The Boleyn Reckoning: A Novel (The Boleyn Trilogy)

In a reading world that has become saturated with novels about Tudor England and the tantalizing life at court, how does a writer make sure their book or series stands apart from the rest? Many tactics have been tried: accounts of Henry VIII’s reign told from the perspectives of those closest to king and his wives and told from the point of view of the largely overlooked serving staff; novelizations sticking so close to the historical facts that they border on non-fiction; some novels that indulge in the supernatural or provocative speculation surrounding Anne Boleyn and her successors as Henry’s queen while others go out of their way to explain it all away. Inevitably, some facets of history are changed for the sake of the story. For Laura Andersen and her Boleyn Trilogy, the answer was to take that inevitability and run with it. The premise of her Boleyn Trilogy lies with the question, what would have happened if Anne Boleyn’s third and final pregnancy had resulted in the healthy son so much depended upon?

Beginning with The Boleyn King, Andersen’s trilogy focuses on the lives of William a.k.a. King Henry IX and his closes family and friends. Rather than spending much of her early life as a threat to her siblings, Elizabeth has grown up under the care of her mother, Anne Boleyn who remained queen and outlived her husband (eliminating wives three through six from the legend of Henry VIII). A close advisor to her younger brother, there are two others who round out the royals’ inner circle. Genevieve “Minuette” Wyatt, the orphaned daughter of one of Anne Boleyn’s favorite ladies was born the same day as the young king and grew up as a royal ward, a playmate and companion to both royals. Similarly, Dominic Courtenay, though a few years older than the king, has been a constant in the monarch’s life and is one of the few people he truly trusts and whose advice William will take.