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cher_n_books 's review for:
The King's Curse
by Philippa Gregory
4 stars - It was great. I loved it.
An excellent end to the series! The author has a knack for bringing historical figures to life and I always looked forward to returning to this book while reading it.
I always learn something new when I read Philippa Gregory's book. With this one, I found this excerpt from the Author's Note to be particularly intriguing:
Current interesting research from Catrina Banks Whitley and Kyra Kramer suggests that Henry may have had the rare Kell positive blood type, which can cause miscarriages, stillbirths, and infant deaths when the mother has the more common Kell negative blood type. Whitley and Kramer also suggest that Henry’s later symptoms of paranoia and anger may have been caused by McLeod syndrome—a disease found only in Kell positive individuals. McLeod syndrome usually develops when sufferers are aged around forty and causes physical degeneration and personality changes resulting in paranoia, depression, and irrational behavior.
Interestingly, Whitley and Kramer trace Kell syndrome back to Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford, the suspected witch and mother of Elizabeth Woodville. Sometimes, uncannily, fiction creates a metaphor for an historical truth: in a fictional scene in the novel, Elizabeth, together with her daughter Elizabeth of York, curse the murderer of her sons, swearing that they shall lose their son and their grandsons, while in real life her genes—unknown and undetectable at the time—entered the Tudor line through her daughter and may have caused the deaths of four Tudor babies to Katherine of Aragon and three to Anne Boleyn.
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Favorite Quote: She’s like an anchor that he has forgotten, but still it keeps him steady.
First Sentence: In the moment of waking I am innocent, my conscience clear of any wrongdoing.
An excellent end to the series! The author has a knack for bringing historical figures to life and I always looked forward to returning to this book while reading it.
I always learn something new when I read Philippa Gregory's book. With this one, I found this excerpt from the Author's Note to be particularly intriguing:
Current interesting research from Catrina Banks Whitley and Kyra Kramer suggests that Henry may have had the rare Kell positive blood type, which can cause miscarriages, stillbirths, and infant deaths when the mother has the more common Kell negative blood type. Whitley and Kramer also suggest that Henry’s later symptoms of paranoia and anger may have been caused by McLeod syndrome—a disease found only in Kell positive individuals. McLeod syndrome usually develops when sufferers are aged around forty and causes physical degeneration and personality changes resulting in paranoia, depression, and irrational behavior.
Interestingly, Whitley and Kramer trace Kell syndrome back to Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford, the suspected witch and mother of Elizabeth Woodville. Sometimes, uncannily, fiction creates a metaphor for an historical truth: in a fictional scene in the novel, Elizabeth, together with her daughter Elizabeth of York, curse the murderer of her sons, swearing that they shall lose their son and their grandsons, while in real life her genes—unknown and undetectable at the time—entered the Tudor line through her daughter and may have caused the deaths of four Tudor babies to Katherine of Aragon and three to Anne Boleyn.
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Favorite Quote: She’s like an anchor that he has forgotten, but still it keeps him steady.
First Sentence: In the moment of waking I am innocent, my conscience clear of any wrongdoing.