Reading History: "The King's Pleasure"

Alison Weir's newest historical fiction novel sheds important light on one of England's most (in)famous monarchs.

I’ve long been a fan of Alison Weir’s nonfiction works–her biography of Queen Elizabeth I remains one of the best books I’ve ever read on the Virgin Queen–and I’ve been similarly impressed with her numerous forays into the world of historical fiction. I was particularly entranced by her six volumes focusing on each of the wives of Henry VIII, giving these women a chance to stand on their own and tell their lives from their own points of view. Now, having covered the eventful life and premature death of Elizabeth of York, Weir turns her pen to Elizabeth’s son, Henry VIII. 

Though told in the third person, The King’s Pleasure nevertheless gives us a privileged glimpse into Henry’s mind, and we follow him from his early days living in the shadow of his mother’s and brother’s death to his own demise several decades later. Along the way we see his encounters with the most important figures of his life, from ever-loyal and long-suffering Katherine of Aragon to the beguiling Anne Boleyn, from the competent and ruthless Wolsey to the efficient and equally ruthless Cromwell. These are the men and women who helped to make Henry who he was, for better and for worse.

Obviously, much of the book is devoted to Harry's romance with Katherine of Aragon and the subsequent dissolution of their marriage as the king’s eye alights on the mysterious, alluring, and opinionated Anne Boleyn. This threeway affair takes up a good two-thirds of the novel, and the remainder contends with the other wives who emerged in their shadow. Among his later wives, it’s Katheryn Howard who seems to exert the strongest hold on Harry’s imagination. Weir allows us to see the extent to which she makes the aging and ailing king feel like a young man again, allowing him to recapture the sense of energy and vivacity that marked his years as a young king. At the same time, she also allows us to see just how much her betrayal wounds him, not just because it is a breaking of his heart but also because she makes a fool of him. If there is one thing that Harry cannot stand, it’s being made to feel as if he’s been duped.

As important as the wives are to Harry’s story, they are matched by the counselors who surround him and help him to craft policy. These are the men who were key to many of Henry’s greatest achievements, particularly the Reformation and the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Yet both Wolsey and Cromwell learn to their regret that what the king can grant he can also take away, and while the former is saved from the ignominy of dying on the block, the latter is not. In each case, Weir allows us to gain a glimpse into the mind of a man who was so quickly able to turn against the very men that he had elevated to greatness. 

When dealing with the fictional version of Henry VIII, an author has a couple of choices to make. Are they going to paint Henry as a self-absorbed tyrant, a man of indomitable will determined to remake the world–and the Church–in his own image, or is he going to be an endlessly vacillating and rather weak man, someone easily manipulated and controlled by the men and women around him? Weir strikes something of a middle road, and while her Harry is a man who is very prone to barking at his Council and other advisers to do his will (Weir leans a lot on the word “barked,” by the way), he is also someone who is easily led to believe what his advisers want him to believe at a given time. This is true throughout his life, though for different reasons. When he’s young and simply wants to enjoy his newfound freedom after his father’s death, it’s due to Wolsey’s skill at handling state affairs that he is able to do so; when he wants to become free of Anne and seize control of the Church, it’s to Cromwell that he turns.

Henry VIII emerges from the pages of The King’s Pleasure as someone who is so ensconced in his own little part of the world that he finds it almost impossible to think outside of it. Like all narcissists, he has the ability to justify every one of his actions, even those that are the most cruel and heinous (see also: the executions of his various wives, as well as the betrayal and abandonment of even his most loyal and competent servants). Despite all of this, it’s to Weir’s credit that she makes Harry into something much more than just the stereotype with which so many people are familiar. He is, instead, a king who is as complex and multi-faceted as any other person, someone who was capable of both great cruelty and great kindness and generosity. 

I was particularly struck by Weir’s skill at showing us Henry’s feelings as his body slowly slips into morbid obesity and decrepitude. For a man like Henry, who spent so much of his youth as a sort of golden boy capable of acts of great physical prowess, the failure of his body is inextricably linked to his growing paranoia and rage, which he is happy to unleash on everyone in his vicinity, including his last wife, Katharine Parr. It might be going a bit too far to say that The King’s Pleasure is a tragedy, but there is nevertheless a certain irony in the title, in that so much of the novel focuses on his inevitable decline. 

The King’s Pleasure joins those rare gems–including Margaret George’s magisterial The Autobiography of Henry VIII–that illuminates Henry in new and interesting ways. In situating this particular monarch in his unique time and place, Weir allows us to see how he was both a product of his own culture and also an engine of history in his own right. His pleasures and his pains would go on to have an enormous impact on the history of England, and so it is fitting that we should get such a magisterial and hefty book as The King’s Pleasure.