ancillary character in this novel, barely a secondary player in a story that is, ostensibly, half hers; overall she is portrayed as a meek woman who bows to her husband’s authority in all things and never asserts her own will or opinion, an assertion I found difficult to believe. I do believe, however, that Plaidy gives an accurate picture of Henry VII as a rather joyless man who does what he feels is best for his country and his house, but lacks warmth and emotion, even toward his family; a cold fish who nevertheless put England right again after so many decades of war and death and destruction. In comparison to his heirs, it is no wonder that so sober and dedicated a king should be out shown by the minor suns that were Henry VIII and Elizabeth I – but if not for Henry VII, neither of these mighty Tudors would have ever been.
To Hold the Crown, then, was a
disappointing read, and if this author’s other work is anything like it, then
they will be all too easy to skip.
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