:00:00. > 3:59:59and turn them into valuable products. That is a way forward.
:00:00. > :00:00.Thank you. Three Sisters, Three Queens,
:00:00. > :00:07.is A novel of the women who became queens of England,
:00:08. > :00:09.Scotland and France, and who were condemned to rivalry,
:00:10. > :00:13.family conflict and a bloody A novelist doesn't have
:00:14. > :00:19.to invent that story, it was the real story
:00:20. > :00:21.of the early 16th century, after Katherine of Aragon arrived
:00:22. > :00:26.as a Tudor bride. Phillippa Gregory has spun The story
:00:27. > :00:34.of that period in a string of best-selling novels and this is her
:00:35. > :00:37.latest subject: Three Sisters, Even by 16th century standards
:00:38. > :00:56.it is a great story. How well do you think this bit
:00:57. > :00:59.of the whole saga is In a way, it's a really
:01:00. > :01:07.classic example of fiction and history put together
:01:08. > :01:13.that the story of Three Sisters, Three Queens is a construct
:01:14. > :01:16.but what we're actually talking about is the history of Katherine
:01:17. > :01:23.of Aragon in the relatively early
:01:24. > :01:26.years of her marriage quite separate his
:01:27. > :01:34.of his two sisters. But then as a novelist I come
:01:35. > :01:37.to these histories, and go, like but they actually are sisters,
:01:38. > :01:39.they know of each other. rise and fall of their success
:01:40. > :01:44.of their lives and in their kingdoms and in their fertility, compares
:01:45. > :01:46.and contrast almost exactly. So it's is a very nice
:01:47. > :01:49.example for me of what you can do in fiction that you
:01:50. > :01:55.wouldn't necessarily do in history. But of course the history itself,
:01:56. > :01:59.which hangs over the whole story, your fictional account of it,
:02:00. > :02:03.is so extraordinary, the fate of nations,
:02:04. > :02:08.you know, hanging on a on an unexpected death,
:02:09. > :02:12.whatever it happens to be. It seems to me, I hope this
:02:13. > :02:17.is not pushing it too far, but it's strangely contemporary
:02:18. > :02:19.about how the fate of nations can change in the wink of an eye,
:02:20. > :02:23.whether it's a royal marriage or a I think one of the reasons that
:02:24. > :02:31.I love the Tudor period so much is that you get these
:02:32. > :02:35.enormous consequences from the So if you look at the one
:02:36. > :02:40.person, you really get a way into the history
:02:41. > :02:43.which is completely fascinating. So you do get this big
:02:44. > :02:46.national story focussed on, in this instance,
:02:47. > :02:50.the choice of James of Scotland to marry Margaret, Henry VIII's
:02:51. > :02:51.sister, which puts And in the end produces the child
:02:52. > :03:05.that will unify the two countries. Just take us through
:03:06. > :03:09.the three of them. Because the rivalries that,
:03:10. > :03:12.that sort of entangled them in the course of a few years
:03:13. > :03:14.had huge consequences? There's been very much less work
:03:15. > :03:18.done on the sisters, and almost I really think that
:03:19. > :03:21.what you see there is an example of the
:03:22. > :03:23.historical selection, "want that many women
:03:24. > :03:29.in the record, thank you. "We've got six wives,
:03:30. > :03:32.let's leave the sisters out of it." Which means you actually,
:03:33. > :03:33.really, rarely, for the Tudor period,
:03:34. > :03:36.you have these on told stories. So the stories that we do know
:03:37. > :03:45.is Katherine of Aragon and she arrives in the novel
:03:46. > :03:47.as she arrives pretty well in the English court
:03:48. > :03:49.as a Princess from Spain and immediately
:03:50. > :03:52.attracts, in my version of events, the jealously and the affronted envy
:03:53. > :03:56.of Margaret who until then was the top Princess at
:03:57. > :03:58.the Henry VIII court. And the other girl
:03:59. > :04:08.in the mix is Mary, Henry's other sister,
:04:09. > :04:13.younger Famously willful, who
:04:14. > :04:19.is married off to the very, very old king of France
:04:20. > :04:21.and recovers from that really disastrous marriage for her,
:04:22. > :04:26.political marriage, to marry
:04:27. > :04:28.the man of her choice. So you've got these three very,
:04:29. > :04:31.very differen stories about princesses who are married to make
:04:32. > :04:34.the allowances for their family and It's the question that you have come
