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mousecroghan's review against another edition
5.0
Well my children are related to the heroine so a good start. Not just her but literally every person in the book. Including Henry IV. Anyway. I have found my new favourite author of historical fiction. I am your slave Mrs O’Brien. Command me as you see fit.
anne_marie_samp's review against another edition
emotional
informative
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
lreay89's review against another edition
3.0
I would like to believe that in some of the marriages in the middle ages there was some love and affection.
I'm however not naive and believe that John Hastings could have seduced Elizabeth on purpose to further his own ambitions of having a powerful Lancaster ally.
Do I think her novels are very heavy on courtly love and affection - absolutely. Do I think that her novels are also sketchy on historical fact - yes at times. The most startling admission to me was her portrayal of the fact that Henry IV sanctioned and even suggested her 3rd marriage to John Cornewall 1st Baron Fanhope which a quick Google search will tell you is far from the truth. I don't understand why this was changed as it could have fitted in very well with the haughty, proud and wilful portrayal of Elizabeth that she has created so well.
Perhaps its because she had spun this web of everlasting love between Elizabeth and John and thought that such a quick marriage after Johns death wouldn't ring true with this portrayal of their love and affection at the end.
This is disappointing as I am an adult reader and I do understand that an idyllic relationship is hard to come by. I also think that it would have been more realistic to show Elizabeth hardening her heart against this man that she loved. Who wouldn't? The guy tried to kill her brother and nephews. That is something that would surely have tested even the greatest love story and could perhaps explain why Elizabeth married so quickly after Johns demise.
I didn't completely hate this book as is reflected in the 3 star rating but I do think that it could have explored Elizabeth's conflicting loyalties a little better. Having read several of Anne's previous novels I feel that she is slotting each heroine into the same mould as the one before. Love sick, proud, haughty, self absorbed - and its starting to wear thin on me slightly.
I think more complex portrayals of these women are required. I do think Elizabeth probably did love John (they had lots of children) so this does suggest some level of affection from them both. But I do think that Anne needs to move away from this romanticising of each of the powerful women she is portraying.
These women are being reduced to gown loving air headed almost idiots in my view. There was some political thought process from Elizabeth at times but this was overshadowed by long prose about gowns and how brilliant she was as a daughter of Lancaster. I'm not stupid I do understand that she would have been brought up to believe as someone of Royal blood that she was very important but being reminded of this every 5 minutes is tiresome and unnecessary.
I will keep reading Anne's books - after all any book has something to add to life's rich picture, but I do keep in mind the somewhat lose portrayal of these women which I think is a real shame as books about historical women can only be a powerful thing.
I'm however not naive and believe that John Hastings could have seduced Elizabeth on purpose to further his own ambitions of having a powerful Lancaster ally.
Do I think her novels are very heavy on courtly love and affection - absolutely. Do I think that her novels are also sketchy on historical fact - yes at times. The most startling admission to me was her portrayal of the fact that Henry IV sanctioned and even suggested her 3rd marriage to John Cornewall 1st Baron Fanhope which a quick Google search will tell you is far from the truth. I don't understand why this was changed as it could have fitted in very well with the haughty, proud and wilful portrayal of Elizabeth that she has created so well.
Perhaps its because she had spun this web of everlasting love between Elizabeth and John and thought that such a quick marriage after Johns death wouldn't ring true with this portrayal of their love and affection at the end.
This is disappointing as I am an adult reader and I do understand that an idyllic relationship is hard to come by. I also think that it would have been more realistic to show Elizabeth hardening her heart against this man that she loved. Who wouldn't? The guy tried to kill her brother and nephews. That is something that would surely have tested even the greatest love story and could perhaps explain why Elizabeth married so quickly after Johns demise.
I didn't completely hate this book as is reflected in the 3 star rating but I do think that it could have explored Elizabeth's conflicting loyalties a little better. Having read several of Anne's previous novels I feel that she is slotting each heroine into the same mould as the one before. Love sick, proud, haughty, self absorbed - and its starting to wear thin on me slightly.
I think more complex portrayals of these women are required. I do think Elizabeth probably did love John (they had lots of children) so this does suggest some level of affection from them both. But I do think that Anne needs to move away from this romanticising of each of the powerful women she is portraying.
These women are being reduced to gown loving air headed almost idiots in my view. There was some political thought process from Elizabeth at times but this was overshadowed by long prose about gowns and how brilliant she was as a daughter of Lancaster. I'm not stupid I do understand that she would have been brought up to believe as someone of Royal blood that she was very important but being reminded of this every 5 minutes is tiresome and unnecessary.
