Tudors week: Interview and book giveaway with Alisa Libby, author of The King’s Rose

For this Creativity Friday, I thought it would be fun to interview another author about her work. Alisa Libby, author of the novel The King’s Rose, is my guest here today—perfect timing for Tudors week on this blog! Not only has she graciously agreed to answer all my questions, she’s also giving away a copy of The King’s Rose to one lucky commenter. (Details at the end of the interview.)

The King’s Rose is about teen queen Catherine Howard, the unfortunate fifth wife of Henry VIII. In most books about her, Catherine is usually described as a frivolous teenager with loose ways and a taste for shiny baubles. In Libby’s hands, Catherine takes on weight to become a thoughtful, tragic heroine caught between explosive familial expectations, romantic desires, and political plotting. An intense and haunting read.

Libby is also the author of The Blood Confession, a novel about Elizabeth Bathory. She lives in the Boston area with her husband. To learn more about The King’s Rose and Alisa Libby, visit her website.

BTW, if you’re just checking in now, earlier this week author Carlyn Beccia (The Raucous Royals) gave us a juicy guest post about Henry VIII’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. Yesterday, I wrote about Anne Boleyn, the king’s second wife who was incidentally a cousin of Catherine Howard; both women lost their heads and crowns for supposedly cuckolding the king. All of the queens mentioned during Tudors week are included in my book Doomed Queens.

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Kris Waldherr: In your first novel, The Blood Confession, you wrote about Elizabeth Bathory, the mad countess who murdered hundreds of young girls to bathe in their blood. In your second, you’ve written about Catherine Howard, an executed (some might even say murdered) young queen—sort of the flip side to Elizabeth. What inspired you to write about Catherine Howard? Are there any connections for you between these two historical figures?

Alisa Libby: I was drawn to both of these women because of their strange, illogical decisions. In spite of their differences, I had a similar reaction to reading about each of them: “What in the world was she thinking?” For Bathory, the question is for obvious reasons—she was a murderess with a very strange beauty regimen. As for Catherine, she was accused of having an affair with a groom of the king’s chamber during her marriage to King Henry. And this king had already beheaded a previous wife due to similar charges—her own cousin, Anne Boleyn. So, assuming that she was not framed for these crimes (making her that innocent would have made her less interesting to me) I wondered: what was she thinking? Was she deliberately cruel to King Henry, or overruled by passion and certain that her secret would be safe? I wrote both of my books to create a personal logic—though not always entirely logical—for each of my character’s seemingly inexplicable actions.

KW: One of the things which struck me the most about The King’s Rose was that your portrayal of Catherine Howard is compellingly sympathetic and very, very sad. Since you’ve written your novel in the first voice, it makes the young queen’s tragic choices very understandable; she’s clearly trapped by forces beyond her control. Was it difficult to come up with Catherine’s voice? How much did your own personality and life experiences influence the way you chose to present her?

AL: I found it very easy to believe that Catherine, being used as a pawn by her family, would have little choice in what happened to her. The fact that her life was controlled by others struck me as something teenagers may be able to relate to. I also had to imagine how Catherine’s early life would affect her character. She was shipped off to live with her step-grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, at the age of ten, after her mother’s death. This was not out of the ordinary, but it helped me imagine a girl with a deep desire for attention and affection. The trysts with two young men while she lived in the Duchess’s establishment could, I thought, support this claim. Catherine was wooed, to some extent, by Henry’s affections and—more importantly—his lavish gifts. This all made her seem like a real person to me, and her voice developed out of these decisions.

KW: Compared to most biographies and novels of Henry VIII and his ill-fated queens, The King’s Rose is somewhat revisionist. In many of these other books, Catherine usually comes off as the Lydia Bennett of Henry’s wives—a teenager more concerned with dancing, flirting, and finery than her role in history. (I’m especially thinking of her portrayal in Phillippa Gregory’s The Boleyn Inheritance.) Do you consider your portrayal of Catherine Howard more historically accurate? If so, why?

AL: I’m perfectly comfortable with agreeing that this is a “revisionist” history. It is fiction, after all, and though I did a good deal of research to get the details right, at a certain point a writer has to choose the story they want to tell and fill in the gaps that those history texts leave behind. I can’t actually purport to know what Catherine was thinking, or what she spoke to her ladies about, or whether or not she felt fear. But it’s my job as an author to fill in those details in a way I found both believable and interesting.

