#written by brandon thomas ofc

[fideidefenswhore]

this is a book (the top review files it as a #wall-banger, appropriate, although i could not do this because i read it on my kindle through a loophole that didn’t return the library rental when it was due and had been meaning to finish it forever, and damned if i wasn’t going to finish my summit fever of this book of enthrallingly trashy mediocrity) about the poles, the ‘white rose’, so it’s weird that the exeter conspiracy and her own imprisonment is the most phoned-in part, the most static. even though it was fiction i thought it might give me some insights into that but it really...didn’t. so, i’ve been reading this other pop history book about the same (at least it’s not w/e/i/r but also i wish there was an academic one?) because it seems like the only one out there, apparently there’s an upcoming one but the release date is 2024.

what else, hm, it’s very...elastic, this ‘curse’. all the male heirs of the tudor line die, etc, well 1st...everyone dies, so. it makes this curse very hard to deny. henry viii has somehow escaped it because he’s not the heir, arthur was, so it hits him. does james v, who died around the age of thirty, count? does james vi/i? moreover, does henry brandon (he’s not mentioned in this book, one assumes because she likes his mother, and divides this world into good-- katharine of aragon’s friends and admirers-- and evil-- those that don’t deep-throat her toes)? the curse does not specify that the male heirs die before maturity or in their youth; there’s a brief pause where the fourth wall breaks down a little between the poles and they’re like oh, henry fitzroy has not died because he’s not an heir, he’s born outside of marriage, but then ofc he dies at seventeen and margaret is like ah yes....The Curse. there are no exceptions. so...idek. she should have just written an alternate history with magic, if she wants the magic to have been believably real, is what i’m getting at. plenty of bloodline curses in historical fantasy (there’s also some fourth wall breaking where the narrator considers that curses can be self-fulfilling, the duke of buckingham dies for hearing and believing in one, and the very weird, offhand remark that henry has ‘enacted’ his own curse because his daughter’s subsequent depression to his abandonment has made her ‘sterile’).

also going by the logic of well second sons can skip this curse but first sons are doomed, you would think edward vi might have lived into adulthood like henry viii....should they have specified something about being of different mothers, idk...

the depiction of princess mary was actually one of the better ones i’ve read. not very balanced, but actually very believably sympathetic, it’s refreshing to read her from the perspective of someone that adores and loves her. i actually found myself wishing that the novel had followed her instead (i found this with both TOBG and the kingmaker’s daughter, wishing it was from the POV of the ‘mean’ sister instead-- anne or isabel-- but be careful what you wish for; ik the queen’s fool was a mess, sooo...).

the depiction of the boleyns is about what one expected, myopic and yet ornately dressed inventiveness for fulsome moral comeuppance and scolding. thomas boleyn was apparently margaret pole’s ‘steward’ (there is a record of thomas boleyn being granted the reversion of bushey manor, but this instead being given to margaret pole in the year an act of parliament restored her, but none of him being awarded the stewardship, although he was awared others... ‘my former steward’ has more of a bite than ‘a steward’, one supposes, particularly since her own son was also...a steward...) so that her nose-holding at his rise is given some personal touch, george boleyn was ‘useless’, while at least mary boleyn was ‘fertile’ and the ‘sweeter of the two sisters’, anne boleyn’s banner and chariot and insignia are of her falcon ‘attacking the pomegranate’ (alright, i know where the origin of this ‘factoid’ on tudorstagram came from now, at least) rather than the only place that was ever found, the margin of one of her musicbooks, rather than her actual symbol, & every subject duly spits on the ground whenever this chariot passes, anne boleyn has no friends except for ‘other boleyns and howards’ (margaret lee, bridget wingfield,  and others do not exist), there are ‘no women of any rank’ and ‘none of the king’s family’ willing to attend her at calais (they included a duke’s daughter and two viscountesses, including his aunt-in-law) or ever acknowledge her (margaret tudor’s recognition of anne as queen is excised from the canon of this entire series), anne boleyn is a ‘commoner’ (the sting of this is somewhat weakened by how margaret pole also refers to margaret douglas, the daughter of a queen and earl, as a ‘commoner’), etc.

[sockich]

You made us them. You played into the stories they tell about the movement. You involved innocent people, and you made them right. No... we finally made them stop.

Aquaman: The Becoming #4 by Brandon Thomas, art by Scott Koblish