I will keep reading Anne's books - after all any book has something to add to life's rich picture, but I do keep in mind the somewhat lose portrayal of these women which I think is a real shame as books about historical women can only be a powerful thing.
ewil6681's review
emotional
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
meggggggff's review
adventurous
challenging
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
rhonaea's review
4.0
I know, I know, another Plantagenet thriller. Elizabeth, daughter of John of Gaunt who has previously featured as in books I’ve read but never as a central character. She lived in interesting times - sister of a would be and future king, married to the half brother of the siting King. The struggle for the Crown between them would sweep her up and tear her loyalties. If you enjoyed Susan Howatch’s The Wheel of Fortune this is for you; also appealing to Philippa Gregory fans.
tharina's review
2.0
Around the Year in 52 Books 2021: A book with a character who can be found in a deck of cards.
lisa_setepenre's review
1.0
Elizabeth of Lancaster is the willful and proud daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. When he marries her to the well-titled but eight-year-old ‘Jonty’ on her, she is furious and unwilling but makes an attempt to accept it. Until, that is, she begins to fall in love and lust with John Holland, the king’s older half-brother. Even as she tempts scandal and disgrace by tangling with him, the politics of Richard II’s reign threaten to tear Elizabeth’s marriage and family apart.
Oh boy, I really did not like this.
I had picked this up, along with most of Anne O’Brien’s in-print Plantagenet novels (this is out of print, but I found a rather bedraggled copy in a bookshop anyway), after really enjoying her novel [b:The Shadow Queen|32181766|The Shadow Queen|Anne O'Brien|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1488206873s/32181766.jpg|52819547]. Although it was not a perfect read, most of my complaints tended towards the nitpicky historical details like “um, no, Joan of Kent and the Black Prince would not be playing a courtly game of archery, they lived in a time where archery was the purview of peasants”.
The King’s Sister had some of those nitpicky issues, although they stood out to me a lot less – that might be because they weren’t as common or as striking, or because I had bigger fish to fry.
I did not enjoy Elizabeth as a narrator or a character. She’s self-obsessed and vain, snobbish and selfish. I can sympathise with her plight – a sexually frustrated, seventeen-year-old woman ready and eager for a husband married to an eight-year-old boy. I can’t sympathise with her, however, as she is immediately characterised as a woman who sneers at ‘Jonty’ for not being the handsome knight she’s been dreaming of marrying. He’s eight years old and harmless. He’s not putting frogs in her bed or anything disgusting, he’s just a cute eight year old who’s interested in puppies and growing up to be a good knight.
Elizabeth also comes off, in the early chapters, as a dumbass. So many people warn her off John Holland, but her response is pretty much “guess I’ll go flirt with him then” and okay, in the long run, it turns out to be the right choice because it’s true love in Anne O’Brien’s tale and not John Holland being John Holland, but it’s infuriating as a character trait.
(I should admit that I’m clearly not the right audience for this novel because I really can’t come at John Holland as a romantic hero.)
Now, Elizabeth’s selfishness is clearly lampshaded as a character flaw throughout the book and in the final chapter, we do see her finally begin to grow beyond it, but man, having such a selfish narrator is not a fun read. It’s not like, say, Philippa Gregory’s [b:The Red Queen|7148256|The Red Queen (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #3)|Philippa Gregory|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1281335912s/7148256.jpg|7413156] where Margaret Beaufort is meant to be unlikeable and I’m not saying that Gregory’s novel was better (it was barely tolerable) but we’re meant to genuinely root for Elizabeth and all I could do was wish she’d have some kind of rude awakening because she’s such a horrid, small-minded person.
This was sort of doubly disappointing to me. I’d be really impressed with how complex the narrative was in The Shadow Queen and I’d chosen this, rather than the other O’Brien novels I have, because I wanted to read about a rather obscure but no less fascinating figure. Elizabeth of Lancaster is a fascinating protagonist – she’s involved in the medieval equivalent of a shotgun wedding and she’s married to a man who rebels against her brother after he deposes her husband’s brother – but I didn’t care about her at all, and the complexity and richness I’d found in The Shadow Queen was missing entirely.
To add difficulty, there were very few other characters that I could generally like. I didn’t believe O’Brien’s take on John Holland was a genuine portrait of the historical figure, but a more sanitised romantic hero version (let’s just say O’Brien and I see Holland very differently), and I couldn’t get away from my dislike of the historical Holland to care for the fictional version. The other chief supporting characters – Elizabeth’s older sister, Philippa, and their governess Katherine Swynford – are sort of too firmly cast in their roles as nagging support to have much personality, though I did like the way Katherine Swynford’s character emerged at the end (which makes me a little more hopeful about reading O’Brien’s [b:The Scandalous Duchess|19015943|The Scandalous Duchess|Anne O'Brien|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1390822755s/19015943.jpg|27039105]). Elizabeth’s brother, Henry, is sort of oddly characterised – he’s held at a distance and frequently unseen or absent, so all we’re left to go on is Elizabeth’s love of him solely because he’s her brother. Then, when he’s king, he’s presented to us as a sort of heavy-handed, unthinking, unlikeable creature before in the final chapters we’re expected to turn around and feel like, well, he was a bit of a dick, but he’s been entirely justified the whole time. Everyone else are either just sort of there or flat out awful.
