02/04/2017 Meet the Author

Three Sisters, Three Queens is a novel of the women

who became Queens of England, Scotland and France

and who were condemned to rivalry, family conflict and a bloody

struggle for succession.

A novelist doesn't have to invent that story,

it was the real story of the early 16th century after Catherine

of Aragon arrived as a Tudor bride.

Philippa Gregory has spun the story of that period into a string

of bestselling novels and this is her latest subject -

Three Sisters, Three Queens.

Welcome.

Even by 16th century standards it is a great story.

How well do you think this bit of the whole saga

is understood and remembered?

In a way, it's a really classic example of fiction

and history put together, that this story of Three Sisters,

Three Queens is a construct.

What we're actually talking about is the history of Catherine

of Aragon in the relatively early years of her marriage with Henry

VIII and the quite separate histories of his two sisters.

But, then, as a novelist, I come to these histories and go, like,

but they actually are sisters, they know of each other and as it

happens, the rise and fall of their success in their lives,

in their kingdoms and in their fertility, compares

and contrasts almost exactly.

So it's a very nice example for me of what you can do in fiction that

you wouldn't necessarily do in history.

But of course the history itself, which hangs over the whole story,

your fictional account of it, is so extraordinary.

The fate of nations hanging on a marriage, on a rivalry,

on an unexpected death, whatever it happens to be.

It seems to me, I hope this isn't pushing it too far,

but it's strangely contemporary, about how the fate of nations can

change in the wink of an eye, whether it's a royal marriage

or a referendum.

I think one of the reasons why I love the Tudor period so much

is you get these enormous consequences from the

decisions of one person.

So if you look at the one person, you really get

a way into the history, which is completely fascinating.

And so you do get this big national story focused on, in this instance,

the choice of James of Scotland to marry Margaret, Henry VIII's

sister, which puts the two countries into total unity and in the end

produces the child who will unify the two countries.

Take us through the three of them.

The rivalries that sort of entangled them in the course of a few years

had huge consequences.

We know the wives very well and there's been very much less work

done on the sisters and almost no work done on the mistresses

and I really think what you see there is an example

of the historical selection, which goes, like, we don't

want that many women in the record, thank you.

We've got six wives, let's leave the sisters out of it.

Which means you actually really rarely, for the Tudor period,

you have these untold stories.

So the story we do know is Catherine of Aragon and she arrives

in the novel as she arrives pretty well at the English court,

as a princess from Spain.

And immediately attracts, in my version of events,

the jealousy and the sort of affronted envy of Margaret,

who until then was the top princess at Henry's court.

The other girl in the mix is Mary, Henry's other

sister, younger sister.

Famously beautiful, famously wilful, who is married off to the very,

very old king of France and recovers from that really disastrous marriage

for her, political marriage, to marry the man of her choice.

So you've got these three very different stories about princesses

who are all married to make the alliances for their family and

how they survive that experience.

It's the question that you have come to know very well over the years.

How much liberty do you feel free to take with the history

for which you have so much affection and so much respect?

I don't take liberty with the history.

I know authors who do and I think they're right to take

whatever choice they want, but I don't.

But you are dealing with characters at a depth that we can't know.

Where I believe that I am right to go into fiction,

where I love the process of going into fiction,

is saying, if she did that, she must have been feeling this

or she must be wanting to do this, or this is an expression

of this sort of character.

So the fiction comes out of the history, but first

of all I look at what's happened and then I say, if somebody behaves

like that, then they must be a woman of this nature.

You've lived with this gang for such a long time now.

I've been married to Henry VIII longer than any wife!

Of these three women, the three sisters and Queens,

as you describe them in the title, which one draws you in the most?

You say Catherine of Aragon, because of the marriage to Henry,

is the one that we know, whether accurately or not.

Which of them attracts you most?

It's very...

In a sense, which you like best is not the same as who is the most

interesting, so you've got two things going on there.

I have great affection for Catherine of Aragon.

I think she was an extraordinary and courageous woman.

Margaret, Henry's sister, lived an amazing life.

I mean, she's married as a very young woman to James

of Scotland and then, when widowed, she chooses

her husband and she has to run away from Scotland.

She gets to England and divorces him, she marries

a third husband for choice.

She's behaving as if she were in total charge of her own destiny.

But of course the loss of her first husband is the fault

of the English court.

Yes, it's planned as a campaign by Catherine of Aragon,

so you have this terrible dark side of the sisterhood,

that they are always rivals and it is Catherine of Aragon's

campaign that kills her brother-in-law.

You can't read about these events, whether in straight history

or fiction, without a sort of mind-boggling feeling

of everything that subsequently came is determined by some of these

almost chance events.

I think the idea of history as the past, as another country,

I think when you're an historian you get this real double view of it.

On the one hand you go, yes, it's almost completely separate

from our world and completely different, yet you can see how

the actions then produce the consequences of today.

I mean, the whole concept of nationhood, the way

the reformation separates us from Europe, the way England

and Scotland are absolutely committed enemies for centuries

before the unification, you know, these are in a sense

really current ideas, which were being worked out then

and to which they came to some conclusions.

And the union of the Crowns itself in 1603, about a century before

the union of the Parliament, came about really by accident

because of what had happened in the period that

you're talking about.

Absolutely.

It's Margaret's granddaughter's boy.

And she of course thinks all the time that when she is queen

of Scotland and when Catherine of Aragon is failing

to have an heir, she knows that her boy will be king

of Scotland and king of England, and it's only Henry's decision

to marry on until he gets a male heir that means Margaret

is not in fact the mother of the next king of England.

Which explains why the fascination continues.

Philippa Gregory, author of Three Sisters, Three Queens,

thank you very much.

Thank you.

Good

Good evening,

Good evening, it

Good evening, it has