If you like your books thick with history, royalty and a touch of romance, Elizabeth Fremantle’s Queen’s Gambit may be for you.

The novel opens as Katherine Parr, a 16-century Englishwoman, nurses her second husband through his dying breaths. As soon as she gets the fellow buried, she hears rumors that King Henry the 8th is single and looking. Specifically, he’s looking at her.

If you know your history, you know Katherine Parr is more than a figment of Fremantle’s imagination. And you know that things didn’t go well for Henry’s previous wives:

1. Divorced
2. Beheaded
3. Died
4. Divorced
5. Beheaded

Is this a mess that our Katherine wants to get mixed up in?

No.

Can she tell Henry, “No thanks”?

No.

How did the king get her number, so to speak? Could it have anything to do with her ambitious brother, Will?

Henry weighs as much or more than the marital bed upon which he’s so eager to place Katherine. Fremantle spares us overmuch detail in this department, but makes it clear enough that Katherine may want to lie back and think of that dashing gentleman she met at court before things got so serious with Henry.

Meanwhile, Katherine might avoid the fate of Henry’s other wives if she produces an heir. Her prospects don’t look bright. Already two marriages down without the pitter-patter of little feet to show for it, she’s running out of time, being thirty-one and all.

She does, however, take the royal children under her wing, and they include the tween girl that eventually becomes the first Queen Elizabeth.

A second strand of the story portrays Dorothy Fownten, a girl from the British sticks. Things haven’t gone well for the Fowntens. Daddy, probably drunk, fell off a thatched roof and it’s all been downhill from there. Sending a daughter into household service is a much brighter prospect than letting her starve on the farm.

So Dorothy, or Dot, joins Katherine’s household. As Katherine travels up the social ladder, Dot trails behind, often packing up the royal gowns and tapestries as the King and Queen move from palace to palace.

Along with royalty and bits of romance, we have intrigue. Should Henry break with Catholicism and Rome and tradition? Should he give the time of day to those heretics who preach Reform? Who sympathizes with the heretics and how far will the traditionalists go to defend their turf?

I would so hate to live in a time when I might get in deep trouble for my beliefs. Oh, wait. That’s exactly the time I do live in. Wonder if I could play it like Katherine, who can walk into a room with a calm smile on her face, even as a sword hangs over her head?

Fremantle serves up a good story with few annoying distractions. One plot line looked like it might tromp through the cow patties, but it never did, so I stuck with Queen’s Gambit and even brushed up on history as I turned the pages.

Photo credit: Thomas Hawk on Foter.com / CC BY-NC