The only exception to that rule is Anne of Bohemia. She’s lovely. I love her. I want a whole novel about her. But not if she’s paired with O’Brien’s Richard II. More on that later.
The writing I found to be generally OK. I didn’t feel that Elizabeth’s voice really worked for me, but apart from two occasions the language didn’t feel jarring or anachronistic. There were some great expositional dumps, where, because Elizabeth wasn’t directly involved in matters, she has to recount what happened – for example, the novel skips ten years into the future, neatly stepping over the Appellant Crisis, Anne of Bohemia’s death, and Richard II’s peace treaty with France and second marriage. Similarly, Richard II’s deposition is almost entirely told through exposition. Now, I believe a skilled writer can put a bit of effort in and make a novel about a character cut off from the action really work by focusing it on their experience – a woman waiting to hear news of her husband’s or brother’s fate is a premise ripe for incredible emotion and drama – but just dumping exposition in doesn’t work, and that’s what O’Brien went for.
Some of the summary narrative means that a disservice is done to the real history. Henry’s exile is explained as Richard “fabricating a treasonable plot” (p. 317) – yet the events that led to that exile are not as simple, and Richard’s role in them is not so simply summarised, nor can he be credited as the great architect of the feud between Thomas Mowbray and Henry Bolingbroke which lead to their exile. He wasn’t sitting there, rubbing his hands with glee, but trying desperately to reconcile them while they stubbornly refused to come to terms with each other. Kathryn Warner, I think, rightly points out that the feud put Richard in an impossible situation where the guilt of either of them would also condemn him in some measure.
O’Brien apparently got her start writing historical romances and it does show in parts – the will they, won’t they melodrama of Elizabeth and John’s romance carried on far too long for my liking. Likewise, the scenes wherein Elizabeth is torn between her husband and her brother. It’s hard to care when it’s the same conflict again and again, with no nuance – Henry is the priority for Elizabeth and should be for John as well, but he’s sticking to his own brother for the sake of ambition before he finally musters up fraternal loyalty (seriously, the novel spends so long saying John is only supporting Richard II out of ambition before suddenly dropping that to say it’s because Richard is his brother).
There are some more obvious historical goofs. O’Brien repeats the once accepted, the now well and truly debunked narrative that Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV) and his wife, Mary de Bohun, had sex before they were supposed to and Mary gave birth to a son (named Edward by Alison Weir) that didn’t live long when she was 12-14. The ‘evidence’ for this theory was misread and the reference to this child in actual fact refers to the birth of Humphrey of Gloucester, the son of Thomas of Woodstock and Eleanor de Bohun (whose care Mary was in). This was published in Ian Mortimer’s [b:The Fears of Henry IV|1106062|The Fears of Henry IV The Life of England's Self-made King|Ian Mortimer|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1181042617s/1106062.jpg|1093000], the most accessible and affordable biography of Henry IV on the market and first appeared on the market seven years before The King’s Sister was published. I find that level of goof inexcusable, though perhaps this plot detail appeared in one of O’Brien’s earlier novels and she didn’t want to contradict herself.
Another bewildering and inexcusable goof is the fact that Henry IV’s second son is named as Lionel. Err, no. His name was Thomas. None of Henry IV’s sons were named Lionel, not even his obscure illegitimate son Edmund. I could understand changing his name if Thomas of Lancaster was a major character (he’s not, he’s literally only named twice) and there were a lot of men named Thomas (not as many as there are named John and Henry and none of them get their name changed). Compounding this error is the fact that in the same sentence, Henry IV’s sons are said to between fourteen and ten years in early 1400 – nope, they were thirteen to nine years of age at this stage (Henry, the eldest, was born August/September 1386 and so 13, the youngest, Humphrey, born 3 October 1390 and so 9). This line was even contradicted later on, with Henry’s age stated correctly to be thirteen.
I don’t believe there’s any evidence that Elizabeth of Lancaster was in the Tower during the Great Uprising of 1381, much less heroically rescued by John Holland. Henry Bolingbroke, 14 at the time, was, and was rescued by a man called John Ferrour, but there is no evidence Holland’s was involved or even directed Ferrour to do so. But, whatever, romance plot gotta romance plot.