That said, Catherine does enjoy a fair amount of dancing, flirting and finery, but I couldn’t allow her to be only that and nothing else. While the accounts don’t paint her as the greatest thinker, I had a hard time imagining that she wouldn’t have had any trepidation about marrying King Henry—especially if she was in love with someone else at the time.

KW: Parts of The King’s Rose reminded me of fairy tales: in particular, Cinderella and Bluebeard. I also read a review which mentioned that The Blood Confession contained folkloric motifs reminiscent of Snow White. How important are folklore and fairy tales to your work as a novelist?

AL: I have a deep love of fairy tales. These stories are so embedded in our subconscious and in our lives that the connections are so easy to make. Catherine’s story is very much a Cinderella story—a terrifying one, but the similarities are still there. And the connection between Countess Bathory and the wicked queen obsessed with being “the fairest of them all” (and willing to murder in order to remain the fairest) was so natural. This only makes these old tales more fascinating to me: though fabulous, they are intrinsically connected to the human experience.

KW: The character of Henry VIII is difficult to parse in The King’s Rose, since we’re seeing him through Catherine’s eyes. Though they are a married couple, there’s a sense that there’s not truly intimate; she really doesn’t know him at all. At times, Henry is indulgent and loving to Catherine; other times, he is mercurial and violent, especially when you describe his decision to execute Margaret Pole. What’s your take on Henry VIII?

AL: Henry was a mix of contradictions, especially at this point in his life. From the accounts I read, he was unpredictable, constantly changing his mind on important matters. It was said that the king’s mind could be different after dinner than it was before. Also, I think that the nature of being king and wielding that kind of power made true intimacy impossible—even with his own wife. All of his closest advisors had their own best interests at heart. The selection of his brides was done with political motivations moving behind the scenes, even if Henry didn’t see them clearly. Catherine was not the “rose without a thorn” that Henry believed her to be, but her family was sure to make him think that she was.

KW: I was fascinated to read that you traveled to England to research The King’s Rose, and even visited Catherine Howard’s grave. What was that like? Any interesting (possibly supernatural) experiences to share? I read that there’s a rumor her ghost still walks Hampton Court.

AL: It was at Hampton Court that Catherine was first arrested, and supposedly she fled from the guards down a particular hallway screaming Henry’s name. The guards caught up with her and dragged her back to her room. Catherine never did see the king again, and was never able to explain to him her actions or beg his forgiveness. According to legend, Catherine’s ghost traverses this gallery shouting “Henry! Henry!”

My husband and I did walk down this very hallway on a ghost tour of Hampton Court. It was all very beautiful, but I didn’t see any ghosts there. I generally don’t have much luck (or misfortune, depending on how you look at it) in communicating with ghosts. I did have this wild fantasy of getting some message from beyond the grave—or at least receiving Catherine’s blessing in telling my version of her life. She was a real person, after all. I kept thinking, “I’m here. If you have anything you want to tell me, please say it now.”

Though I didn’t see her ghost, I did feel a profound sense of gratitude when we went to visit her burial place in the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London. Catherine doesn’t often get visitors (unlike her cousin Anne, buried right beside her) but we had come a long way just to see her. I like to think that she was grateful.

KW: Finally, do you think there’s any way Catherine could have outwitted fate to live happily ever after?

AL: If she had become pregnant and given birth to a healthy boy, that would have saved her life. I don’t think any of her opponents would have been able to touch her: the king wouldn’t have allowed anything to besmirch the line of succession if it included another boy. If she had managed to do this (which may or may not have been possible, considering Henry’s age and health) and had no affairs—or at least been more discreet about them—she could have been safe. The king died in 1547, less than seven years after they were wed. She would have been in her twenties and honored as a Dowager Queen. She may have even been able to marry her darling Culpeper, if her family saw fit to allow it.

KW: What are you working on next?

AL: I hope to work on another historical novel soon, but right now I need a break from all of that research! It’s a daunting process, [ed: totally agree with Alisa there!] and I need to embrace it whole-heartedly in order to write a book. Right now I’m working on some contemporary fiction—a bit of an experiment. I hope it turns into a book someday.

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As I mentioned above, Alisa is generously giving away an autographed copy of The King’s Rose to one lucky person. Thank you, Alisa!!! To enter the raffle, leave a comment on this post before Thursday, April 9 midnight EST. One winner will be chosen at random and announced the following day in my next Creativity Friday post.

Good luck to all!

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