A Review of Alison Weir’s Jane Seymour: The Haunted Queen

*For context: The events described in this book cover King Henry VIII’s divorce of Catherine of Aragon in order to put his mistress Anne Boleyn on the throne, followed by his affair with Jane when she is a lady-in-waiting in Anne’s court and Jane’s rise to the throne after Anne’s execution.

I’ve always had a special place in my heart for historical fiction, in part due to the ways in which it makes a past era come alive and in part due to my respect for the enormous challenge the author faces: producing a coherent, captivating plot and entertaining characters while still staying true to the historical context that s/he has selected for the book. When an author chooses to write historical fiction about people who did indeed exist in history, the challenge of creating a book that is both appealing and historically accurate multiplies tenfold. In this instance, the primary sources that the author evaluates for background on the book need to shed light not only on the events and cultural phenomena that would have affected the characters; the sources also need to shed light on the characters themselves. In the case of writing about historical figures, authors must take what they glean from old documents and determine exactly how they will use this information to give the historical figure a personality. When I was browsing for a new read in the “Recreational Reading” section of my college library, this book caught my eye because it depicts an actual woman from history, and I wondered: was Alison Weir successful in drawing Jane Seymour, who normally pales in comparison to her husband Henry VIII, out of the confines of the past?

“Historians endlessly debate whether or not Jane was the demure and virtuous willing instrument of an ambitious family and an ardent and powerful king; or whether she was as ambitious as her relations and played a proactive part in bringing down the Queen she served…And yet a novelist approaching Jane Seymour must opt for one view or the other.”

Alison Weir, ‘Author’s Note,’ p. 545

In the Author’s Note at the back of the book, Weir describes the careful consideration she had to put into sculpting Jane’s character. Was she to depict Jane as ambitious in her goal of usurping Anne Boleyn’s position as Queen, or should she make Jane into a quiet, modest woman who was swept up in her family’s ambitions? Ultimately, Weir chooses to go with the latter, and Jane remains kind-hearted, thoughtful, and morally sound throughout the book. I personally feel that Jane’s constant adherence to virtue and stoicism made her a less interesting character at times. For example, why is it that her father’s affair, which threatened to ravage her family system at the start of the book, ends up vanishing from her thoughts during her time at court? Even when Sir John Seymour appears later in the book, when Jane is to be married to King Henry, she displays only concern and sympathy for his ailing health. The book’s summary advertises John Seymour’s affair as a catastrophe that later “triggers memories of a haunting incident that shaped her [Jane’s] beliefs about marriage,” so it seems odd that he quickly becomes a sympathetic character and Jane remains fond of him in spite of all of the indiscretions she witnesses at court. With that said, I understand the challenge that Weir is up against in recreating the past—she mentions in the Author’s Note that Sir John Seymour’s affair likely happened, but it is not certain, and she had to exercise some caution in making it a plot point.

I also found myself unsatisfied by the rapidity with with Jane reverses her decision on becoming a nun. Her devotion to religion seems less convincing when she tries and abandons life in a nunnery within the first twenty pages of the book. However, the constant conflict Jane experiences between staying true to her traditional Catholic faith and accepting King Henry’s religious reforms more than makes up for the sense of inauthenticity I got from her decisions early in the book. Based on her meticulous research, which revealed that Jane remained a staunch supporter of the “old faith” throughout her life, Weir makes Jane into a woman whose internal turmoil is thrown against the backdrop of the havoc that Henry’s divorce wreaked on England. Should Jane continue to support the disposed Queen Catherine of Aragon and oppose church reforms at the potential expense of Henry’s love and her family’s success? Also fascinating is the way in which Jane becomes unwillingly drawn into ruthless court politics and tasked with manipulating King Henry into disposing of the “usurper” Queen Anne. At many points, such as the moment when Jane needs to imply that Anne has been adulterous in front of Henry at dinner in order to please her court allies, her fear and guilt is palpable. Jane’s hallucinations toward the end of the book of Anne’s shadow returning from the dead to haunt her solidify the idea that she is unable to move past some of the questionable decisions she has made, having become a tool of Anne’s foes and unwittingly contributing to Anne’s execution.

In fact, I found Anne to be an even more sympathetic character than Jane. This was perhaps not Weir’s intention, but she does a tremendous job portraying two facets of Anne’s personality: a manipulative, politically-minded woman whose scheming lands her a place on the throne, and a vulnerable woman who is desperate to give Henry a male heir and retain her newfound status as Queen. The passages that describe Anne’s painful childbirths, devastating miscarriages, and fury at finding out about Henry’s affair with Jane illuminate a tragic aspect of life for women in the sixteenth century: their social statuses depended not only on securing good marriages for their families, but also on producing male heirs, and the consequences could be quite severe for them if they did not do this. Readers can sense Anne’s increasing desperation as she fails to give Henry a son again and again, and his temper grows ever more volatile. To me, Anne’s struggles perfectly capture the high stakes and dangers faced by all of Henry’s queens.

Whether Alison Weir is a historian first and an author second, or an author first and a historian second, is up to interpretation. It is important to keep in mind that she is writing a book that is part of a “commercial fiction” type of series, and her main objective is to entertain rather than inform. I was disappointed in the shallowness of the plot and characters at times, particularly in Jane’s relationship with Henry and in her death at the end of the book (which was stuffed into only a few pages). However, Weir has clearly put a lot of thought into how to portray these historical figures based on her extensive knowledge of them, and I appreciate that. Because Jane Seymour: The Haunted Queen is the third book in a six-book series that documents the lives of each of Henry VIII’s wives, I am inclined to read the other books and examine how Weir chose to combine Jane’s story with those of the other Queens. How do Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn appear differently when they are the main subjects of a book as opposed to showing up through Jane Seymour’s eyes? I will have to find out!