A Critique of Philippa Gregory

No author rais­es my hack­les quite like Philip­pa Gre­go­ry does. Put as suc­cinct­ly as pos­si­ble, Gre­go­ry — who mar­kets her­self as a his­tor­i­cal fic­tion writer spe­cial­iz­ing in the Tudor-era — takes pride in cre­at­ing sup­pos­ed­ly rich­er, more nuanced por­traits of the char­ac­ters she por­trays, most of whom are his­tor­i­cal women of rel­a­tive fac­tu­al obscu­ri­ty. Indeed, Gre­go­ry has reg­u­lar­ly sug­gest­ed that she gives voice and depth to his­tor­i­cal women whose lives “have been ignored by his­to­ri­ans, and…viewed [only] as pawns in the dynas­tic bat­tles of Europe,”^[1]Gre­go­ry, Philip­pa. Three Sis­ters, Three Queens. or who have oth­er­wise been “neglect­ed and tra­duced by con­ven­tion­al his­to­ry.”^[2]Kell­away, Kate. “Philip­pa Gre­go­ry: unearthing his­to­ry’s for­got­ten women.” The Guardian.^[3]Gre­go­ry, Philip­pa. The Boleyn Inher­i­tance.

I find the real­i­ty, how­ev­er, to be some­what dif­fer­ent. In writ­ing her char­ac­ters, Gre­go­ry not only tends to cre­ate one-dimen­sion­al, gross­ly polar­ized car­i­ca­tures of the women off whom they are based, but also acts more as a revi­sion­ist than the his­to­ri­an she claims to be — by fre­quent­ly push­ing a reimag­ined ver­sion of Tudor his­to­ry shaped by her per­son­al bias­es and pref­er­ences, one that aligns more with what she wish­es would have actu­al­ly hap­pened. Giv­en Gre­go­ry’s enor­mous plat­form as a best­selling author, I find this prac­tice to be, quite frankly, just a tad irresponsible. 

Not Quite A Historian

In my opin­ion, most if not all of the issues that make Gre­go­ry such a prob­lem­at­ic writer, derive from her insis­tence on mar­ket­ing her­self as a his­to­ri­an; when in actu­al­i­ty, Gre­go­ry cher­ry-picks only the bits of his­to­ry that fit an often high­ly fic­tion­al­ized nar­ra­tive of her own per­son­al inven­tion, and then twists any facts that con­flict with said nar­ra­tive to make them con­sis­tent with the sto­ry she choos­es to tell. Giv­en Gre­go­ry’s main­stream pop­u­lar­i­ty — I would go so far as to say that she is prob­a­bly the most pop­u­lar, or at least prob­a­bly the most well-known, author of Tudor-era fic­tion — her ten­den­cy to prop­a­gate these often gross­ly untrue takes is beyond frus­trat­ing to me. (To wit, Gre­go­ry’s About the Author blurb is also brazen­ly mis­lead­ing. She describes her­self as hav­ing “stud­ied his­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sus­sex and received a Ph. D. from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh,” but con­ve­nient­ly refrains from men­tion­ing that said Ph. D. is in lit­er­a­ture rather than his­to­ry, as the blurb seems meant to imply.)

Nonethe­less, Gre­go­ry has been called the “queen of roy­al fic­tion” by USA Today, which I find to be a bit of an iron­ic trav­es­ty. She got her big break, so to speak, with the release of her nov­el The Oth­er Boleyn Girl in 2001, and since then has become one of the more pop­u­lar authors dab­bling in his­tor­i­cal fic­tion; sev­er­al of what she calls her The Plan­ta­genet and Tudor nov­els have been best-sell­ers that have reached a wide­spread glob­al audi­ence. So it is espe­cial­ly unfor­tu­nate that many of these nov­els are rid­dled with his­tor­i­cal inac­cu­ra­cies — in the form of both out­right false­hoods and sub­tler mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions, most of which are will­ful­ly, pur­pose­ful­ly made in order to suit her pre­ferred narrative.