So. Now to my rant about Richard II’s treatment in this novel. Here is a picture depicting my experience of reading this book:
I should admit that I’m a bit sensitive to how Richard II is handled. He was a terrible king and did some awful things. But he was not a monster, nor was he mad and I’m just tired of seeing that characterisation in fiction.
O’Brien’s Richard II is probably not the worst I’ve seen, but close. There’s no real attempt to understand his behaviour, he’s just presented “as is”. He’s unreasonable and egocentric, entirely irrational – someone that has to be at the centre of attention and resorts to petty tricks to be so, someone who the other characters have to “manage” and cajole into not being a complete monster.
We’re told of his utter unreasonableness when informed that John of Gaunt is plotting treason against him and it’s presented as obvious that Gaunt wouldn’t. Never mind the fact that rumours abounded that Gaunt wanted to usurp Richard’s position and inheritance before Richard was even Prince of Wales. For crying out loud, Edward of Woodstock (the Black Prince, Richard’s father and Gaunt’s eldest brother) spent his dying days trying to safeguard his son from being cheated out of his inheritance – the chief suspect, at least in the public’s mind, was John of Gaunt. Parliament even had Richard presented to them officially as Edward III’s heir to try and avoid any designs Gaunt had on usurping him. These rumours and the whispers of Gaunt’s villainy did not magically go away on the day Richard was coronated, either. The rebels of the Great Revolt, for example, wanted to free Richard from his “evil counsellors” and the man they wanted to destroy most was Gaunt. Now we can talk about Richard having bad taste in friends who tried to poison him against the influential, rich and vastly unpopular Gaunt, but it doesn’t seem like Gaunt tried very hard to endear himself to Richard (or anyone else for that matter).
While Gaunt might have ultimately been a “good guy” and tolerated Richard on the throne and while Richard may have had a weak personality that was exploited by his so-called friends, it wasn’t like Richard had a totally irrational hate boner for Gaunt which is how things are presented in The King’s Sister. There were very real fears about Gaunt’s ambitions that Richard grew up hearing and saw them treated as credible and real.
On a similar note, Richard is presented as totally unreasonable and beholden to his emotions and his favourites when John Holland murders a nobleman, Ralph Stafford, and Richard refuses to intervene and leaves Holland to face justice unprotected by royal protection. Elizabeth and Gaunt plead for him to no avail, and Joan of Kent rouses herself from her sickbed to add to the pleas for her (apparently favourite) son’s life, Richard is a gigantic, unreasonable dick and refuses, so when Joan dies, supposedly of grief, Richard is given the brunt of the blame and even then must be flattered and cajoled into pardoning John Holland. Without the manipulative treatment of Richard as unreasonable (and we have no real idea what went down beyond the basics), this whole plot point looks very different. At least to me, it reads as though Elizabeth of Lancaster and her family are a bunch of self-serving parasites who want to protect a murderer because he’s ~family~ and omg so hot, while blaming the guy who was like “maybe he should face justice…” for his already ill mother’s death.
There has been excellent research on Richard II’s reign that has looked at untangling his life and reign. Christopher Fletcher, for instance, has done a lot of research in Richard and masculinity, arguing against some of the more common tropes that O’Brien deploys (i.e. he wasn’t a coward afraid of conflict or battle, there is evidence that he did indeed joust). Other research suggests Richard did not disinherit Henry Bolingbroke but merely prevented him from claiming his inheritance until his term of exile was up (Kathryn Warner has also suggested that Richard may have been driven by fears of being controlled by Bolingbroke with the weight and wealth of the Lancaster duchy behind him, as Edward II was beholden to Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, during his reign). Anne Curry argues that Bolingbroke’s son, the future Henry V, went to Ireland, not as Richard’s hostage, but as a young noble to be “blooded” in an actual war.
Actually, O’Brien’s… subplot? about the young Henry as Richard’s hostage is weird – it’s the one moment which proves to be the impetus for Elizabeth to decide that Richard has to go and Bolingbroke has to return to do it. Yet we never hear about Henry as Richard’s hostage again, and when Bolingbroke returns… nothing is mentioned of Henry’s fate. When Elizabeth reunites with Bolingbroke, she doesn’t ask if Henry is even alive, though she begs to find out whether her husband sided with Bolingbroke (priorities, man – a kid being murdered is no big deal so long as her husband picked the right side), and we have to wait until the parliament scene to casually find out that mad, unreasonable, hostage-taking Richard didn’t execute his enemy’s son and Henry is still, apparently, alive and completely unharmed. Nor are we given any indication why either. While the historical evidence points to the bond between Henry and Richard as somewhat affectionate, at least on Henry’s side, which is unlikely if he’d been mistreated by Richard or fully aware of his status as a hostage. But this would clearly be at odds with O’Brien’s characterisation of Richard II so it’s just ignored by the story. It’s not an issue of historical accuracy, however, it’s about having this be a huge, big moment and then… nothing, it’s as though it never happened.
