Three Sisters, Three Queens starts off in the sour tongue of a petty, jealous Margaret Tudor, eldest sister of the notorious King Henry VIII. I kept expecting the point-of-view character to change to one of the other queens in the title, but it remained in the voice of Margaret Tudor. I'm a big fan of Philippa Gregory, but I kept wondering, "Why would she choose to write about someone she obviously doesn't like?" I assume she was trying to show her writing chops, not only illustrating a character's progression and improvement but demonstrating her own flexibility in writing from a different perspective. By the end of the book, thank goodness, I began to like Margaret more. I'm not sure I've ever had that experience of not liking the protagonist of a Philippa Gregory book, and that's saying something, as I even liked the delusional zealot Margaret Beaufort (this Margaret Tudor's grandmother) in The Red Queen (which actually might be my favorite Philippa Gregory book of all!).
[Spoiler Alert. You may want to stop reading here!]
Margaret Tudor became a queen when she married King James IV of Scotland, who died at the Battle of Flodden when his son James was still a toddler. Gregory then goes along with the rumors of the day in assuming it's a romantic match when Margaret remarries to Archibald Douglas, 6th earl of Angus, but given how he treated her and his obvious power-grabs, I question whether she had much say (much as I'm convinced Mary Queen of Scots was strong-armed into marrying the earl of Bothwell). Margaret's story is quite long and convoluted, but after following her through so many difficulties, you're as happy as she is when things finally work out well for her in the end. She finally has a good husband in Henry Stewart, 1st Lord Methven, and her son's on the throne. Meanwhile, her sister Mary is dying, and her sister-in-law Katherine of Aragon has had her crown stripped from her and is spurned by her husband. We're happy for Margaret and relieved she isn't overtly gloating!
While I enjoyed the end of the book, and of course I liked her rich descriptions of court life, I also had issues with Margaret's inexplicable inconsistencies. I suppose Philippa Gregory was going with 'less is more' and thought it obvious enough that Margaret was being disingenuous or fickle with her communications towards her sisters, but I really needed her to give me Margaret's motive, to clue me in if she was being falsely warm in her letters, or if she'd gotten the angst out of her beforehand and then felt a flood of real affection when she was actually writing. It was hard to tell. I listened to the audiobook version read by Bianca Amato, and she read the letters as if they were sincere, which added to my confusion. I suppose it's possible that Philippa Gregory meant for us to read them in a wry tone, so maybe I wouldn't have been as confused if I'd simply read the book. It wasn't just with the letters, though. Margaret flip-flopped somewhat whimsically in her affections and opinions so much mid-book that I was feeling quite grumpy about it all! Perhaps Philippa Gregory was simply trying to depict the course of events and allowing her to be a 'flawed character', but even flawed characters have reasons for what they're doing, why they're changing. I'd have like to have heard Margaret's thoughts in those shift periods a bit more.
All that said, if you make it all the way through the novel, you may find yourself like me, inexplicably pleased with the scale of the work--and with Margaret's improvement. I'm assuming it was improvement, and not merely that she wasn't as jealous once she was doing better than the others...
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