Through her Plan­ta­genet and Tudor nov­els, Gre­go­ry has writ­ten from the point of view of Mar­garet Beau­fort, Mary Boleyn, and Anne of Cleves, to name just a few. Indeed, Gre­go­ry prides her­self in what she calls, essen­tial­ly, giv­ing a voice to the women who have been oth­er­wise large­ly neglect­ed by his­to­ry, or at least by his­tor­i­cal record. But it is pre­cise­ly because there is such sparse infor­ma­tion avail­able with respect to these women, that any fic­tion­al­ized account of their per­son­al­i­ties must be almost entire­ly the prod­uct of spec­u­la­tion. It is dif­fi­cult enough to cre­ate a nuanced por­trait of a per­son whose life has been exten­sive­ly doc­u­ment­ed, much less one of a per­son about whom we know next to noth­ing. Accord­ing­ly, Gre­go­ry ends up writ­ing a one-dimen­sion­al char­ac­ter that she then claims is a his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the fig­ure off of which she is based.

“Rounded” Personalities

Gre­go­ry’s one-note por­tray­als might not be too egre­gious, giv­en that so lit­tle infor­ma­tion is avail­able regard­ing the fig­ures about whom she writes; rather, the issue is that Gre­go­ry open­ly claims to cre­ate com­plex, lay­ered por­traits of the women she depicts in her works. Gre­go­ry seem­ing­ly takes great pride in what she believes to be her por­tray­ing these women “as indi­vid­u­als” and offer­ing insight into “their inner lives,” so as to allow read­ers “imag­ine them as round­ed per­son­al­i­ties.”^[4]Gre­go­ry, Philip­pa. Three Sis­ters, Three Queens. In her 2008 nov­el, The Oth­er Queen, Gre­go­ry writes from the point-of-view of Mary, Queen of Scots:

“ ‘Peo­ple always make up sto­ries about princesses…For most of my life I have been adored by fools and hat­ed by peo­ple of good sense, and they all make up sto­ries about me in which I am either a saint or a whore.’ ”^[5]Gre­go­ry, Philip­pa. The Oth­er Queen.

The under­ly­ing sub­text here, I believe, nec­es­sar­i­ly implies that such gross sim­pli­fi­ca­tion is wrong; and that Gre­go­ry her­self nei­ther (1) con­dones it; nor (2) engages in it. Indeed, with respect to her 2006 nov­el, The Boleyn Inher­i­tance, Gre­go­ry also writes that:

“Anne of Cleves and Kather­ine Howard are the two wives of Hen­ry VIII we know least; as is so often the case, we think we know them well. In this fic­tion­al account of the real facts I have tried to get past the con­ven­tion that one wife was ugly and the oth­er stu­pid, to con­sid­er the lives and cir­cum­stances of these two very young women who were, so briefly, the most impor­tant women of Eng­land, suc­ces­sive wives to a man on the brink of mad­ness.”^[6]Gre­go­ry, Philip­pa. The Boleyn Inher­i­tance.

Gre­go­ry fur­ther claims that The Boleyn Inher­i­tance “res­cues the rep­u­ta­tion of two queens who have been neglect­ed and tra­duced by con­ven­tion­al his­to­ry — his­to­ri­ans still call Anne of Cleves ‘fat’ and Kather­ine Howard ‘stu­pid’ ” and that, accord­ing­ly, in writ­ing the book, it “matter[ed] to [her] that they [would be] con­sid­ered care­ful­ly as real peo­ple.”^[7]Gre­go­ry, Philip­pa. The Boleyn Inher­i­tance. Fur­ther to that point, Gre­go­ry has crit­i­cized what she calls “the stereo­typed view of women by lat­er his­to­ri­ans” hold­ing, in essence, that “a ‘good’ woman…must have been inca­pable of telling a lie,” before rather sanc­ti­mo­nious­ly adding that she “tend[s] to take a more lib­er­al view of female men­dac­i­ty” in her own writ­ing.^[8]Gre­go­ry, Philip­pa. The King’s Curse.

Hav­ing actu­al­ly read many of Gre­go­ry’s Plan­ta­genet and Tudor nov­els, I find that Gre­go­ry’s claims of depth and mod­ernism fall rather flat. To the con­trary, as far as I can tell, Gre­go­ry writes her char­ac­ters to be so one-dimen­sion­al, so polar­iz­ing, that it is dif­fi­cult to see them as any­thing oth­er than car­i­ca­tures of the women they are meant to rep­re­sent. Not only that, but many of her char­ac­ter por­tray­als actu­al­ly per­pet­u­ate the dat­ed stereo­types about the fig­ures off of whom they are based, the very stereo­types that Gre­go­ry sup­pos­ed­ly resents. To that end, my read-throughs of Gre­go­ry’s nov­els have gen­er­al­ly failed to find the com­plex, pro­gres­sive­ly mod­ern­ized por­traits she claims to cre­ate: in her writ­ings, Gre­go­ry has reg­u­lar­ly dou­bled down on the stereo­types that Mar­garet Beau­fort was frigid and over­bear­ing; that Kather­ine Howard was dull and air­head­ed; and that Anne Boleyn was sin­gu­lar­ly cru­el and self-serv­ing, to name just a few. Indeed, I per­son­al­ly find that Gre­go­ry’s depic­tions of Anne Boleyn, Kather­ine Howard, and Cather­ine of Aragon are the most egre­gious instances of her one-dimen­sion­al characterizations. 

Anne Boleyn

Anne Boleyn, by Unknown

If you have read any of Gre­go­ry’s Tudor nov­els, I imag­ine that it should be glar­ing­ly obvi­ous pre­cise­ly where her sym­pa­thies lie; but on the off chance that it isn’t, I can fill you in — Gre­go­ry’s ado­ra­tion of Cather­ine of Aragon, first wife of Hen­ry VIII, is rivaled only by her hatred of Anne Boleyn, sec­ond wife of Hen­ry VIII, who claimed the throne by cap­tur­ing the atten­tions of the king and effec­tive­ly push­ing her pre­de­ces­sor aside. (Her dis­like of Anne Boleyn is such that it per­co­lates down to her daugh­ter, Eliz­a­beth I, whom she has described as hav­ing a “typ­i­cal, nar­cis­sis­tic lilt” about her, such that she was “always ready to fall in love with her­self”^[9]Gre­go­ry, Philip­pa. The Vir­gin’s Lover.; her love for Cather­ine of Aragon sim­i­lar­ly per­co­lates down to her daugh­ter, Mary I, whom she has described as “a most beau­ti­ful woman” that “[n]obody could help lov­ing.”)^[10]Gre­go­ry, Philip­pa. The Queen’s Fool. Indeed, in The Oth­er Boleyn Girl, Gre­go­ry rather shame­less­ly demo­nizes Anne Boleyn, all while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly beat­i­fy­ing Cather­ine of Aragon.

In The Oth­er Boleyn Girl, Anne is depict­ed as a cold, cal­cu­lat­ing, haughty young woman, com­plete­ly unfazed by the prospect of com­mit­ting mur­der or incest to secure her posi­tion as queen of Eng­land (a lofty accu­sa­tion for Gre­go­ry to make, in my opin­ion, giv­en that his­to­ry fails to defin­i­tive­ly estab­lish that Anne engaged in either). I will admit that her por­tray­al could be sym­pa­thet­ic, at times — Gre­go­ry allows Anne to dis­play a rare trace of human­i­ty when she is heart­bro­ken at her sep­a­ra­tion from Hen­ry Per­cy, 6th Earl of Northum­ber­land — but on the whole, she is large­ly unlik­able, prone to hys­ter­i­cal fits of vio­lence and van­i­ty: Gre­go­ry has Anne phys­i­cal­ly beat her sis­ter Mary Boleyn on mul­ti­ple occa­sions, mali­cious­ly sep­a­rate her from her chil­dren, and poi­son a Bish­op, to name just a few things.

