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berenikeasteria 's review for:
The Constant Princess
by Philippa Gregory
It is difficult to know where to start with this review. Perhaps by highlighting one of the most pertinent points. The novel is written alternately from third person and first person point of view. Usually, a scene will occur written in the third person, followed by an internal monologue from Catalina's character about the events which have just occurred. Is this poor writing, or does this continuous switching of views work within the story? The premise sets off alarm bells that the story may seem confusing or disjointed with so much switching about, and indeed there are other novels which employ this tactic to disastrous effect. Gregory manages to prevent head-spinning confusion, but instead demonstrates a lack of writing skill. To be told facts about a character's personality and opinions is fine from time to time, but these ought to be demonstrated mainly through the character's actions. This gives the reader a sense of plausibility, since in real life we judge others mainly based on what we observe of them and have no magic method to take a peek into their thoughts. When authors have trouble showing, they fall back on simply telling their readers what they want to convey and expecting the reader to buy into it. It's poor writing.
Gregory lacks the skill or imagination to develop a characterisation over time, so she just plops down huge chunks which delve into Catalina's character and emotional reactions by falling back onto character thoughts providing the necessary narration and exposition. It's about as subtle as a charging rhinoceros, and is a bad writer's crutch. Instead of observing for ourselves that Catalina has fallen in love with Arthur, it must be spelt out through an internal monologue. Many of these monologues refer to events and other characters without actually showing us what happened or giving us any real evidence of what we're being told. This would be bad enough, but oftentimes these character's thoughts segments reveal that internally Catalina's thoughts directly contradict the actions she undertakes as described in the preceding third person perspective scene, leaving the reader to feel like they've been hit in the face by a frying pan out of the blue.
The book also suffers from frequent examples of redundant repetition. This is where a writer might write several sentences explaining something in a slightly different way each time but which are essentially all conveying the same message. This makes the passage sound long, clumsy, and unnecessary. For example, in one monologue we are told, with very little variation of the wording, that Catalina and her sisters walked in the gardens and ate the fruit and bathed in running waters, all created by the Moorish architects, no less than three times. This thrice repetition, without hardly any rephrasing, just plopped down there on the page, smacks of cut and paste. It's like Philippa Gregory really wanted to get in there somewhere this idea, tried writing three similar approaches and then forgot to delete two of them. Repetition like this should have been cut out in editing. The most grating example of redundant repetition is however Catalina's constant insistence that it is her destiny to be queen of England. I get that she's the "constant princess" of the title and that Catalina's faith and determination to secure her match is what keeps her going through the long years of hardship, and that it's the running theme of the book, but it doesn't need to be repeated word for word every ten pages.
Gregory's choice of topic piques the interest. Katherine of Aragon is not frequently written about in historical fiction, and the early years of her life even less so - most works featuring her focus on the messy proceedings of her divorce from Henry. However, Gregory misjudges the pacing of events. As a book about the life of Katherine of Aragon, I expected it to cover her entire biography, but instead the book ends only a couple of years into the reign of Henry VIII, thus omitting entirely many of the most significant events of Katherine's life. So, the apparent focus of "The Constant Princess" is the theme of Catalina's struggle to achieve her goal of becoming Queen of England and her constancy in never wavering from this task. Logically, the climax of the story should then be the point at which this goal is achieved, perhaps at her wedding to Henry with the end of the book coming after she has managed to successfully pull the wool over his eyes on the wedding night. Inexplicably, Gregory chooses not to make this the story's climax or end the novel at this point, but plods on for several more chapters into the first couple of years of Henry's reign, in which largely nothing happens at all except Katherine schemes to get her husband out of the country so that she can tempt the Scots into invading England and defeat them in a decisive battle. I suppose Gregory thought that the successful wedding and achievement of all Catalina's hopes wasn't exciting enough, and that she thought it would highlight Catalina's links to her battling mother by having her "heroically" win a battle. After the massive build up that Gregory gives it, the whole matter is resolved when a messenger arrives to tell Katherine that the army she sent ahead under an English commander has defeated the Scots. This may have happened historically, which is fair enough, but Gregory's failure is in building up Katherine as a warrior queen who will personally don armour and lead the English into battle, as the climax of the novel, and then Katherine never has to go through with it - causing the build up of promised heroics and excitement to fall completely flat.
Gregory portrays the relationship between Catalina and Arthur as initially awkward and frosty, but swiftly turns it into a bodice-ripping whirlwind romance worthy of a Harlequin pulp novel, with Arthur sneaking about every night to come and see her. The eponymous character herself was virtually unrecognisable from the actual historical Katherine, and perhaps even worse came across as selfish and unlikable. She ruins the reputation of one of her ladies in order to keep her secret about the consummation, schemes to get Henry out of the way so that she can go to war against the Scots, and denigrates Henry's sisters - Catalina comes across as a self-centred, pretentious prima donna. We are told that she and Arthur imagine a better way to rule, and Catalina's internal thoughts repeatedly tell us that she is supposedly concerned with doing what's best for England - and yet she cruelly orchestrates the downfall of Lady Margaret Beaufort, who is attempting to save the country's finances, for no other reason than Catalina is desperate to keep her grip over the young Henry VIII. Her actions thus contradict what we are being told, causing Catalina to comes across as vain, self-serving, and cruel. Philippa Gregory takes a shot at trying to explain the origins of Henry's later notorious changeable temper and arguably tyrannical actions, by depicting him here as slow witted, fairly self-centred, and a spoilt child. This crude stab fails to even get close to the enigma of the complex personality of Henry, and explain how he transformed from enlightened prince to autocratic tyrant.
Overall, whilst the language is at least competent it is nothing exceptional, and Philippa Gregory falls down in her storycraft, using bad author crutches and warping all the historical fact out of the novel. These characters resemble their historical counterparts in name only. Read if you've got a few hours train journey ahead of you and want to fill up the time with indulgent but mediocre fluff, not if you want something of groundbreaking substance to get your teeth into. If you give this one a pass you won't be missing anything.