baronessekat | 2020 Popsugar Reading Challenge: A book with a map

Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lady Jane Grey, great grand niece of Henry VIII was a devout Protestant and avid scholar. She wanted nothing more to have a shred of love from her parents and to continue her studies. However, the adults had different plans. First her parents schemed to marry her to her cousin Edward, son of the King, in hopes of her one day becoming Queen and thus improving their standings in Society.

After Edward becomes King, the insiders realize that he is not going to survive due to ill health. So her parents and the head of the Privy Counsel arrange for Jane to marry his son. They also plot and execute a way to put Jane on the throne still. They get the King to declare his sisters bastards (since the marriages of their mothers to Henry were set aside) and through succession Jane would be third in line for the throne - and her mother sets aside her claim so that Jane can be put on the throne.

Jane faces abuse by the hand of her husband, emotional torment by her parents and her conscious as she strongly believes that Mary, the King's eldest sister, should be next. But she is pressured into taking the throne. But Mary rises with the backing of the people and Catholic Spain and fights to regain her rightful inheritance. And in the span of less than a year Jane is crowned, deposed, imprisoned and in the end executed - all because she was an innocent pawn of those who had more power over her life than she would ever have.

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I first learned of the story of Lady Jane through the 1986 movie of the same name (incidentally where I formed my first fangirl crush on Cary Elwes). I remember finding the story tragic and my heart breaking for poor Jane and how she suffered at the hands who saw her as nothing more than a means to an end - people who should have been the ones to love and protect her. This book did not change my impression - if anything it solidified it more.

I have also been a fan of Alison Weir for many years now and will not turn away from books she has written. She has a wonderful use of language and an ability to bring to life the lives of very important women in English history. If you are interested in English monarchy history I would recommend her books (she is a contemporary of Phillipa Gregory but I find I like Alison Weir better).

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