Gre­go­ry’s sin­gu­lar deter­mi­na­tion to depict Anne Boleyn as a vil­lain is such that she re-imag­ines and char­ac­ter­izes even the lat­ter’s good deeds as acts of spite: his­tor­i­cal­ly, Anne Boleyn took Hen­ry Carey — the son of her then-des­ti­tute sis­ter, Mary — as her ward and act­ed as his patron and advo­cate, as his own moth­er had no means of pro­vid­ing for him.^[11]Starkey, David. Six Wives: The Queens of Hen­ry VIII. It was, in fact, only through her influ­ence that Carey ulti­mate­ly received a superb edu­ca­tion at a Cis­ter­cian monastery, as it was only through her inter­ces­sion that the wid­owed Mary Boleyn received a pen­sion of £100. How­ev­er, The Oth­er Boleyn Girl instead sug­gests that Anne forcibly removed Hen­ry Carey from Mary’s care and adopt­ed him as her own child not out of any par­tic­u­lar gen­eros­i­ty, but in order to have a son of her own with whom she could fur­ther entice Hen­ry VIII to mar­ry her. It sim­i­lar­ly sug­gests that Anne was more than con­tent to leave her wid­owed sis­ter to lan­guish in pover­ty — when in actu­al­i­ty, it was Anne who reg­u­lar­ly act­ed as Mary’s pri­ma­ry bene­fac­tor at court, push­ing for her and hers to receive the monies and posi­tions to which she felt they were enti­tled.^[12]Weir, Ali­son. The Six Wives of Hen­ry VIII.^[13]Starkey, David. Six Wives: The Queens of Hen­ry VIII.

Catherine of Aragon

Cather­ine of Aragon, by Sittow

Con­verse­ly, Gre­go­ry so loves Cather­ine of Aragon that she not only por­trays Cather­ine as beau­ti­ful, indomitable, and majes­tic, but also goes so far as to neg­a­tive­ly char­ac­ter­ize any­one whose inter­ests ran counter to Cather­ine’s. It is, for exam­ple, debat­able that any his­tor­i­cal fig­ure treat­ed Cather­ine worse than her hus­band of twen­ty years, Hen­ry VIII; and suf­fice it to say, Gre­go­ry’s dis­taste for Hen­ry VIII is on ready dis­play in all and any of her books. Writ­ing in the voice of Jane Boleyn in The Boleyn Inher­i­tance, she paints a less-than-flat­ter­ing image of Hen­ry VIII on more than a few occa­sions, once when he is help­ing him­self to dinner:

“He is cram­ming food into his mouth as we watch him, both hands up to his face; he is fat­ter than any many I have ever seen in my life before, his shoul­ders gross, his neck like an ox, his fea­tures dis­solv­ing into the moon-shaped vat of his face, fin­gers like swollen pud­dings.”^[14]Gre­go­ry, Philip­pa. The Boleyn Inher­i­tance.

And then again, when he has just been rebuffed by Anne of Cleves, describ­ing him as:

“…[A]n old man, long past his prime, no longer hand­some, no longer desir­able, a man that a young woman would push rough­ly away from her because she could not stand his smell, because she could not bear his touch…[H]e is a fool­ish old man who thought he could put on a cape and a hood and ride out to meet a girl of twen­ty-four, and she would admire the hand­some stranger, and fall in love with the king. He is shocked to his soul, and now he looks fool­ish and con­fused like a mud­dled grand­fa­ther.”^[15]Gre­go­ry, Philip­pa. The Boleyn Inher­i­tance.

In the same book, she even goes so far as to make the (as far as I could find — please do cor­rect me if I’m mis­tak­en) base­less claim that the abra­sive Duke of Nor­folk ever “real­ly loved only one woman and that was Kather­ine of Aragon,” seem­ing­ly for the sole pur­pose of fur­ther cul­ti­vat­ing Cather­ine’s image as saint­ly, per­fect, uni­ver­sal­ly adored.^[16]Gre­go­ry, Philip­pa. The Boleyn Inher­i­tance.

Gre­go­ry’s 2005 nov­el, The Con­stant Princess, which focus­es on Cather­ine of Aragon, fur­ther cel­e­brates her deter­mi­na­tion, poise, and grace under fire, while also man­ag­ing to dis­par­age her father-in-law, Hen­ry VII. Admit­ted­ly, Hen­ry VII did treat Cather­ine noto­ri­ous­ly poor­ly while she was a wid­ow in Eng­land, fol­low­ing the death of her first hus­band, Arthur; but The Con­stant Princess presents him as some­thing of a bum­bling fool, secret­ly car­ry­ing a flame for Cather­ine and des­per­ate­ly besot­ted with her — when in actu­al­i­ty, Hen­ry VII was appar­ent­ly quite smit­ten with Cather­ine’s sis­ter, Jua­na, and sought to mar­ry her after the pass­ing of his wife, Eliz­a­beth of York.^[17]Starkey, David. Six Wives: The Queens of Hen­ry VIII. To that end, Hen­ry VII’s mar­riage to Eliz­a­beth of York is one of the few that the his­to­ries sug­gest was actu­al­ly hap­py and suc­cess­ful^[18]Penn, Thomas. Win­ter king: Hen­ry VII and the dawn of Tudor Eng­land.^[19]Weir, Ali­son. The Six Wives of Hen­ry VIII.; yet Gre­go­ry reg­u­lar­ly implies that it was a tense, frigid affair^[20]Gre­go­ry, Philip­pa. The White Princess., if only because she can’t bear to either (1) sug­gest that Hen­ry VII could ever be a pleas­ing hus­band; or (2) grant Hen­ry VII mar­i­tal hap­pi­ness, even that of a fic­tion­al vari­ety — giv­en how poor­ly he treat­ed Gre­go­ry’s beloved Cather­ine of Aragon.

