The Fallen Queen

by Emily Purdy

Tyrannised by Bloody Mary and the Virgin Queen, Ladies Jane, Katherine and Mary Grey feared love was unthinkable.

A gripping and bittersweet tale of broken families and broken hearts, courage and conviction, The Fallen Queen recounts an astonishing chapter in the hard-won battle for the Tudor throne.

Led by love into the jaws of fate….

Lady Jane Grey is crowned Queen at the behest of Edward VI. Her reign lasts only nine days before she is executed for treason.

Lady Jane’s two sisters, Katherine and Mary, live on into Elizabeth I’s reign but in family misfortune they are bound, inspiring the Queen’s wrath against them.

In secret, Katherine and Mary risk everything and disobey the royal order by marrying the men they love. Will their treachery be discovered? And must they face imprisonment in the Tower of London, just as their sister did before them?

A stunning tale of treachery and treason, The Fallen Queen gives an unforgettable voice to three extraordinary sisters at the heart of a devastating conflict. Perfect for fans of The Tudors and Philippa Gregory’s The White Queen.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical, Tudor Period

368 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 25, 2013

About the author

Pen name of Brandy Purdy.

Reviews

[Emma · Rating 1 out of 5]

A weak, highly fictional account of the lives of her Grey sisters.

In the last twelve months, stories about the ill fated 9 day queen Jane Grey and her two sisters have become increasingly popular. I have read a number of these and this is perhaps the most unplausible story of them all so far. For me, what makes a good historical fiction is the ability of an author to keep to the tone of the times, this book certainly did not do this, and in times when daughters were supposed to be almost seen and not heard and be respectful to their parents, Purdy creates an unbelievable account of the three sisters by setting them as you would expect children to act in today's society, constantly giving challenge and displaying them with somewhat lose morals. What I perhaps found hardest to believe in this book was the supposed love relationship between Jane's father (Henry Grey) and her husband (Guilford Dudley) and also Kate Grey attempting to save Jane's life by sleeping with her father in law from her first mariage. The artistic license allowed to an author In a historical fiction account has been stretched rather thin in this one. As well as creating three sisters with their somewhat modern day attitudes, Purdy also uses overly modern language constantly throughout this novel, preventing the reader from feeling the gravity of the girls actions against the setting of the times in which they were made.

A weak read for anyone with any knowledge oft he history for the period.

[Lindsay · Rating 2 out of 5]

I agree with most of the other reviews - this book was too wordy, and there were too many fulsome descriptions of food, hair, flowers and clothing. It was quite distracting from the story, which in itself was quite interesting, although presumably not historically accurate. I felt very sorry for the Grey sisters, whose parents sold them down the river for the chance of power.

[V.E. Lynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Fallen Queen" is the story of the Grey sisters, Jane, Katherine and Mary, told mainly from the perspective of the youngest, and always the most likable of the trio, Mary. Mary Grey is a dwarf and suffers greatly, both physically and mentally, from the condition. As a consequence, her parents, the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk, do not really see her as marriage material and concentrate all their considerable ambitions on the older two. Jane is married off to Guildford Dudley, with tragic results for both, and Katherine has her first marriage annulled before she secretly weds Edward Seymour, has two babies in the Tower of London, and dies young having been banished by Elizabeth I. Mary does eventually marry, to Thomas Keyes, but they are separated and she dies alone at her house in London. This is of course all very fertile ground for a novelist and Emily Purdy has taken all these events and put her own, very unique twist on them. I liked the portrayal of both Mary and Katherine, they are warm hearted, brave and quite selfless, especially Mary. Jane is naturally bookish, bright and fiercely Protestant but in this version of her story she also lusts after her handsome young husband, the golden haired Guildford. And here we come to a very unusual part of the book: the portrayal of Guildford Dudley and the Grey girls father, Henry, Duke of Suffolk. Emily Purdy has them engaged in a passionate love affair, when Suffolk isn't talking about marzipan and pastries and Guildford isn't boasting of his good looks and declaring that he will go to Italy in order to pursue a singing career! It's different, and maybe such a familiar tale needs a point of difference, but it just didn't work for me. The rest was a good read.

[Cearuillin Ni · Rating 2 out of 5]

So much potential and I really wanted to love this book. But at parts I felt like I was willing myself to continue... so much description it was at times difficult for the mind to fall into that flow state that comes with reading.

[Louise Fry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book okay however not great I'm glad I read it as always good to read from my favourite period of history and interesting to read another perspective from Mary - I do find the grey sisters one of the most fascinating subjects as they are interesting people and so tragically ruined by being so close to the throne for no fault of their own. Overall It was an okay book.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm about 100 pages from finishing "The Fallen Queen" and I'm really disappointed to have to admit to myself that I can't wait to get this book finished. I've read quite a lot of Emily Purdy's other work and I seem to have the same issues with each of her books. Don't get me wrong - I still really enjoy her stories, I think my favourite so far has definitely been "The Tudor Bride", but there are definitely recurring problems with them. Let me first talk about Purdy's writing style - first off, she is massively into her descriptions. Believe me, I'm a lover of detail in books, particularly within the Historical Fiction genre as I think it's the descriptions of the sights, sounds and smells etc. of the era you're reading about that transport you back to that time. Emily Purdy is really good at description - maybe even a bit too good. Ever heard the phrase "less is more" - this should have been Purdy's creed when writing "The Fallen Queen". She spends aaaaaaages describing the outfits Mary Grey and her sisters Kate and Jane are wearing, right down to the most minute details, and sometimes spends half a page listing the food and drink that's available at a banquet. A few examples of this scattered throughout a book would be no bad thing, but this type of writing is so frequent in the book it becomes repetitive and dull, it felt a bit like continuously reading food or clothes shopping lists! There's an awful lot of repetition in the book in general - I'm thinking of a particular instance where Mary describes a cunning woman Kate has gone to see for help, then later in the novel the same character reappears and is again described almost word for word in exactly the same manner!

Now onto the actual story itself - it definitely had tons of promise! Jane Grey, the Queen for Nine Days and certainly her sisters Mary and Katherine Grey are some of the more neglected characters in popular historical fiction. I don't know why though as they have really interesting stories! So there was definitely a lot of potential here for a really good story. Characterisation was a massive problem though. Here are my thoughts:

# Jane Grey: Wow! How unlikeable can you get!? It's quite hard to feel sorry for such a thoroughly unpleasant character. Of course I sympathised with Jane's plight, but her rudeness (dropping the contents of her chamber pot over a statue of the Virgin Mary to pointedly upset her cousin Mary and farting while Mary read Catholic prayers aloud) and selfishness didn't really redeem her that much for me.

# Guildford Dudley: Guildford was almost too ridiculous to read about. I really don't like what Purdy chose to do with his character, partly because I don't understand any of his motives. So he was a vain, pompous, conceited yet devilishly handsome fool - or was he? Was his behaviour "I am too beautiful..." (he genuinely does say stuff like this) a front to hide something more? Well that's just it, I don't know. If it was a front, and he really was a kind, intelligent young man, why did he feel the need to mask this with idiocy and self importance? Cringe.

#Henry "Hal" Grey: Cringe again. Mega cringe. This guy was like a caricature. All he thought about was sweets! The sections of dialogue where he'd list all the things he liked to eat while comparing them to Guildford Dudley were so incredibly irritating I wanted to stop reading them.

You may wonder then why I've still given this book 3 stars when I've whinged about it so much. I think of my rating actually as more of a 2.5, and it gets that because, try as I might, I will always be a sucker for 16th century English historical fiction, whether it is well or poorly written!

** Just finished the book - WTF was with the ridiculous storyline of Adrian Stokes (the former stable boy at Bradgate, Mary's childhood home, and then husband of Mary's formidable mother) revealing that he'd loved Mary all along?! Why on Earth was that just tacked onto the story in the last 5 pages of the book? How silly.

[Melanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

First things first: historical fiction is not my kind of thing at all so I maybe went into this not expecting a great deal, but at the same time the story and the writing have done little to nothing to change my mind. I don't know a great deal about this period of English history - what little we covered at school I've mostly forgotten - so I don't know how much of what happens in this book is 'historical' and how much is 'fiction' but there are many things which strike me as utterly unbelievable.

The characters are largely caricatures, though I must admit that this calms down a little as the book progresses, and I don't particularly like any of them. Jane Grey is pious and preachy without ever actually seeming to practice what she preaches. She's selfish and stubborn to a fault. Katherine is all about love. Love love love. That's all she thinks about; that's all she is. When it comes to Mary - the narrator of this story - I have to admit that I just didn't believe in her. You've got a 5-8-year-old soliloquising on life and love in a more elegant manner than most adults could achieve. Yes, yes, childhood didn't exist as it does now, but I think that took it too far.

And I honestly think that if all the unnecessary descriptions of clothes, food, hair, flowers had been cut the book would have been a good fifty pages shorter. I found the sections where these things had no place to be far easier to read, and often skipped over passages rather than read the litanies.

[Helene Harrison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review - At the beginning I found it very hard to get in to. The novel doesn't immediately grip you. The prologue is a little long and boring in places, and it wasn't until around the third chapter that I really began to get interested. However, the middle and end were really very good and more enjoyable. I thought it was very clever how the sisters were all so different yet so stubborn at the same time. For me it was the character portrayals that brought this book back from disaster in the first few chapters. In particular I loved Mary, who history seems to forget, and it was interesting to see her point of view.

Genre? - Historical / Romance / Drama

Characters? - Jane Grey / Frances Grey / Katherine Grey / Mary Grey / Guildford Dudley / John Dudley / Thomas Keyes / Adrian Stokes / Edward Seymour / Henry Grey / Elizabeth I / Mary I / Henry Herbert / Amy Robsart / Mrs Ellen

Setting? - London, Bradgate & Chelsea (England)

Series? - N/A

Recommend? - Yes

Rating - 16/20

For discussion questions see my blog at https://bookbloggerish.wordpress.com/...

[Alannah Clarke · Rating 3 out of 5]

A highly fictitious account of Lady Jane Grey and her two sisters who had lived into Queen Elizabeth's reign. I don't think I would have paid full price for this book but snatched it up as soon as I saw it was on sale. At the beginning of the book, I thought it was quite slow but the character portrayals of the three sisters really changed that for me. Purdy manages to create three unique women despite them all being related.

I did believe the prologue was quite long for the length of the book. I do believe people will enjoy this book if they manage to persevere through the first three chapters, at least.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I sort of enjoyed this, but it was kind of frothy. WAY too much lavish descriptions of clothes, sweets and hair. You'd think the only really key thing about any of these women was the colour of their hair.
I also think it would have been interesting to focus more on Mary Grey. Despite being the narrator, she was sort of neglected.

[Louisa Mcginn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh dear, this really isn't very good. It's not really clear who the 'fallen queen' of the title is, the pacing is all wrong, and if you cut out all the descriptions of what the sisters are wearing and the sweets their father gives them then the book would be half the length. You're best off sticking with Philippa Gregory, and I'm no big fan of her either.

[Carina · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you're looking for a catalogue of Tudor-era clothing and sweets and an absence of punctuation, this book is for you. I appreciate the attempt to humanize the various persons generally overlooked in historical fiction but it passed the mark by about fifty miles and three hundred pounds of sweetener.

[Alison · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ok for light reading but annoying in places because of a few stupid mistakes. Like having someone picking flowers that could not possibly have been in the garden together - snowdrops with roses as an example. Overly heavy on what people are wearing or eating

[SAGEY · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't even finish this book...

[Hollieann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although the narrator spent too much time describing foods, flowers and clothing (lists of more than 6-7 lines were normal), I really enjoyed this book.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really wanted to like this book, but the 8 year old narrator; Mary Gray, was far too mature for her years...