The Mary Tudor Trilogy
by Hilda Lewis
From the Crushed Lime Media collection for readers 16 and older
I am Mary Tudor
In the folk memory of England, Mary is remembered yet as a scarlet legend of evil and cruelty symbolised by the flames which rose about the Protestant martyrs. Yet Hilda Lewis, who has traced the story of the shy, proud girl who grew to a warmhearted woman, shows what creative insight how Mary Tudor was indeed a ‘merciful prince’. Events that she could not control, the climate of the time that she was powerless to change, drove against the grain of our true nature. And beyond all was her personal tragedy of a marriage bed seldom shared with Philip, the king-consort as cruel as he was handsome and the heir that she longed for never to be granted by the God who seemed to have turned from her. Even that was not enough, and the rising star of Elizabeth, most brilliant of all the Tudor dynasty, cast Mary into shadow even while the throne was still hers. Elizabeth came between Mary and her people, between Mary and her husband, and the duel of jealousy between the half-sisters, both true daughters of Henry VIII in their strength of passion, flames through the closing chapters of the book.
Mary the Queen
Picking up where the first book in The Mary Tudor Trilogy, I am Mary Tudor, finishes, Mary the Queen covers the years of her marriage to Phillip of Spain and her first pregnancy. Hilda Lewis continues to give us an intensely human story of England’s last Catholic monarch. Told from Mary’s point of view, with meticulous research, Lewis gives us a sympathetic look at the woman who came to be known as “Bloody Mary”.
Bloody Mary
Splendid in its completion of the story of a tragic Queen begun in I am Mary Tudor and continued in Mary the Queen, this final volume in the trilogy by Hilda Lewis is also an intensely human story.
In the rolls of history, it is the sins of Mary that are remembered. If ever the balance is to be restored it will be by such a sympathetic interpretation as Hilda Lewis gives for Mary Tudor.