The Boleyn Inheritance
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Boleyn Inheritance is a novel by British author Philippa Gregory which was first published in 2006. It is a direct sequel to her previous novel The Other Boleyn Girl, and the most recent addition to her five-part series on the Tudor royals. (The other titles in the series are The Constant Princess, The Queen's Fool, and The Virgin's Lover.) The novel is told through the voices of three narrators - Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Jane Boleyn, who was a prominent character in The Other Boleyn Girl. It covers a period from 1539 until 1542 and chronicles the fourth and fifth marriages of King Henry VIII of England.
Many of the same characters and themes from The Other Boleyn Girl are explored in The Boleyn Inheritance, particularly Gregory's criticism of the English Reformation and aristocratic court. The novel has received generally positive reviews and it has avoided the controversy created by its prequel. Much of the criticism aimed against The Other Boleyn Girl was based on that novel's apparent suggestion that Queen Anne Boleyn and her brother, George, were guilty of the charges of incest and treason for which they were both put to death at the end of the novel. However, in an interesting twist, The Boleyn Inheritance clearly states on several occasions that both were innocent.
