The Waiting Game
The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens: A History
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4.1 • 14 Ratings
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- $20.99
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
A New York TImes Book Review Editor's Pick
A colorful and authoritative narrative history of the often-overlooked—yet hugely influential—figures of the Tudor court: the ladies-in-waiting.
Every Tudor Queen had ladies-in-waiting. They were her confidantes and her chaperones. Only the Queen's ladies had the right to enter her most private chambers, spending hours helping her to get dressed and undressed, caring for her clothes and jewels, listening to her secrets. But they also held a unique power. A quiet word behind the scenes, an appropriately timed gift, a well-negotiated marriage alliance were all forms of political agency wielded expertly by women.
The Waiting Game explores the daily lives of ladies-in-waiting, revealing the secrets of recruitment, costume, what they ate, where (and with whom) they slept. We meet María de Salinas, who traveled to England with Catherine of Aragon when just a teenager and spied for her during the divorce from Henry VIII. Anne Boleyn's lady-in-waiting Jane Parker was instrumental in the execution of not one, but two queens. And maid-of-honor Anne Basset kept her place through the last four consorts, negotiating the conflicting loyalties of her birth family, her mistress the Queen, and even the desires of the King himself.
As Henry changed wives—and changed the very fabric of the country's structure besides—these women had to make choices about loyalty that simply didn't exist before. The Waiting Game is the first time their vital story has been told.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Clark (Six Lives) paints a captivating group portrait of the "phalanx of pretty faces" who served as ladies-in-waiting to the six wives of Henry VIII from 1501 to 1547. As royal retinue, they routinely shared a room with the queen and, occasionally, with the king, Clark explains. Among them is Bessie Blount, who gave birth to the king's son Henry Fitzroy while his first wife Catherine of Aragon, mother of Princess Mary, struggled through a series of stillbirths—a fact that contributed, Clark notes, to Henry's relentless pursuit of a legitimate son by churning through five additional queens. Other subjects include the "immovably loyal" Maria de Salinas, who spied on Anne Boleyn for a soon-to-be-sidelined Catherine; and Jane Parker, who married Anne Boleyn's brother and then turned on him during Anne's downfall (she likely gave evidence that led to his execution). Throughout, Clark highlights how the queen's privy chamber served as a staging ground for plots and schemes involving marriage, sex, and high-profile gifts that were carefully designed to impact the affairs of state. It's an astute study of how the personal and political were deeply intertwined at Tudor courts.