The Appellant Crisis, in which five nobleman, including Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, and Henry Bolingbroke, attempted to restrain Richard’s rule by removing his favourites, is really weirdly handled. It’s mainly treated as the Lords Appellant wanting to remove Robert de Vere, one of Richard’s friends and favourites, from influence and Richard is depicted as being driven to revenge by de Vere’s loss – this reading would be far more in keeping in a novel about Edward II and his loss of Piers Gaveston. The Appellant Crisis saw others close to Richard executed, including Simon Burley, his tutor, and it appears that Richard may have actually been deposed for three days before being restored to the throne because the Lords Appellant disagreed amongst themselves about who should be king next – Gloucester wanted to become king himself, but Henry Bolingbroke argued against that as he, his father, amongst others, were before Gloucester in the line of succession. It was so much more than just de Vere and to reduce the conflict down to that is utterly silly and entirely misleading.
There are excellent reasons why Richard might have been upset and angry about the Appellant Crisis, but the novel just acts like he should just forget all about it. He lost his friends, his royal dignity and status was attacked and efforts were made to put him under strict control – why the hell shouldn’t he be resentful?
Because Elizabeth of Lancaster says so, I guess. There’s a thing in this novel that I don’t really like and it’s all about how the heroes can treat the antagonist any way they like because they’re the hero and the antagonist therefore is the villain. Lancaster is good, therefore everything about that family is good and right, and Richard II is bad, therefore everything about him is bad. John Holland’s loyalty to his brother is initially dismissed as ambition and, to be fair, it could’ve been – but the novel acts like that’s the only reason why Richard could have someone loyal to him. That is, until it’s time for Elizabeth to berate John Holland for being loyal to his brother instead of her brother. In a bewildering moment, John finally confronts her over that and says, in response to her “why you commit treason against my brother” nagging, “I can’t let my brother die” and she’s all “Henry would never! You have no evidence he’d kill Richard!” despite the fact that it’s been treated like open knowledge that Henry would eventually have Richard killed, including by her own young children. Just… where is the logic? Is she meant to be that much of a hypocrite or is it a writing fail?
Also, the part where she seems to accept that she’s going to rejoice in Richard’s death is pretty damn gross. I know Richard is a dickhead in her world, but I find it really hard to care about a character who’s salivating over someone else’s death.
Now, all of this is might be excused by the lens of the novel – i.e. this view of Richard is just what Elizabeth of Lancaster thinks he’s like. And maybe it is. But I don’t feel like there’s anything in the novel to suggest it or suggest her unreliability as a narrator.
So, at the end of this – I did not like The King's Sister. I struggle to say anything positive about it – I didn’t like the characters, the history was mishandled, I hated how the things I enjoyed about O’Brien’s other novel turned out to be missing. I am now viewing her other novels with great caution.
Oh boy, I really did not like this.
I had picked this up, along with most of Anne O’Brien’s in-print Plantagenet novels (this is out of print, but I found a rather bedraggled copy in a bookshop anyway), after really enjoying her novel [b:The Shadow Queen|32181766|The Shadow Queen|Anne O'Brien|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1488206873s/32181766.jpg|52819547]. Although it was not a perfect read, most of my complaints tended towards the nitpicky historical details like “um, no, Joan of Kent and the Black Prince would not be playing a courtly game of archery, they lived in a time where archery was the purview of peasants”.
The King’s Sister had some of those nitpicky issues, although they stood out to me a lot less – that might be because they weren’t as common or as striking, or because I had bigger fish to fry.
I did not enjoy Elizabeth as a narrator or a character. She’s self-obsessed and vain, snobbish and selfish. I can sympathise with her plight – a sexually frustrated, seventeen-year-old woman ready and eager for a husband married to an eight-year-old boy. I can’t sympathise with her, however, as she is immediately characterised as a woman who sneers at ‘Jonty’ for not being the handsome knight she’s been dreaming of marrying. He’s eight years old and harmless. He’s not putting frogs in her bed or anything disgusting, he’s just a cute eight year old who’s interested in puppies and growing up to be a good knight.
Elizabeth also comes off, in the early chapters, as a dumbass. So many people warn her off John Holland, but her response is pretty much “guess I’ll go flirt with him then” and okay, in the long run, it turns out to be the right choice because it’s true love in Anne O’Brien’s tale and not John Holland being John Holland, but it’s infuriating as a character trait.
(I should admit that I’m clearly not the right audience for this novel because I really can’t come at John Holland as a romantic hero.)
