[Gráinne]

A Dangerous Inheritance, by Alison Weir. This is pure historical trash, although I enjoy her biographies.

It's parallel stories of Katherine Plantagenet, illegitimate daughter of Richard, Duke of Gloucester (and soon to be King), and Katherine Grey, sister of Lady Jane Grey. Both were real people, though I'm sure much license has been taken as to their personalities and characters.

Katherine Plantagenet is more a convenient character narrating the unfolding story of Richard, his sister-in-law the Queen, and his nephews. He of course has gone down as the wickedest uncle in history, killing his nephews and allegedly several other kin to snatch the throne for himself. Or was he??

The image of the hunchbacked homicidal power-mad Richard came out of the Tudors and Shakespeare. Henry Tudor, with only a flimsy claim to the throne, won the Battle of Bosworth and became Henry VII. That tenuosity would have ramifications throughout all the Tudor reigns and afterwards. Richard's much more sympathetic in the book. Others, including Henry, also had motive to brush aside the boy-king and his brother like mosquitos.

Katherine Grey was caught up in a plot by a powerful duke to prevent the Roman Catholic Mary Tudor (Henry VIII's daughter) from becoming Queen, after the Protestant Edward VI died. Part of this was marrying her to the son of one of his cronies, and there are teasing scenes of almost-consummation, but in reality the marriage was never consummated and ultimately annulled. Later, she brought down the rage of her cousin Elizabeth when she clandestinely married without the Queen's consent and had two sons, to boot. She died under house arrest. Her role in the book is to discover her distant relative Katherine Plantagenet and what happened to the nephews.

Books like this usually just make me mad, as they are almost like fanfiction instead of reality. But, once in a while, a little trash is a good thing.