Leanda de Lisle: Henrietta Maria: Conspirator, Warrior and Phoenix Queen: basically "Henrietta Maria: For the Defense!", a spirited new biography of one of the most unpopular English Queens. It's well written, presents its assumptions with source quotes and does a great job with establishing context and bringing not just its titular character but also the people around her to life. This holds especially true for Henrietta Maria's sisters, Christine of Savoy and Elisabeth/Isabel of Spain, both of whom are very interesting in their own right and make for a great compare and contrast to her. (Meanwhile, brother Louis XIII - that's the one from the Three Musketeers - remains a bit vague, but being overshadowed by his First Minister Richelieu has been his lot since his life time.) By quoting from letters between the sisters, Leanda de Lisle also shows they remained in contact throughout their turbulent lives. Henrietta Maria was the youngest (literally a baby when their father, Henri IV, was assassinated), and how her sisters fared in their marriages and adopted countries of course informed her own behaviour. Both Christine and Elisabeth were distrusted and resented at first, but then became popular - Christine especially was impressive in that Richelieu, like many a head of government before and after him, assumed she'd basically the representative of French interests in Savoy, whereas Christine, to Richelieu's great displeasure, played the bad cards she was dealt (Savoy wasn't a huge and powerful Kingdom like France, Spain or England, but it was strategically very iimportant for everyone's plans in the Europe of the Thirty Years War) exceedingly well and kept the Duchy independent for her son to rule. Of course, Christine and Elisabeth shared the religion of the majority in their adopted countries - and Henrietta Maria did not. Which meant the initial standard xenophobic distrust never went away, as in her sisters' cases, but multiplied.
In terms of establishing context, Leanda de Lisle also does a great job in pointing out that Catholics in England (and Scotland, and good lord, Ireland)
were relentlessly persecuted, both by the government(s) - and here, far from doing better under Charles I, they at first did worse than under James, denying the claim that Henrietta Maria made Charles pro Catholics - and by a very vocal part of the Protestant population, who basically was convinced every Catholic was secretly planning a second Bartholomew's Night massacre and acted accordingly. 15 years old Henriettta Maria when sent to England as a bride was very much expected to help her co-religionists to at least toleration status and was told as much by the papal legate. She tried. It didn't help the initial tense state of her marriage or how she was perceived by the Brits. A classic early situation is teen Henrietta Maria passing Tyburn, where Catholics priests had been executed, and praying, essentially treating the spot as a place of martyrdom, while for the Protestant Brits these had been dirty traitors getting their just deserts and they thought her honouring their memory was outrageous. New to England teen Henrietta Maria also said, when asked about whether she could live with and love Protestants, "why not? My father was one!", which is a far cry from the Catholic fanatic secretly plotting to bring the Inquisition to England her enemies portrayed her at. All this said, I think while Leanda de Lisle makes a good case for young Henrietta Maria being earnestly driven to achieve toleration, not dominance, she's letting middle aged Henrietta Maria off too easily for her behaviour re: religion vis a vis both her youngest and her oldest son, more about this later.
Henrietta Maria and Charles I pretty much were the real life version of the "arranged marriage after initial obstacles and mutual misunderstandings becomes true love match" trope, which paradoxically was both great for more than a decade of personal happiness and bad for her ever darkening reputation. Because one of the obstacles to marital bliss had been the favourite Charles had inherited from his father, the Duke of Buckingham. (Not in the sense of also romancing Buckingham, but Buckingham
was whom he was emotionally closest to.) When Buckingham was killed, there was, as Leanda de Lisle wryly observed, only one part of his many, many offices, riches, and standing his enemies did not covet - and that was Buckingham playing the role of Evil Advisor (tm) in the public perception. It's the classic get out both for a monarchically minded population - of course you don't blame the King, you're not against the King, it's just the Evil Advisor responsible for anything wrong, not the King - and for the monarch (who if and when making concessions to appease disgruntled nobles and/or commons can always throw said advisor under the bus. Charles I. had already shown himself stubborn re: that last part re: Buckingham (i.e. he defended him at every turn), but as long as Buckingham was still alive, he still made for a good scapegoat in the public perception. Once Buckingham was dead, the role of Evil Advisor (tm) went to... Henrietta Maria, whose increasing closeness to the King was very noticeable. Plus Charles did not have any mistresses to play the role instead. As a result, Henrietta Maria in addition to all the distrust she already got for being Catholic now got all the hostlity Buckingham used to get. In terms of how much political influence she actually had: Leanda de Lisle, who also wrote a biography about Charles I, shows that while he took her advice more into account in those later years, he still disagreed with her a lot, too. Some of his most disastrous decisions in the long term, like trying to impose the "Arminian" (= Anglican Catholicism, basically) style championed by his Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, on England and Scotland had nothing to do with her (and didn't come with much improvement for Roman Catholics, though there was a bit - though they still had to pay heavy fines for going to mass; quarelling with his parliament Charles definitely could not do without that money). (Speaking of Scotland, de Lisle points out that the only Scots Henrietta Maria knew personally were the few Catholic Scottish Lords at court in Westminster, which was bound to give her a distorted impression as what Scotland was like, where Catholics by then were only one percent of the population or thereabouts. Her urging son Charles to make a deal with the Scots decades later partly came from this very wrong idea that the country was full of Royalist Catholics burning to rally to the Stuart cause.)
