Madge Shelton, strangely innocent fifteen-year-old daughter of experienced Court player Lady Shelton (the one who was famously instructed to box Mary Tudor’s ears “for the cursed bastard she is”) is summoned to court early in 1533 to attend her cousin Anne Boleyn, because, as Thomas Boleyn tells Madge in his opening and only scene, Anne has great need of friends and support until she can solidify her position by giving birth to a prince, which, seeing as she’s already pregnant, will surely be happening any day now. If you’re wondering how this is possible – read on, if you dare. But this book is something unique in my experience: a story in which two characters get married unbeknownst either to them or to the story’s author. Some of these are better than others, all of them hinge on the main character’s unfamiliarity with the place in which they’ve found themselves. There are more than few stories out there, mostly in the SFF world, in which characters get married without their knowledge (or, in another variation, where they’re made to think that they’ve married without their knowledge).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |