The King's Curse (the Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #7)

The sixth and final novel in Philippa Gregory's Cousins' War series follows Margaret Pole from 1499 to 1541 as she struggles to protect her family under the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII. Set in Tudor England, the novel is narrated by Margaret herself, beginning when she is a young woman stripped of her royal identity and ending with her death on Henry VIII's scaffold.

In November 1499, twenty-six-year-old Margaret Plantagenet wakes at Westminster Palace to the reality that her brother Edward, known as Teddy, the Earl of Warwick and a Plantagenet heir to the English throne, was beheaded the previous day. Henry VII ordered the execution to eliminate a rival claimant and satisfy Spain, which refused to send Katherine of Aragon to marry Prince Arthur while competing heirs lived. Margaret, once a niece of Kings Edward IV and Richard III, has been married off to Sir Richard Pole, an obscure knight, to bury her dangerous name. Richard urges her to hide her grief, warning that open mourning will displease the Tudors.

Before Margaret departs court, Queen Elizabeth of York, her cousin and Henry VII's wife, confides a terrible secret: She and her mother once cursed whoever murdered the young princes in the Tower of London, declaring that the murderer's son and grandson would die young. Margaret privately dreads the curse could fall on the Tudor line and leave nothing but barren girls. She carries this fear as she travels to Stourton Castle in Staffordshire for her confinement, where she gives birth to her fourth child, Reginald, and then to Ludlow Castle on the Welsh border, where Richard serves as guardian to Prince Arthur.

At Ludlow, Margaret helps prepare for Katherine's arrival. The young couple fall deeply in love, but in April 1502, Arthur contracts what appears to be the sweating sickness. On his deathbed, he extracts a promise from Katherine, later revealed to be that she will marry his younger brother Harry and still become queen. After Arthur's death, Katherine tells Margaret she intends to claim the marriage was never consummated so she can remarry. Margaret reluctantly agrees to support this story.

Losses mount quickly. Queen Elizabeth dies in childbirth in 1503. Richard dies of a sudden fever in 1504, leaving Margaret nearly destitute with five children. She sends her older sons Henry, whom she calls Montague, and Arthur to live with a cousin. She places six-year-old Reginald in the Carthusian monastery at Sheen Priory because she cannot afford to feed him and takes refuge with her two youngest children at Syon Abbey. For years she endures grinding poverty and deepening bitterness toward the Tudors.

Everything changes in April 1509 when Henry VII dies and the seventeen-year-old Prince Harry seizes the throne as Henry VIII, immediately marrying Katherine and fulfilling Arthur's dying wish. Katherine summons Margaret as her first lady-in-waiting, and the king grants her an annual income, restores her sons to court, and funds Reginald's education. Later, Margaret petitions to restore her brother's lands and titles. Henry grants everything, making her Countess of Salisbury in her own right, the only woman in England holding a title independently.

Katherine endures a devastating pattern of failed pregnancies. A son born in January 1511 dies after ten days, and Margaret, appointed Lady Governess of the royal nursery, must deliver the news to the queen. Henry's response to repeated losses evolves from grief to suspicion. His affair with lady-in-waiting Anne Hastings plants a poisonous idea: Anne whispers that his marriage to his brother's widow may violate scripture and be cursed. Meanwhile, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey rises to become the king's chief minister and papal legate, the pope's official representative in England, accumulating unprecedented power.

In 1516, Katherine gives birth to Princess Mary, a healthy girl but not the hoped-for son. Margaret becomes Mary's governess. The king's mistress Bessie Blount bears him an illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, in 1519, whom Henry acknowledges with extraordinary honors, signaling his desperation for a male heir. Margaret rebuilds the Plantagenet family through strategic marriages for her children, but the execution of her cousin Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, on treason charges in 1521 warns that Plantagenet blood remains dangerous. Margaret's family is briefly exiled from court.

The king's infatuation with Anne Boleyn, who refuses to become his mistress and demands marriage, plunges the court into crisis. Henry seeks an annulment. Katherine dramatically appears at the legatine court, a church tribunal convened by papal representatives, kneels before Henry, declares herself his true wife, and walks out. Margaret's son Reginald, now a respected scholar, is sent to consult French theologians; when he reports they unanimously support Katherine, the king strikes him and draws a dagger. Reginald flees England permanently.

Thomas Cromwell, a lawyer of humble origins, rises as the king's chief minister after Thomas More briefly serves as Lord Chancellor and resigns rather than support the break with Rome. Cromwell engineers Parliament's recognition of Henry as Supreme Head of the Church of England. Katherine is stripped of her title and banished. Princess Mary is declared illegitimate and forced to serve in the household of the infant Princess Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn's daughter. Margaret is dismissed as Mary's governess.

Margaret, her sons Montague and Geoffrey, and their cousin Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter, secretly ally with the Spanish ambassador and Catholic lords to protect Katherine and Mary. Lord Thomas Darcy, a prominent northern lord and defender of the old faith, gives Margaret an embroidered badge of the five wounds of Christ surmounted by a white rose, linking the defense of the Church to the Plantagenet cause. Katherine dies in January 1536. Anne Boleyn is executed on fabricated charges in May, and Henry Fitzroy dies in July. Henry marries Jane Seymour, but the commons of northern England rise in the Pilgrimage of Grace, thirty thousand strong, demanding restoration of the monasteries. The king promises reform, then breaks every pledge and executes hundreds, including the pilgrim leaders Robert Aske and Darcy.

Jane Seymour gives birth to Prince Edward in October 1537 but dies twelve days later. Reginald publishes Pro ecclesiasticae unitatis defensione, a treatise calling Henry a tyrant. Cromwell's agents investigate the Pole family. Geoffrey is arrested and, broken by imprisonment, attempts suicide. He survives and testifies against his brother Montague, cousin Courtenay, and others. Montague, Courtenay, and their cousin Edward Neville are beheaded in December 1538. Geoffrey receives a pardon but is destroyed by guilt.

Margaret refuses to confess under interrogation and is moved to the Tower of London in May 1539, where she discovers her eleven-year-old grandson Harry has also been imprisoned. Parliament passes an Act of Attainder, a law declaring the Plantagenets guilty of treason without a trial; the only evidence Cromwell produces is Darcy's embroidered badge. Margaret and Harry endure two years of deprivation. Cromwell himself is executed in 1540, but Margaret is not released.

On the morning of May 27, 1541, the warden informs Margaret she will be executed in ninety minutes, without charge or trial. She walks to the block, pays the young executioner, and speaks briefly. But as she prepares to lay her head down, she is seized by a fierce refusal to submit. She rises, crying "No!" as the inexperienced executioner strikes clumsily. She fights to the last, bearing witness against the injustice the Tudors have done to her and to the Plantagenet line.