This is definitely the strongest Philippa Gregory novel I have read to date! What a wonderful, magical, in-depth portrayal of a young and relatively unknown woman who saw extreme turmoil during her lifetime. This novel is the definition of being at the center of everything. Margaret Tudor takes us from inside the Tudor court to Stirling Castle to the highlands and to exile in the borderlands. We meet the larger than life figures of Katherine of Aragon, Henry VIII, James IV, and Archibald Douglas, her scoundrel second husband.

Throughout all of this, Margaret maintains that she is also fascinating and complex and a force to be reckoned with. Too often, these narrators become mere lenses for the reader and don't actually have any impact on their world, but Margaret makes decisions, both good and detrimental. It's riveting to watch her on fortune's wheel.

Some complain that Margaret is too whiny and self-centered, that she constantly complains over and over again about petty things. I argue against this because, it's used as a basis for Margaret's growth. While Margaret constantly goes back and forth between resenting and admiring her sister-queens, you see her growth as her views on why she resents her or admires her sisters change. She recognizes Katherine's fear of divorce and reads through Mary's lines while also being fed up with them, and this took great skill on Gregory's part.

While it may not be wholly factual (it is historical fiction), Margaret is a woman who goes after what she wants and wins. Not many women in the past can say that, so she is definitely someone to read about.
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Three Sisters, Three Queens is great at demonstrating what happens in Tudor England from an outsiders perspective. It also shows the friendships and conflict of England and other countries as well as how Henry had his favourites and how those who weren’t in favour suffered. It also helps set the scene for the new era after the Tudors. ( )

3.75* ( )

Three Sisters, Three Queens is a first person account of the life of Margaret, Dowager Queen of Scots, the older sister of Henry VIII of England. The two other queens are her sister, Mary, younger than Henry, and her sister-in-law, Katherine of Aragon. Knowing the events of the English court so well, it was very interesting to imagine what might have been going on in the mind of a related queen who was so far away from the drama, but immersed in a drama of her own.

No one handles historical fiction with more elan than Philippa Gregory. I always feel I am there and know these people intimately. I have to remind myself frequently that this is fiction and that the historical person may have felt none of these emotions and carried few of these convictions. But, Gregory can pull me right into her view most of the time.

I do think it would be beyond difficult to be raised as a favored daughter, indulged, praised, and then to be sent away for a marriage of political convenience, left widowed, treated poorly by both your adopted country and your birth nation. From where inside themselves did the women of this time pull the courage and fortitude to keep on defying the odds and surviving the hardships? Everyone seems to have wanted to be royal, but I would have been praying for myself that I might occupy a well-respected position much further down the chain. Being a man would mean constantly being called out to war, brutal war at that; being a woman would mean having no control over your future, your children, your wealth or your life, and being often at just as much risk as the men.

I have been working my way through the Tudor and Lancaster/Plantagenet novels for some years now. I have switched sides in the ongoing struggle as often as Gregory has, and while I do not like all of these people, I feel they are real in her hands and require us to consider that history is, at its base, the story of people, of their lives, and of what happens to them, and to them alone.
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Philippa Gregory is one of my favorite authors. Her descriptions of life at court during the Tudor era draw the reader into the exquisitely painful and boring life the Royals experienced. She makes you feel the fabrics the women wear, hear the sharpness of the gossip at court and dread the life or death decisions that hang daily over the heads of Henry's lovers and enemies. Gregory's forte is taking a subject much written about and bringing the reader into a totally different viewpoint. ( )