I enjoyed her relationships with Henry’s other wives, Katherine Howard and Katherine Parr since there is no animosity between them. Her relationship with Henry is more of a close friendship than that of a husband and wife, which is very loving, caring, and believable. Weir takes the time to show Anna’s journey from Germany to England and how she transitioned into her new life in a new country.

Anna is informed that she was to marry King Henry VIII of England, who has been married three previous times. We even saw them arguing about Catholicism versus Protestantism, which was the hot topic of the time. To see her interacting with her parents and her siblings was delightful and so relatable. Weir begins her book with Anna’s life in her native Germany and her relationship with her family. Anna of Cleves is one of my favorite wives of Henry VIII, yet I have never read a historical fiction novel on her, so I found this concept of this book intriguing. Anna is often viewed as the “lucky” wife of Henry VIII, but was she? What was Anna’s story and what was her marriage with Henry really like? Alison Weir has taken up the challenge to give her readers a taste of what Anna’s life might have been like in this novel, “Six Tudor Queens: Anna of Kleve, Queen of Secrets”.Īs many of you know, I am a big fan of Alison Weir and I have enjoyed the “Six Tudor Queens” series thus far, so I knew that I wanted to read this one. To say that they did not see eye to eye would be an understatement as the marriage did not last long. His new bride to be is the German princess Anna of Kleve. The bridegroom was the recently-widowed Henry VIII, the shadow of his former self and notorious throughout Europe for having his second wife Anne Boleyn executed. To those who study history, this is a story that has been told numerous times, but what makes this particular story unique is the people involved. A foreign princess who travels to England to marry the king to establish a strong political alliance.

Anna of Kleve by Alison Weir