One attractive quality Henrietta Maria had was that she was a loyal friend (and patron, and relation) to have. As mentioned, she hadn't gotten along well with Buckingham, but apparantly his sister, Susan Denbigh, whom he'd placed at her side as a lady-in-waiting (as he'd done with a probable mistress, Lucy Hay, the legendary Countess of Carlisle who's switch sides three times in the Civil War), must have behaved well towards Henrietta Maria during the Buckingham years, because far from dismissing her post Buckingham's death, Henrietta Maria kept her (and the other Villiers ladies, including Buckingham's widow) in her service (and not to humiliate them, either, but as prefered courtiers). And when her mother, Maria de' Mediici, who'd lost her power struggle with Richelieu and had been touring the continent in exile ever since, chose the worst possible time to visit Britain (i.e. around the time of Wentworth's execution, when everyone was on powder kegs already, and receiving the French Queen Mother, seen as an embodiment of the Counter Reformation, really REALLY REALLY did not help), she stll did her best to make her welcome. (Maria de' Medici eventually had to leave because Charles I. could no longer guarantee her personal safety.) This quality explains conversely while the few courtiers who followed her into exile remained loyal to her through thick and thin when there was nothing to gain and everything to lose by staying around her. And she was both a good organizer and full of personal courage, with the most obvious example being her organizing guns and another army for her husband during her first trip to the continent (the Protestant Netherlands being her first call, not yet France) and bringing them with her when making it back to England. Another example are the circumstances of her last pregnancy which resulted from he reunion with husband Charles during that occasion. Henrietta Maria was very aware that if she was captured by the Parliamentarian army, she would make either a powerful hostage or might not survive. So she gave birth at Exeter (to Henriette Anne, aka Minette), heard the army under the command of the Earl of Essex (yes, that one, Frances Howard's first husband) were fastly approaching, left newborn baby Miinette in the care of a lady-in-waiting (as a baby could not make a fast escape ride) and basicaly made her successfull escape (to France, this time) directly after having birth. (That it was necessary, from her pov, is shown by Essex - never one to avoid the chance of showing himself as a jerk towards a woman - having sent a message to her saying he'd happily escort her back to London for the sake of her health as the air was better there.) (Baby Minette would be smuggled out of England by said lady in waiting two years later.)
Now for the criticism: it's basically what makes the book compelling, too, that it is unabashedly partisan in its defense of its titular heroine. More often than not, this works for me, and for example, I don't begrudge de Lisle showing Richelieu mainly in his capacity as feuding with Maria de' Medici, and then her daughters, as this is how he impacted Henrietta Maria's life, and not getting in depth into his policies aside from this. But basically spending only spending a paraphrase of Tallyrand's "worse than a crime, a mistake" re: the punishment of several anti Laud, anti Armenian Puritans by Charles I made me say "hang on...". Showing how bad Catholicis had it in England: fair and important, and often neglected in traditional accounts of the Civil War. Not spending much narrative time on all the genuine issues Parliament had with Charles I., otoh, results in Team Roundheads coming across as mostly motivated by hysteria, which is as unfair as painting Henrietta Maria as The Evil Catholic Queen Planning A Takeover Through Her Weak Husband. And then there's Leanda de Lisle defending one of Henrietta Maria's decisions from her exile years that's most often held against her, to wit, her relentless attempt to convert her youngest son, Henry (once he'd been finally released by Parliament and joined his family in continental exile), to Catholicism, and her basically kicking ihm out when he refused and her oldest son, not really yet Charles II, also told her that converting his brothers to Catholicism was a no go. (Since it fed direclty into the Roundheads narrative of the Stuarts as a bunch of hidden Catholicis anyway and if he, Charles, was ever to make it back to the throne, then as a Protestant.) Leanda de Lisle argues that from Henrietta Maria's pov, becoming a Catholic would have heightened Henry's chances on the mostly Catholic continent, allowing for marriages to rich Catholic princesses, and for Charles (not yet II) to become a Catholic as well would have granted him in adddition to a rich Catholic bride access to in-laws with armies. I don't doubt these reasons were part of her thinking. (Sidenote re: the realism of such a prospect: the French had their own internal Civil War, the Fronde, and once that was done Mazarin - who was like his mentor Richelieu a pragmatist, and had made a deal with Cromwell's Commonwealth - and later a young Louis XIV this early on in his own reign would not have spend the amount of money and men that would have been necessary to put a Catholic Cousin Charles on the