Now, Elizabeth’s selfishness is clearly lampshaded as a character flaw throughout the book and in the final chapter, we do see her finally begin to grow beyond it, but man, having such a selfish narrator is not a fun read. It’s not like, say, Philippa Gregory’s [b:The Red Queen|7148256|The Red Queen (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #3)|Philippa Gregory|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1281335912s/7148256.jpg|7413156] where Margaret Beaufort is meant to be unlikeable and I’m not saying that Gregory’s novel was better (it was barely tolerable) but we’re meant to genuinely root for Elizabeth and all I could do was wish she’d have some kind of rude awakening because she’s such a horrid, small-minded person.
This was sort of doubly disappointing to me. I’d be really impressed with how complex the narrative was in The Shadow Queen and I’d chosen this, rather than the other O’Brien novels I have, because I wanted to read about a rather obscure but no less fascinating figure. Elizabeth of Lancaster is a fascinating protagonist – she’s involved in the medieval equivalent of a shotgun wedding and she’s married to a man who rebels against her brother after he deposes her husband’s brother – but I didn’t care about her at all, and the complexity and richness I’d found in The Shadow Queen was missing entirely.
To add difficulty, there were very few other characters that I could generally like. I didn’t believe O’Brien’s take on John Holland was a genuine portrait of the historical figure, but a more sanitised romantic hero version (let’s just say O’Brien and I see Holland very differently), and I couldn’t get away from my dislike of the historical Holland to care for the fictional version. The other chief supporting characters – Elizabeth’s older sister, Philippa, and their governess Katherine Swynford – are sort of too firmly cast in their roles as nagging support to have much personality, though I did like the way Katherine Swynford’s character emerged at the end (which makes me a little more hopeful about reading O’Brien’s [b:The Scandalous Duchess|19015943|The Scandalous Duchess|Anne O'Brien|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1390822755s/19015943.jpg|27039105]). Elizabeth’s brother, Henry, is sort of oddly characterised – he’s held at a distance and frequently unseen or absent, so all we’re left to go on is Elizabeth’s love of him solely because he’s her brother. Then, when he’s king, he’s presented to us as a sort of heavy-handed, unthinking, unlikeable creature before in the final chapters we’re expected to turn around and feel like, well, he was a bit of a dick, but he’s been entirely justified the whole time. Everyone else are either just sort of there or flat out awful.
The only exception to that rule is Anne of Bohemia. She’s lovely. I love her. I want a whole novel about her. But not if she’s paired with O’Brien’s Richard II. More on that later.
The writing I found to be generally OK. I didn’t feel that Elizabeth’s voice really worked for me, but apart from two occasions the language didn’t feel jarring or anachronistic. There were some great expositional dumps, where, because Elizabeth wasn’t directly involved in matters, she has to recount what happened – for example, the novel skips ten years into the future, neatly stepping over the Appellant Crisis, Anne of Bohemia’s death, and Richard II’s peace treaty with France and second marriage. Similarly, Richard II’s deposition is almost entirely told through exposition. Now, I believe a skilled writer can put a bit of effort in and make a novel about a character cut off from the action really work by focusing it on their experience – a woman waiting to hear news of her husband’s or brother’s fate is a premise ripe for incredible emotion and drama – but just dumping exposition in doesn’t work, and that’s what O’Brien went for.
Some of the summary narrative means that a disservice is done to the real history. Henry’s exile is explained as Richard “fabricating a treasonable plot” (p. 317) – yet the events that led to that exile are not as simple, and Richard’s role in them is not so simply summarised, nor can he be credited as the great architect of the feud between Thomas Mowbray and Henry Bolingbroke which lead to their exile. He wasn’t sitting there, rubbing his hands with glee, but trying desperately to reconcile them while they stubbornly refused to come to terms with each other. Kathryn Warner, I think, rightly points out that the feud put Richard in an impossible situation where the guilt of either of them would also condemn him in some measure.
O’Brien apparently got her start writing historical romances and it does show in parts – the will they, won’t they melodrama of Elizabeth and John’s romance carried on far too long for my liking. Likewise, the scenes wherein Elizabeth is torn between her husband and her brother. It’s hard to care when it’s the same conflict again and again, with no nuance – Henry is the priority for Elizabeth and should be for John as well, but he’s sticking to his own brother for the sake of ambition before he finally musters up fraternal loyalty (seriously, the novel spends so long saying John is only supporting Richard II out of ambition before suddenly dropping that to say it’s because Richard is his brother).
