Jane Seymour, The Haunted Queen (Six Tudor Queens #3) by Alison Weir

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Acclaimed author and historian Alison Weir continues her epic Six Tudor Queens series with this third captivating novel, which brings to life Jane Seymour, King Henry VIII’s most cherished bride and mother of his only male heir.

Ever since she was a child, Jane has longed for a cloistered life as a nun. But her large noble family has other plans, and, as an adult, Jane is invited to the King’s court to serve as lady-in-waiting for Queen Katherine of Aragon. The devout Katherine shows kindness to all her ladies, almost like a second mother, which makes rumors of Henry’s lustful pursuit of Anne Boleyn—who is also lady-in-waiting to the queen—all the more shocking. For Jane, the betrayal triggers memories of a painful incident that shaped her beliefs about marriage.

But once Henry disavows Katherine and secures his new queen—altering the religious landscape of England—he turns his eye to another: Jane herself. Urged to return the King’s affection and earn favor for her family, Jane is drawn into a dangerous political game that pits her conscience against her desires. Can Jane be the one to give the King his long-sought-after son or will she meet a fate similar to the women who came before her?

Bringing new insight to this compelling story, Weir marries meticulous research with gripping historical fiction to re-create the dramas and intrigues of the most renown court in English history. At its center is a loving and compassionate woman who captures the heart of a king, and whose life will hang in the balance for it.

Source: advance copy provided by publisher in exchange for an honest review


One of my best friends and I have talked about how we don't understand why tv shows or movies would purposefully revamp actual historic events when they were dramatic enough in real life to begin with. I get it, not everything translates to the screen so artistic license is taken. So what does this conversation have to do with Jane Seymour, The Haunted Queen? Everything because reading this shows that there was no bigger soap opera in Europe than the court of Henry VIII. 

We are dropped into one of the most tumultuous times during Henry's reign. Still freshly divorced from Katherine of Aragon, his first wife and now turning sour on his second wife, Anne Boleyn, Henry's need to produce a legitimate male heir to ensure a peaceful succession to the throne is in overdrive. The political machine is hard at work trying to figure out how to make this happen. But first they need to do damage control caused by the divorce from the much beloved first or "true" queen, then they have to get Henry away from Anne which then paves the way for him to take a new wife, and that would be Jane Seymour.

As a knight's daughter, Jane's family isn't as rich or influential as the Boleyns but they have a presence. Being the lady-in-waiting to Katherine and then later to Anne puts her in Henry's orbit. Jane isn't as ambitious the way Anne was believed to be. In her book, Weir offers us an alternative: that as a child she had wanted to live a quiet life as a nun but later realized that that wasn't a life suited for her. Jane presents a more demure nature that befits a queen and more importantly, is acceptable to the royal court and to a country after Henry's divorce. After the scandal that has followed Anne, Henry is convinced that Jane is the answer. She starts believing it, too.

Here's the deal: reading about The Tudors - specifically Henry and his wives - stirs up all kinds of emotions. I go from sympathy to annoyance to outrage and then back to sympathy. and I preat that cycle. Keeping in mind the time period (that Henry needed to establish his legitimacy domestically and internationally) and what a woman's role was then, I have to remember that the women were essentially pawns in a greater game played by the ego-driven and politically ambitious men and families surrounding them. These women were encouraged to use their feminine ways to woo the king by any means necessary, but the dangerous flipside to that was that their femininity was also used against them when they proved to be a political liability and no longer useful (see: Anne Boleyn). Reading Jane Seymour made that more apparent because she isn't necessarily in the thick of things but merely an observer for most of the time she's at court. She witnesses Katherine's humiliation, Henry's estrangement from his two daughters, Anne's (and her family's) rise through the ranks and then seemingly overnight, the machine behind Anne's downfall. It was illuminating for me to see these events through her eyes and I have to say that I learned something and gained a better perspective on this factious time. As always after I've read one of Alison Weir's books, I come away with a better perspective for these events and some of the players involved. As I said before, this is pure soap opera that you can't even make up! I have a special affection for Jane now. I'd like to think that at her heart she was a genuine person who yearned to bring about peace and stability to the monarchy and to Henry's personal life. In some ways she did but at the end of the day, she was another in a line of women served up to the king.

