Product Description

I am now a condemned traitor . . . I am to die when I have hardly begun to live.

Historical expertise marries page-turning fiction in Alison Weir’s enthralling debut novel, breathing new life into one of the most significant and tumultuous periods of the English monarchy. It is the story of Lady Jane Grey–“the Nine Days’ Queen”–a fifteen-year-old girl who unwittingly finds herself at the center of the religious and civil unrest that nearly toppled the fabled House of Tudor during the sixteenth century.

The child of a scheming father and a ruthless mother, for whom she is merely a pawn in a dynastic game with the highest stakes, Jane Grey was born during the harrowingly turbulent period between Anne Boleyn’s beheading and the demise of Jane’s infamous great-uncle, King Henry VIII. With the premature passing of Jane’s adolescent cousin, and Henry’s successor, King Edward VI, comes a struggle for supremacy fueled by political machinations and lethal religious fervor.

Unabashedly honest and exceptionally intelligent, Jane possesses a sound strength of character beyond her years that equips her to weather the vicious storm. And though she has no ambitions to rule, preferring to immerse herself in books and religious studies, she is forced to accept the crown, and by so doing sets off a firestorm of intrigue, betrayal, and tragedy.

Alison Weir uses her unmatched skills as a historian to enliven the many dynamic characters of this majestic drama. Along with Lady Jane Grey, Weir vividly renders her devious parents; her much-loved nanny; the benevolent Queen Katherine Parr; Jane’s ambitious cousins; the Catholic “Bloody” Mary, who will stop at nothing to seize the throne; and the protestant and future queen Elizabeth. Readers venture inside royal drawing rooms and bedchambers to witness the power-grabbing that swirls around Lady Jane Grey from the day of her birth to her unbearably poignant death. Innocent Traitor paints a complete and compelling portrait of this captivating young woman, a faithful servant of God whose short reign and brief life would make her a legend.

“An impressive debut. Weir shows skill at plotting and maintaining tension, and she is clearly going to be a major player in the . . . historical fiction game.”
–The Independent

“Alison Weir is one of our greatest popular historians. In her first work of fiction . . . Weir manages her heroine’s voice brilliantly, respecting the past’s distance while conjuring a dignified and fiercely modern spirit.”
–London Daily Mail


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1389 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-06
• Released on: 2007-11-06
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Popular biographer Weir (Eleanor of Aquitaine, etc.) makes her historical fiction debut with this coming-of-age novel set in the time of Henry VIII. Weir's heroine is Lady Jane Grey (1537–1554), whose ascension to the English throne was briefly and unluckily promoted by opponents of Henry's Catholic heir, Mary. As Weir tells it, Jane's parents, the Marquess and Marchioness of Dorset, groom her from infancy to be the perfect consort for Henry's son, Prince Edward, entrusting their daughter to a nurse's care while they attend to affairs at court. Jane relishes lessons in music, theology, philosophy and literature, but struggles to master courtly manners as her mother demands. Not even the beheadings of Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard deter parental ambition. When Edward dies, Lord and Lady Dorset maneuver the throne for their 16-year-old daughter, risking her life as well as increased violence between Protestants and Catholics. Using multiple narrators, Weir tries to weave a conspiratorial web with Jane caught at the center, but the ever-changing perspectives prove unwieldy: Jane speaking as a four-year-old with a modern historian's vocabulary, for example, just doesn't ring true. But Weir proves herself deft as ever describing Tudor food, manners, clothing, pastimes (including hunting and jousting) and marital politics. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Reviewed by Ron Charles

After publishing 10 works of history about the kings and queens of England, Alison Weir has come over to the dark side and written a novel. The process, she says, "filled me with a heady sense of freedom," but clearly that appraisal is based on the Historian's Heady Sense of Freedom Index, which runs from 1 (using colored note cards) to 10 (hiding in the library after hours). Innocent Traitor is an enormously entertaining novel to read, but writing it was obviously a process of painstaking research, the same sort of hard work that resulted in Weir's bestselling history The Six Wives of Henry VIII. What's different this time is her decision to write about Queen Jane -- England's briefest monarch -- in the voices of the participants. The result is an engrossing story that's suspenseful even though we know poor Jane will end up on the chopping block at 16, one of the first of Bloody Mary's many victims.