There are some more obvious historical goofs. O’Brien repeats the once accepted, the now well and truly debunked narrative that Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV) and his wife, Mary de Bohun, had sex before they were supposed to and Mary gave birth to a son (named Edward by Alison Weir) that didn’t live long when she was 12-14. The ‘evidence’ for this theory was misread and the reference to this child in actual fact refers to the birth of Humphrey of Gloucester, the son of Thomas of Woodstock and Eleanor de Bohun (whose care Mary was in). This was published in Ian Mortimer’s [b:The Fears of Henry IV|1106062|The Fears of Henry IV The Life of England's Self-made King|Ian Mortimer|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1181042617s/1106062.jpg|1093000], the most accessible and affordable biography of Henry IV on the market and first appeared on the market seven years before The King’s Sister was published. I find that level of goof inexcusable, though perhaps this plot detail appeared in one of O’Brien’s earlier novels and she didn’t want to contradict herself.
Another bewildering and inexcusable goof is the fact that Henry IV’s second son is named as Lionel. Err, no. His name was Thomas. None of Henry IV’s sons were named Lionel, not even his obscure illegitimate son Edmund. I could understand changing his name if Thomas of Lancaster was a major character (he’s not, he’s literally only named twice) and there were a lot of men named Thomas (not as many as there are named John and Henry and none of them get their name changed). Compounding this error is the fact that in the same sentence, Henry IV’s sons are said to between fourteen and ten years in early 1400 – nope, they were thirteen to nine years of age at this stage (Henry, the eldest, was born August/September 1386 and so 13, the youngest, Humphrey, born 3 October 1390 and so 9). This line was even contradicted later on, with Henry’s age stated correctly to be thirteen.
I don’t believe there’s any evidence that Elizabeth of Lancaster was in the Tower during the Great Uprising of 1381, much less heroically rescued by John Holland. Henry Bolingbroke, 14 at the time, was, and was rescued by a man called John Ferrour, but there is no evidence Holland’s was involved or even directed Ferrour to do so. But, whatever, romance plot gotta romance plot.
So. Now to my rant about Richard II’s treatment in this novel. Here is a picture depicting my experience of reading this book:
I should admit that I’m a bit sensitive to how Richard II is handled. He was a terrible king and did some awful things. But he was not a monster, nor was he mad and I’m just tired of seeing that characterisation in fiction.
O’Brien’s Richard II is probably not the worst I’ve seen, but close. There’s no real attempt to understand his behaviour, he’s just presented “as is”. He’s unreasonable and egocentric, entirely irrational – someone that has to be at the centre of attention and resorts to petty tricks to be so, someone who the other characters have to “manage” and cajole into not being a complete monster.
We’re told of his utter unreasonableness when informed that John of Gaunt is plotting treason against him and it’s presented as obvious that Gaunt wouldn’t. Never mind the fact that rumours abounded that Gaunt wanted to usurp Richard’s position and inheritance before Richard was even Prince of Wales. For crying out loud, Edward of Woodstock (the Black Prince, Richard’s father and Gaunt’s eldest brother) spent his dying days trying to safeguard his son from being cheated out of his inheritance – the chief suspect, at least in the public’s mind, was John of Gaunt. Parliament even had Richard presented to them officially as Edward III’s heir to try and avoid any designs Gaunt had on usurping him. These rumours and the whispers of Gaunt’s villainy did not magically go away on the day Richard was coronated, either. The rebels of the Great Revolt, for example, wanted to free Richard from his “evil counsellors” and the man they wanted to destroy most was Gaunt. Now we can talk about Richard having bad taste in friends who tried to poison him against the influential, rich and vastly unpopular Gaunt, but it doesn’t seem like Gaunt tried very hard to endear himself to Richard (or anyone else for that matter).
While Gaunt might have ultimately been a “good guy” and tolerated Richard on the throne and while Richard may have had a weak personality that was exploited by his so-called friends, it wasn’t like Richard had a totally irrational hate boner for Gaunt which is how things are presented in The King’s Sister. There were very real fears about Gaunt’s ambitions that Richard grew up hearing and saw them treated as credible and real.
On a similar note, Richard is presented as totally unreasonable and beholden to his emotions and his favourites when John Holland murders a nobleman, Ralph Stafford, and Richard refuses to intervene and leaves Holland to face justice unprotected by royal protection. Elizabeth and Gaunt plead for him to no avail, and Joan of Kent rouses herself from her sickbed to add to the pleas for her (apparently favourite) son’s life, Richard is a gigantic, unreasonable dick and refuses, so when Joan dies, supposedly of grief, Richard is given the brunt of the blame and even then must be flattered and cajoled into pardoning John Holland. Without the manipulative treatment of Richard as unreasonable (and we have no real idea what went down beyond the basics), this whole plot point looks very different. At least to me, it reads as though Elizabeth of Lancaster and her family are a bunch of self-serving parasites who want to protect a murderer because he’s ~family~ and omg so hot, while blaming the guy who was like “maybe he should face justice…” for his already ill mother’s death.
