Although I really enjoy Alison Weir's fictionalised version of the Tudor court, I have found the last couple of her books to be a bit more difficult to get through. Add to that the fact that Mary I is always the Tudor I find the least accessible, it's hopefully understandable why I've put off reading this book for a while. However, I was very pleasantly surprised!

The author, as always, does a wonderful job bringing her character to life, sticking well with the established facts while filling in the gaps of emotions and thoughts with sensitivity and an even hand. While in her author's notes she admits she favours the more 'traditional' view of Mary and has gone more down this path with her narrative, nevertheless she has given Mary depth, allowing the reader to perhaps get an insight into her motivations beyond her all-consuming Catholicism and love for her mother. Particularly at the beginning of the book, I found myself somehow mistaking the third person writing for a first person one; it was that easy for you to slip into the mind of the young Mary. This did falter as things progressed - as she becomes more closed-minded, so too does the ability to follow her trail of thought diminish.

There were elements of her character that I didn't get on with quite so well. Firstly, the fact that she remained quite literally completely oblivious to "what passes between a man and a woman" until her wedding night. And I mean COMPLETELY oblivious. While I can absolutely accept that it was normal for women to be innocent of sex before marriage, given the scandals of court life and the general bawdiness even of her own fool, I found it quite hard to believe that she wouldn't have had any knowledge  at all. Even one as pious as Mary would surely have been able to gather enough to have even an abstract understanding? I don't know, but it just didn't sit right with me.

It also frustrated me that Mary could not see her own hypocrisy. This is one of the character flaws that makes me dislike the real Mary I, but reading this book has given me the understanding why it bugs me so much. Ultimately, she is quite happy to resist orders from her father and brother to temper her faith, but when the shoe is on the other foot she berates Elizabeth for offering that same resistance. This came through in the writing so clearly to me, and I found it an excellent portrayal of her single-mindedness. What I did notice was that the change in her affections for Elizabeth and Edward seemed to change in no time at all - the writing and story flowed really well, but it did feel like a story of two parts when it comes to her siblings, and indeed her religion.

I will never truly understand the religious position of the 16th century or indeed why it mattered (matters) so much about the specifics of how someone worships the Christian God. As a result, I can only look upon Mary I as something of a zealot when it comes to her faith being the 'true' faith. Again, this means that her time as Queen was, for me, far more difficult to digest because of the seeming lack of explanation for Mary's ordering of heretics to be burned other than 'my religion is better than your religion'. While I get that this was the author's aim, this lack of exploration meant that I did lose some interest towards the end as it felt like less thought has been given to it.

I was fully prepared for this to be a slog, but I was surprised at the lightness of the writing despite the more difficult subject matter. I enjoyed the little tidbits of speculation about Mary's feelings for Ambassadors Chapuys and Renard, the brief but well developed framing of her relationships with her various stepmothers and so on. It's moments like this that the author is so good at; you know it's supposition, but it's been so seamlessly woven into the narrative that you start to think "well, just maybe...". 

It's definitely worth a read as it makes you think about your reactions to the real Mary I, but ultimately it is unlikely to shift your perceptions of her by too much.