:04:35. > :04:42.to know very well over the years, how much liberty do
:04:43. > :04:44.you feel free to take with the history for
:04:45. > :04:47.which you have so much affection
:04:48. > :04:50.and so much respect? I don't take liberty
:04:51. > :04:52.with the history. I know authors who do and I think
:04:53. > :04:55.they're right to take whatever But you are dealing
:04:56. > :05:09.with characters at a depth Where I believe that I'm right
:05:10. > :05:19.to go into fiction, where I love the process of going
:05:20. > :05:23.into fiction, is saying, if she did that, she must have been
:05:24. > :05:27.feeling this or be wanting to be doing this, or this
:05:28. > :05:30.is an expression of this sort of So I start, the fiction
:05:31. > :05:34.comes out of the history, but first of all I look at what's
:05:35. > :05:36.happened, and then I say if somebody behaves
:05:37. > :05:39.like that, then they You've lived with this
:05:40. > :05:42.gang, so to speak, I've been married to Henry they VIII
:05:43. > :05:46.longer than any wife! And of these three women,
:05:47. > :05:49.the three sisters, the three queens, as you describe them
:05:50. > :05:52.in the title of the book, which one You say that Katherine
:05:53. > :05:55.of Aragon because of the marriage to Henry is
:05:56. > :05:57.the one that we know, whether accurately or not,
:05:58. > :06:00.which of them attracts you the most? in the sense, which you like best,
:06:01. > :06:04.is not the same as who is So you've got two
:06:05. > :06:08.things going on there. I have great affection
:06:09. > :06:14.for Katherine of Aragon, I think she was
:06:15. > :06:22.an extraordinary, courageous woman. Margaret, Henry's sister,
:06:23. > :06:29.lives an amazing life. She's married as a very young woman
:06:30. > :06:31.to James of Scotland, and then when widowed
:06:32. > :06:36.she chooses her husband and has to run away
:06:37. > :06:39.from Scotland, she gets to England,
:06:40. > :06:41.she divorces him, she marries She's behaving as if she was in
:06:42. > :06:50.total charge of her own And of course the loss of her first
:06:51. > :06:55.husband is the fault of the English The loss of her first husband
:06:56. > :06:59.is planned as a campaign by So you have this terrible
:07:00. > :07:02.dark side of the sisterhood that they are always
:07:03. > :07:05.rivals and that it is Katherine of Aragon's campaign that
:07:06. > :07:07.kills her brother-in-law. You can't read about this events,
:07:08. > :07:09.whether in straight history or fiction, without a mind-boggling
:07:10. > :07:11.feeling of everything that subsequently came is
:07:12. > :07:13.determined by some of these - I think the idea of
:07:14. > :07:18.history, as in the past is another country,
:07:19. > :07:19.when you are a historian,
:07:20. > :07:22.you get this real double view of it. On the one hand you go
:07:23. > :07:25.like, "yes, it is almost completely separate from our world
:07:26. > :07:31.and completely different, yet you can see how then the actions then
:07:32. > :07:37.produce the consequences of today." I mean the whole concept
:07:38. > :07:39.of nationhood, the way The way England and
:07:40. > :07:49.Scotland are absolutely committed enemies for centuries
:07:50. > :07:51.before the unification, a sense really current ideas
:07:52. > :07:54.which were being worked out then and to which they came
:07:55. > :07:56.to some conclusions. And the union of the Crowns itself
:07:57. > :08:01.in 1603, a century or so before the union of
:08:02. > :08:04.the Parliament, came about really by accident
:08:05. > :08:06.because of what had happened in the period
:08:07. > :08:07.you are Absolutely, it's Margaret's
:08:08. > :08:09.granddaughter's boy. You just go like, this,
:08:10. > :08:16.and she of course, thinks all the time,
:08:17. > :08:23.she is Queen of Scotland when Katherine of Aragon is failing to
:08:24. > :08:30.have an heir, she knows that her boy will be king
:08:31. > :08:31.of Scotland and king of
:08:32. > :08:38.England, it's only Henry's decision to marry on until he gets a
:08:39. > :08:40.male heir, that means that Margaret is not in fact
:08:41. > :08:42.the mother of the king of
:08:43. > :08:44.Which explains why the fascination continues.
:08:45. > :08:46.Phillippa Gregory, author of Three Sisters, Three Queens,
:08:47. > :09:06.Southerly winds brought warmth across the country today. But it
:09:07. > :09:08.wasn't all warmer, we had some