~ Bel

Anne Boleyn: A King's Obsession by Alison Weir

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A novel filled with new insights into the story of Henry VIII’s second—and most infamous—wife, Anne Boleyn. The second book in the epic Six Tudor Queens series, from the acclaimed historian and bestselling author of Katherine of Aragon.

It is the spring of 1527. Henry VIII has come to Hever Castle in Kent to pay court to Anne Boleyn. He is desperate to have her. For this mirror of female perfection he will set aside his Queen and all Cardinal Wolsey’s plans for a dynastic French marriage.

Anne Boleyn is not so sure. She loathes Wolsey for breaking her betrothal to the Earl of Northumberland’s son, Harry Percy, whom she had loved. She does not welcome the King’s advances; she knows that she can never give him her heart.

But hers is an opportunist family. And whether Anne is willing or not, they will risk it all to see their daughter on the throne…

Source: advance copy provided by publisher in exchange for an honest review



I adore Alison Weir immensely. I've always been a fan of history but while I was in college I lost the desire to read it much. A couple of years after I graduated, I happened upon her book Elizabeth I and instantly became a fan. She is singlehandedly responsible for my renewed love of history, particularly The Tudor era. I own many of her books. On the other hand, I tend to be a bit skeptical when it comes to historical fiction because I have a tendency to fact-check details which is rather annoying and takes away all enjoyment of the subject matter. But I'd read one of her historical fictions not too far back and liked her approach, and now that she's doing a series on the 6 Tudor wives of Henry VIII, I couldn't be happier!

I think most people who've heard of Anne Boleyn and are familiar with her fall into two camps: she was a power-hungry, manipulative woman or she was a pawn used by her father and maternal uncle for the sole purpose of raising the family's rank in the English aristocracy. Nowadays, some even view her as an early feminist. Any which way you look at it there's no denying that she's a controversial figure who was at the center of a major religious reform in England that had long-lasting reverberations around the European continent. 

In Anne Boleyn: A King's Obsession, Weir explores Anne's life from a young girl who became lady-in-waiting at several royal courts, and how her experiences there helped shaped the woman who would become Henry VIII's future queen. Anne's family wasn't super rich but her father's growing stature as the King's foreign diplomat meant that Anne and her older sister were afforded certain privileges, the most important of them being an education. Anne took to her studies easily whereas her sister Mary is mostly remembered for her looks and eventually becoming the King's mistress. I feel that Weir chose to show how Anne's intelligence and critical thinking along with her proximity to some very important female figures she looked up to at the time helped her develop her feminist ideas. Well as feminist as you could be in the 1500's. I was surprised by how likeable and even admirable she was during the early years when it came to some of her beliefs including how she was determined to keep her good name. It's in the later years when she became the object of Henry VIII's affections and succumbed to him that her narrative changed. She became corrupted by the power she wielded over an infatuated King, taking advantage of him to suit her needs or those of her family. Her arrogance led to her thinking she was invincible but ultimately it's what led to her downfall. She garnered a lot of enemies along the way, any one of them happy to see her out of the picture. Weir lays it all out there - the intrigue and the plotting - showing how Anne went from King's darling to scorned wife. More impressively, Weir does a brilliant job of demonstrating the mental and emotional changes Anne went through over the years, the last few being filled with anguish and uncertainty. The final paragraph in this novel is a haunting image that stays with you. 

If you're a fan of historical fiction and this is an area you'd like to explore, you'd be in good hands with Alison Weir. Familiar as I am with this piece of history and its outcome, I was glued to this book because Weir offered a few different perspectives. When it comes to Anne Boleyn, I'm pretty open-minded. I do believe she's a complex woman, so divisive yet, I also think a woman who is not given her due. She did help encourage some necessary church reform though the greedy nobles took that in a different direction. I think Henry VIII was indeed in love with Anne, and she wanted to give him, even promised him a son but that never came to be. Who knows if her place at court might have been secured had she been able to bear a male heir. The irony is something she could not have known at the time: that her greatest legacy would be that of her only surviving child, a daughter and the future queen, Elizabeth I. 

~ Bel