Katherine Howard

Gre­go­ry has claimed that in writ­ing The Boleyn Inher­i­tance, she “tried to get past the con­ven­tion that [Kather­ine Howard was] stu­pid” so as to “rescu[e]” her rep­u­ta­tion, so “tra­duced by con­ven­tion­al his­to­ry.”^[21]Gre­go­ry, Philip­pa. The Boleyn Inher­i­tance. On my read­ing of The Boleyn Inher­i­tance, how­ev­er, I per­son­al­ly found the oppo­site to be true: indeed, Gre­go­ry seem­ing­ly ful­ly embraced Kather­ine’s rep­u­ta­tion as a dull, emp­ty-head­ed young woman of lit­tle learn­ing or dis­cre­tion in writ­ing the character.

Pos­si­ble like­ness of Kather­ine Howard, by Holbein

Through­out the nov­el, Gre­go­ry describes Kather­ine Howard dis­mis­sive­ly, on one occa­sion refer­ring to her as “a girl whom [the king] could bed for lit­tle more than the price of a gown,” and on anoth­er as “the most com­mon com­mon­er ever to sit on a bet­ter wom­an’s throne.” She lat­er dou­bles down on Kather­ine’s appar­ent vapid­i­ty through the opin­ions expressed by oth­er char­ac­ters in the book: at one point, Kather­ine Howard’s own uncle fumes, “God help us, the girl is an idiot;” while Jane Boleyn com­ments that she “can almost hear the slow revolv­ing of [Kather­ine’s] thoughts.”^[22]Gre­go­ry, Philip­pa. The Boleyn Inher­i­tance.

You would be for­giv­en for think­ing that Gre­go­ry was, per­haps, try­ing to give Kather­ine depth by sug­gest­ing that it was her con­tem­po­raries who wrong­ly dis­missed or viewed her as stu­pid and that, in real­i­ty, she was actu­al­ly a sharp, astute young woman. How­ev­er, this is clear­ly not the case either, as Gre­go­ry also writes from the point of view of Kather­ine Howard her­self, and reg­u­lar­ly paints her as being con­fused and bored by the world around her, except where there are rib­bons and dress­es involved. Indeed, in the voice of Kather­ine Howard, Gre­go­ry writes:

“I turn my head one way to appear as if I am listening…[but] I don’t hear any of them, to tell truth. It is all buzz, buzz above me, and there are no musi­cians and no danc­ing and noth­ing to amuse me but the con­ver­sa­tion of my hus­band, and what bride ever want­ed that?”^[23]Gre­go­ry, Philip­pa. The Boleyn Inher­i­tance.

And that is real­ly it — at no point in the book, even near­ing its end, does Kather­ine dis­play any more sub­stance than this, despite Gre­go­ry’s rather self-aggran­diz­ing asser­tions that she active­ly strove to por­tray Kather­ine as more than just the dull, vapid youth that his­to­ry has sup­pos­ed­ly claimed her to be.