The novel rotates through a small collection of narrators, starting with Jane's bitter mother on the day in 1537 when she goes into labor. Jane doesn't emerge from the womb reading Latin, but almost. She quickly grows into an exceptionally, even weirdly, brilliant girl, who struggles to be obedient while remaining true to herself. Any parent might be thrown by a 4-year-old who says, "I must above all remember that each meal is like the Last Supper, so I must eat with as goodly manners as if I were in the company of Our Blessed Lord Himself." But the mean treatment Jane endures from her parents shocks even the family's servants and friends. Jane's mother, as the niece of Henry VIII, is in a position to build a powerful house, but she needs a son, and her failure to produce one makes her impatient and cruel.

The importance of male heirs was, of course, a foundation of this patriarchal society. The disappointment that Jane's parents feel is just a small version of the king-sized anxiety that Henry VIII feels in the boudoir. An intimate scene of the bloated, ulcerated monarch making one last flaccid attempt with his sixth and final wife, Katherine Parr, will put most readers out of the mood for weeks. But Katherine emerges as one of the novel's most fascinating narrators. She comes into the story when Jane's parents send her to live with the royal family in a craven effort to boost their standing. Long deprived of maternal affection, Jane adores the queen, who secretly encourages the girl's radical Protestant ideas and gives her a crash course in surviving the ecclesiastical tensions tearing England part. Who better to teach her than a queen married to a serial wife-killer? Katherine knows the importance of quick denials and heartfelt pleas, but, sadly, this is one lesson Jane will never learn.

Even before the king is dead, Jane's parents and the maniacal duke of Northumberland scheme to subvert the law of succession and drag Jane to the throne as queen. Alternately beating her and appealing to her religious idealism, they succeed -- but only for nine precarious days before Henry VIII's Catholic daughter, Mary, revives her own claim to the throne and begins wrenching England back toward Rome.

This complicated history sweeps along in a remarkably accessible way -- always exciting, always engaging. And the use of multiple voices -- each clearly named and dated -- keeps us at the center of every new outrageous plot twist. You'll be tempted to guffaw at these events, but Weir anticipates that skepticism in a witty author's note: "Some parts of the book may seem far-fetched," she writes. "They are the parts most likely to be based on fact."

What ultimately seems far-fetched, though, is not the ax-wielding murderer who bursts through a wall or the use of arsenic to prolong young King Edward's gruesome death; it's each character's complete self-knowledge and candor. Weir has given these people a strong dose of truth serum and set them down in front of a bright light. No matter how conniving, proud, foolish or deluded they may be with each other, they speak to us without a hint of dramatic irony, clearly and honestly explaining their actions and motives. What's gained in historical clarity comes at the cost of psychological depth, as though, after spending decades laying out the complexities of British history, Weir were unwilling to create characters who would consciously or unconsciously mislead us or who might not fully realize why they behave as they do.

But ambiguity may be too much to ask for from such an enthralling story. You can't resist Jane -- so young, so brilliant, so cruelly used and sacrificed. In the nine days' queen, Weir has found a fascinating and deeply sympathetic figure through which to examine one of the strangest crises of British history.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From AudioFile
Alison Weir writes a splendid historical fiction with this story of Lady Jane Grey, who becomes the XX of Henry VIII's eight wives. Multiple talented narrators are well chosen for voices and viewpoints that collaborate to tell the story. Davina Porter's cold tones portray Jane's shrewish mother, Frances Brandon, who can't forgive her daughter for being born female. The regal-accented Gerald Doyle portrays self-interested John Dudley, who uses Jane as a political pawn, and Bianca Amato plays Queen Mary, who responds coldly to this political threat but melts later in compassion. In contrast are Jenny Sterlin's kindly nurse, Mrs. Ellen, and Stina Nielsen, who shows us Jane's development from dutiful child to contemplative girl at court and finally the 16-year-old young woman who faces execution with grace. S.W. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

Very good
Fills us in on some of the goings-on between the death of Henry VIII and the reign of (following Edward and Mary) Elizabeth I. Good along the same lines as Phillipa Gregory's "The Other Boleyn Girl".

Very well-written and informative
I found Allison Weir to be an excellent writer. She told the story with detail, yet kept the reader interested. I look forward to reading more of her work.

Wonderful
I was hooked in this book. You learn a lot about Queen Mary and the short life of Lady Jane Grey. It's hearbreaking what her family made her do against her will and that she had to pay with her life for her families meddling. I definetely recommend this book to other Tudor fans. I lended it to friends and they loved it, too.