throne. Decades later, maybe, but not with the Fronde and the memory of his own nobles fighting against him just a few years ago. As for the Spanish, they also were exhausted by war - with the fellow Catholic French, incidentally - , and contrary to English imagination had no desire to organize another Armada.) But to pressure young Henry - who had seen his father shortly before Charles I.'s execution and had explicitly promised to Charles I he'd stay true to the Church of England and would obey his mother in all things BUT matters of religion - and to react so very badly to his refusal strikes me as being motivated not by any practical concern for his future but by the by then hardcore religious conviction in middle aged Henrietta Maria, the idea that she had to save his soul. She wasn't the teenager ready to refer to her own father as a Protestant (despite his famous "Paris is worth a mass" conversion) anymore, the intervening decades had made her faith one of the few things she could rely on to keep her going. By ascribing practical motives to Henrietta Maria instead of religious ones, I think our author is very aware that current day readers tend to be put off by any kind of religious conversion zeal, and this entire book is meant to defend its subjects and make the readers like her. Which I think would still have been possible while granting Henrietta Maria a few genuine mistakes born out of less than sympathetic to a contemporary of ours but very much part of her era motivation.
(One last note on authorial defensiveness for HM - when quoting the passage from Sophia of Hannover's memoirs where young Sophie, age 12, describes being put off by seeing her aunt for the first time in rl becuase van Dyck made her look so beautiful and here she was, with teeth like cannons out of a fortress and too long arms for too small a figure, Leanda de Lisle is pointing out this is exhausted and traumatized Henrietta Maria mid Civil War and this is cold and heartless. Having read the entire memoirs, Sophie makes fun of her own and her siblings' looks as well, and also she's not writing for publication, she's writing what she recalls of her own impression as a child, and that kind of narrative honesty is what makes her memoirs so vividly entertaining to read.)
All in all: a good biography of its main subject. But if you want a non-royalist perspective on the Civil War, you need to look elsewhere.
Margaret Irwin: Royal Flush: this, on the other hand, is not a new but a very old book, from the 1930s, which
kathyh after beta reading my Minette story for Candyhearts told me about. An audio version on Audible was available. It turned out to be a very entertaining historical novel, dated in some parts (not just because research marches on, but so do attitudes), but still a good read, and also full of shades of grey. I'm not sure I'd call it a biographical novel about Henriette Anne/Minette exactly, though her life is certainly the read thread holding it together (it starts with her as a small child in France and ends with her death), because the focus isn't always on her, and by "not always" I mean considerable parts of the novel focus on other characters from their pov. I don't mean that as a crticisim, just not to set up wrong expectations. What I'd call this novel is an ensemble story about the Bourbon and the Stuart family in Minette's life time, with some sections where she's the pov character, or very prominent, and others where she isn't; listening to the book, I thought that the Grande Mademoiselle (Minette's cousin, daughter of Gaston D'Orleans) probably gets as much pov time as Minette, say, and Henrietta Maria and Louis XIV only slightly less, and then Charles II. (Philippe D'Orleans aka Monsieur, Minette's husband, never gets a pov but he is very present in the book, obviously.) Irwin is a very good writer who gives shades of grey to everyone, which also ensures three dimensionality for her characters. And she has fun even with the ones that briefly show up, like Louise, oldest daughter of Elizabeth Stuart the Winter Queen (and another of Minette's cousins), or that tireless schemer Gaston d'Orleans, and brings them all too life. As for Minette herself, it's not quite how I see her, but it's certainly a plausible and sympathetic portrait.
The actress reading the book does a good job, both with the always faintly ironic narrative voice and for the character voices, except for one thing which touches on a pet peeve of mine, and I'm not sure anyone but me would mind, escpecially in an audio format where it's useful to signal which character is from where. But: all the French characters (except Minette) speak in French accents. Given that except for conversations involving Charles II and his brothers, every single character in this novel actually talks in French to each other, I don't see the point. (Except to signal to the listener who is French and who is not, but like I said: letting Minette, who grows up in France and while speaking English does so in a second language way, not have a French accent is inconsistent then.)
But as I said: the whole "accents when no one in rl speaks in English anyway and we just read/hear it because that's the language the book is written in/the film is shot in" is a personal pet peeve, and probably no one else would mind.