Even more dangerous, perhaps, is the love that hides in her heart for a man close to the King – at the end of that path, if found out, would lie the axe.Īnd so we come to the sixth and final novel in Alison Weir’s ambitious and spectacularly-presented series, a series that I have read and loved for almost six years now. That means she has enemies and they seek her ruin.

These are dangerous times to have beliefs that stray towards Protestantism and Katharine is seen by some of that faith as a beacon of hope. The result is a tangled tale of love and a struggle for power, bringing to a close the dramatic and violent reign of Henry VIII.Katharine Parr must have thought when she buried her second husband that now she could marry for love and not for the advancement of her family but, in 1543, when Katharine caught the eye of an ailing King Henry VIII, her fate was decided and she became his sixth wife. The princess is innocently flattered by his attentions, allowing him into her bedroom, to the shock of her household. Thrilled at this renewed opportunity to wed her first love, Katharine doesn't realize that Sir Thomas now sees her as a mere stepping stone to the throne, his eye actually set on bedding and wedding fourteen-year-old Elizabeth. The king is no longer in any condition to father a child, but Katharine is content to mother his three children, Mary, Elizabeth, and the longed-for male heir, Edward.įour years into the marriage, Henry dies, leaving England’s throne to nine-year-old Edward-a puppet in the hands of ruthlessly ambitious royal courtiers-and Katharine's life takes a more complicated turn.

Aware of his rival, Henry sends him abroad, leaving Katharine no choice but to become Henry’s sixth queen in 1543. She, however, is in love with Sir Thomas Seymour, brother to the late Queen Jane. Having sent his much-beloved but deceitful young wife Katheryn Howard to her beheading, King Henry fixes his lonely eyes on a more mature woman, thirty-year-old, twice-widowed Katharine Parr.

“A superb read and a remarkable end to a brilliant series.”- Historical Novel Society Bestselling author and acclaimed historian Alison Weir brings her Tudor Queens series to a close with the remarkable story of Henry VIII's sixth and final wife, who manages to survive him and remarry, only to be thrown into a romantic intrigue that threatens the very throne of England.

Katharine parr the sixth wife a novel