Innocent Traitor
A Novel of Lady Jane Grey
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4.3 • 95 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “vibrant and fresh” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) portrait of Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Days’ Queen—the stunning first novel from the renowned author hailed as “the finest historian of English monarchical succession writing” (The Boston Globe)
“Poignant [and] gripping.”—The Seattle Times
“Enormously entertaining.”—The Washington Post
I am now a condemned traitor. . . . I am to die when I have hardly begun to live.
The child of a scheming father and a ruthless mother, Lady Jane Grey is born during the harrowingly turbulent period between Anne Boleyn’s beheading and the demise of Jane’s infamous great-uncle, King Henry VIII. Vexed by not having a male heir, Jane’s abusive parents connive to use their intelligent, dutiful young daughter as a pawn in a dangerous dynastic game.
But when the premature death of Jane’s adolescent cousin—and Henry’s successor—King Edward VI thwarts their original ploy, Jane unwittingly finds herself at the center of the struggle for supremacy. And though she has no ambitions to rule, preferring to immerse herself in books and religion, she is forced to accept the crown, and by so doing sets off a firestorm of intrigue, betrayal, and tragedy.
“In giving narrative voice to her subjects Alison Weir brings us into emotional contact with them in a way that an unadorned historical account does not.”—Boston Sunday Globe
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Popular biographer Weir (Eleanor of Aquitaine, etc.) makes her historical fiction debut with this coming-of-age novel set in the time of Henry VIII. Weir's heroine is Lady Jane Grey (1537 1554), whose ascension to the English throne was briefly and unluckily promoted by opponents of Henry's Catholic heir, Mary. As Weir tells it, Jane's parents, the Marquess and Marchioness of Dorset, groom her from infancy to be the perfect consort for Henry's son, Prince Edward, entrusting their daughter to a nurse's care while they attend to affairs at court. Jane relishes lessons in music, theology, philosophy and literature, but struggles to master courtly manners as her mother demands. Not even the beheadings of Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard deter parental ambition. When Edward dies, Lord and Lady Dorset maneuver the throne for their 16-year-old daughter, risking her life as well as increased violence between Protestants and Catholics. Using multiple narrators, Weir tries to weave a conspiratorial web with Jane caught at the center, but the ever-changing perspectives prove unwieldy: Jane speaking as a four-year-old with a modern historian's vocabulary, for example, just doesn't ring true. But Weir proves herself deft as ever describing Tudor food, manners, clothing, pastimes (including hunting and jousting) and marital politics.