There has been excellent research on Richard II’s reign that has looked at untangling his life and reign. Christopher Fletcher, for instance, has done a lot of research in Richard and masculinity, arguing against some of the more common tropes that O’Brien deploys (i.e. he wasn’t a coward afraid of conflict or battle, there is evidence that he did indeed joust). Other research suggests Richard did not disinherit Henry Bolingbroke but merely prevented him from claiming his inheritance until his term of exile was up (Kathryn Warner has also suggested that Richard may have been driven by fears of being controlled by Bolingbroke with the weight and wealth of the Lancaster duchy behind him, as Edward II was beholden to Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, during his reign). Anne Curry argues that Bolingbroke’s son, the future Henry V, went to Ireland, not as Richard’s hostage, but as a young noble to be “blooded” in an actual war.
Actually, O’Brien’s… subplot? about the young Henry as Richard’s hostage is weird – it’s the one moment which proves to be the impetus for Elizabeth to decide that Richard has to go and Bolingbroke has to return to do it. Yet we never hear about Henry as Richard’s hostage again, and when Bolingbroke returns… nothing is mentioned of Henry’s fate. When Elizabeth reunites with Bolingbroke, she doesn’t ask if Henry is even alive, though she begs to find out whether her husband sided with Bolingbroke (priorities, man – a kid being murdered is no big deal so long as her husband picked the right side), and we have to wait until the parliament scene to casually find out that mad, unreasonable, hostage-taking Richard didn’t execute his enemy’s son and Henry is still, apparently, alive and completely unharmed. Nor are we given any indication why either. While the historical evidence points to the bond between Henry and Richard as somewhat affectionate, at least on Henry’s side, which is unlikely if he’d been mistreated by Richard or fully aware of his status as a hostage. But this would clearly be at odds with O’Brien’s characterisation of Richard II so it’s just ignored by the story. It’s not an issue of historical accuracy, however, it’s about having this be a huge, big moment and then… nothing, it’s as though it never happened.
The Appellant Crisis, in which five nobleman, including Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, and Henry Bolingbroke, attempted to restrain Richard’s rule by removing his favourites, is really weirdly handled. It’s mainly treated as the Lords Appellant wanting to remove Robert de Vere, one of Richard’s friends and favourites, from influence and Richard is depicted as being driven to revenge by de Vere’s loss – this reading would be far more in keeping in a novel about Edward II and his loss of Piers Gaveston. The Appellant Crisis saw others close to Richard executed, including Simon Burley, his tutor, and it appears that Richard may have actually been deposed for three days before being restored to the throne because the Lords Appellant disagreed amongst themselves about who should be king next – Gloucester wanted to become king himself, but Henry Bolingbroke argued against that as he, his father, amongst others, were before Gloucester in the line of succession. It was so much more than just de Vere and to reduce the conflict down to that is utterly silly and entirely misleading.
There are excellent reasons why Richard might have been upset and angry about the Appellant Crisis, but the novel just acts like he should just forget all about it. He lost his friends, his royal dignity and status was attacked and efforts were made to put him under strict control – why the hell shouldn’t he be resentful?
Because Elizabeth of Lancaster says so, I guess. There’s a thing in this novel that I don’t really like and it’s all about how the heroes can treat the antagonist any way they like because they’re the hero and the antagonist therefore is the villain. Lancaster is good, therefore everything about that family is good and right, and Richard II is bad, therefore everything about him is bad. John Holland’s loyalty to his brother is initially dismissed as ambition and, to be fair, it could’ve been – but the novel acts like that’s the only reason why Richard could have someone loyal to him. That is, until it’s time for Elizabeth to berate John Holland for being loyal to his brother instead of her brother. In a bewildering moment, John finally confronts her over that and says, in response to her “why you commit treason against my brother” nagging, “I can’t let my brother die” and she’s all “Henry would never! You have no evidence he’d kill Richard!” despite the fact that it’s been treated like open knowledge that Henry would eventually have Richard killed, including by her own young children. Just… where is the logic? Is she meant to be that much of a hypocrite or is it a writing fail?
Also, the part where she seems to accept that she’s going to rejoice in Richard’s death is pretty damn gross. I know Richard is a dickhead in her world, but I find it really hard to care about a character who’s salivating over someone else’s death.
Now, all of this is might be excused by the lens of the novel – i.e. this view of Richard is just what Elizabeth of Lancaster thinks he’s like. And maybe it is. But I don’t feel like there’s anything in the novel to suggest it or suggest her unreliability as a narrator.
So, at the end of this – I did not like The King's Sister. I struggle to say anything positive about it – I didn’t like the characters, the history was mishandled, I hated how the things I enjoyed about O’Brien’s other novel turned out to be missing. I am now viewing her other novels with great caution.