The Takeaway

It is, in my opin­ion, read­i­ly appar­ent that Gre­go­ry likes to think of her­self as a cham­pi­on of the for­got­ten woman, in no small part because of what she believes to be her role in cre­at­ing sup­pos­ed­ly nuanced por­traits of women oth­er­wise neglect­ed by his­tor­i­cal record.^[24]Kell­away, Kate. “Philip­pa Gre­go­ry: unearthing his­to­ry’s for­got­ten women.” The Guardian. Yet she strikes me more as pre­cise­ly the type of per­son she crit­i­cizes in The Oth­er Queen; that is, the type that “make[s] up sto­ries about [princess­es] in which [they are] either a saint or a whore.”^[25]Gre­go­ry, Philip­pa. The Oth­er Queen. There is rarely any in-between in Gre­go­ry’s writ­ing; her char­ac­ters tend to be either win­some and charm­ing, or obnox­ious and insuf­fer­able — and the por­tray­al they receive is almost entire­ly depen­dent on her per­son­al feel­ings toward them.

I am aware that as humans we are all giv­en to our own pref­er­ences and bias­es, whether known or unknown. Indeed, I prob­a­bly would not take such issue with Gre­go­ry’s writ­ing were it not for the fact that my own bias­es hap­pen to run exact­ly oppo­site hers: I have great admi­ra­tion for the tenac­i­ty and intel­li­gence of Anne Boleyn, as well as for the willpow­er of Mar­garet Beau­fort — anoth­er his­tor­i­cal fig­ure Gre­go­ry clear­ly dis­likes, like­ly because she was not exact­ly a bene­fac­tor of Cather­ine of Aragon (but I would point out that nei­ther pref­er­ence pre­vents me from also feel­ing a great deal of sym­pa­thy for Cather­ine of Aragon; and were I ever to, say, dab­ble in writ­ing his­tor­i­cal fic­tion, from por­tray­ing her fair­ly, some­thing that seems lost on Gre­go­ry). To Gre­go­ry’s cred­it, she has acknowl­edged that some parts of her nov­els “are his­to­ry, some are spec­u­la­tion, and some are fic­tion,”^[26]Gre­go­ry, Philip­pa. The Red Queen. and also that the “feel­ings [of the char­ac­ters she writes]…can only be a mat­ter of spec­u­la­tion in the absence of any per­son­al record.”^[27]Gre­go­ry, Philip­pa. Three Sis­ters, Three Queens. Still, when you are a famous author with a large plat­form capa­ble of reach­ing mil­lions of read­ers, and you insist on mar­ket­ing your­self as a rel­a­tive­ly objec­tive his­to­ri­an, whose nov­els are large­ly his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate except for the “feel­ings and moti­va­tions”^[28]Gre­go­ry, Philip­pa. The Oth­er Boleyn Girl. of the char­ac­ters involved, then I think a lit­tle more account­abil­i­ty might be in order.

If I could stress only one point to any­one about to read Gre­go­ry’s Plan­ta­genet or Tudor-era nov­els, it would be that Gre­go­ry is at least as much a revi­sion­ist as she is a his­to­ri­an. Now, I might also be tempt­ed to stress that nei­ther she nor any­one else, real­ly, can help that — I would posit that all his­to­ri­ans must be in some part revi­sion­ists, as it is impos­si­ble to know the exact course of even the most fas­tid­i­ous­ly doc­u­ment­ed events of yore, much less how the peo­ple involved felt and thought as indi­vid­u­als. I do ful­ly under­stand that writ­ing his­tor­i­cal fic­tion neces­si­tates the tak­ing of cre­ative lib­er­ties. But Gre­go­ry’s prob­lem, in my opin­ion, is that she projects her per­son­al bias­es into her writ­ing often to the pro­nounced dis­ser­vice of oth­er his­tor­i­cal fig­ures, i.e., those toward whom she feels per­son­al antipa­thy, such as Anne Boleyn — all while mar­ket­ing her­self as both a rel­a­tive­ly objec­tive his­to­ri­an as well as an advo­cate of the women mar­gin­al­ized by his­to­ry. To that end, it would prob­a­bly be more accu­rate for her to refer to her­self as an advo­cate for only the women that strike her per­son­al fan­cy. For her to claim any­thing else, I think, would be a gross, even irre­spon­si­ble, misrepresentation.

The con­tent of this post con­sti­tutes an expres­sion pure­ly of my per­son­al opin­ion. The var­i­ous facts and quo­ta­tions ref­er­enced in sup­port of it have been cit­ed to their prop­er sources. If you see any errors in any of the fac­tu­al ref­er­ences made, please let me know.