Whitehall Palace, London 1540. Thirty years into the reign of King Henry VIII
and it’s been a long, hot, summer: London is experiencing intense heat and there
has been no rain for two months. But while his subjects wilt, the King’s vigor
remains undiminished. The Reformation goes on and Henry has just married the
beautiful Katherine Howard, his fifth Queen, who is a mere seventeen years old.
Katherine is different from earlier wives in more ways than age: far from being
nobility she was ‘discovered’ by some of the King’s friends in a boarding
house
for wayward young ladies. Charles Brandon, and his wife, Catherine Brandon, are
separated after Charles's actions in defeating the Pilgrimage of Grace. Joan Bulmer, the new Queen’s
childhood friend, is hired as a lady in waiting; she knows too much scandalous
detail about Katherine’s sexual past to be outside the court. The Queen’s ‘low’
background, combined with her youth and beauty, arouses a lusty familiarity in
certain members of Henry’s court. Her most notable admirer is the King’s
handsome and ambitious new groom Thomas Culpeper, who makes no secret of his
desire for the new Queen during an extended hunting trip visit by the royal
entourage. Culpeper unleashes his sexual frustrations by raping an unfortunate local peasant woman and then
murdering her aggrieved husband.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please let me know what can be done to improve the blog