By Philippa Gregory

Touchstone. 438 pp. $25.95

Acynical observer might think the world could get along without another book about Mary Queen of Scots. The cynic would be missing a bet. Philippa Gregory's novel looks at Mary Stuart and her times from a fresh and engaging angle, while making an unusual point about history in general.

The book deals with a love triangle consisting of Mary Stuart and the earl and countess of Shrewsbury. Who? I hear you asking. George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, and his wife, Bess, were selected by Elizabeth Tudor to be hosts (a.k.a. jailers) to her cousin Mary when she was run out of Scotland and took refuge in England. Bess, the earl and Mary take turns explaining themselves, boasting, lamenting, plotting -- the book includes a truly staggering number of political plots -- each seeing events from a narrow perspective but succeeding collectively in providing a 360-degree view of their times, as well as themselves.

The earl is a nobleman in every sense of the word: honest, idealistic, protector of the helpless, loyal servant of his queen, the embodiment of honor and dismissive of such crass things as money. This attitude steams his wife, who boasts repeatedly of being a "self-made woman -- self-made, self-polished, and self-sold." Elizabeth Shrewsbury has bootstrapped her way out of poverty by a series of judicious marriages -- Shrewsbury is her fourth -- aided by an avaricious temperament and previous husbands who profited from the dissolution of the Catholic Church in England. Her table is adorned with abbots' silver dinner plates, and her treasure room is stuffed with the church's goodies.

This, she piously (and repeatedly) informs us, is incontrovertible evidence that God prefers Protestants. After all, He would not have rewarded them with all this worldly wealth unless He thought their views of the pope, the Bible and transubstantiation were correct. Her husband tells her she has no theology, but he doesn't complain about the health of her bottom line. Mary, by contrast, is both a Catholic and a spendthrift. After all, it isn't her money being lavished on gold embroidery, 30-course dinners and squadrons of lute players. A queen must be treated like a queen, after all.

Gregory shows all three people as entirely human, entirely sympathetic (since we see them by their own lights) and in increasing conflict with one another, as the honor of hosting a queen begins to drain the Shrewsburys' coffers. Bess is agitated and resentful. George, to his horror, finds both his heart and his honor compromised as he begins to fall in love with his enchantingly vulnerable prisoner.

Mary remains in (and on) the Shrewsburys' hands for years, constantly the focus of political plots. Bess becomes increasingly embittered as she sees her wealth drain away and her husband ensnared in Mary's web. George is devastated by what he sees as the fall of the England he knew, as Queen Elizabeth's wily counselor, Robert Cecil, cements her hold on her kingdom. In doing so, he destroys concepts of tradition, honor and justice that define Shrewsbury's conviction of what it means to be an Englishman while suborning Bess as a spy.

And Mary? She grows fat and ill in captivity but never stops plotting to regain her throne. Annoying as she is, we appreciate both the immense loneliness of her position and her courage in maintaining it. She seduces everyone because seduction is her only weapon, but she can't reciprocate the love she evokes.

Most treatments of Mary Queen of Scots deal as much with Elizabeth as with Mary. "The Other Queen" doesn't. Elizabeth is always there, but like a black star: unseen, though affecting the orbit of everything near her. She appears onstage only once and briefly, though the difference between her and Mary's interpretations of a queen's role forms an important subtext of the book.

One of the most admirable things about "The Other Queen" is the delicate way in which Gregory drops bits of historical allusion into a very personal story. We're never distracted by information, but there's enough of it to make the past both factually comprehensible and emotionally accessible. In the author's view as well as Bess Shrewsbury's, questions of religion and political allegiance always come down in the end to money. That's true, but fiction rarely focuses primarily on the economic basis of history; this novel is a refreshing exception.

Above all, the book is an examination of the nature of loyalty, as well: to a spouse, to a monarch, to a family or a family name, to a religion, to political ideals and especially to one's sense of self.

(Source: The Washington Post)

Gregory (The Boleyn Inheritance, 2006, etc.) makes a return trip to Tudor England, focusing on the period when Mary, Queen of Scots, fleeing from rebel Scottish lords, found herself imprisoned in England by her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. The story is narrated from multiple perspectives: that of Queen Mary as well as her two jailors, George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, and his new wife, Bess of Hardwick, a much-married and canny financial administrator as well as a spy for the ruthless William Cecil, Queen Elizabeth's chief adviser. As the months, then years, pass, George's hopeless, forever unfulfilled love for the Queen of Scots wars with his desire to retain his honor and serve Queen Elizabeth, and also destroys the affectionate business relationship that united him and his wife in amiable marriage. Bess watches the substantial fortune she amassed through well-chosen husbands, good investments and careful accounting dwindle in support of Queen Mary's extravagant lifestyle. And, of course, Mary plots and plots again, to little avail. Reading the novel is a bit like witnessing a fixed tennis match: Queen Mary shuttles back and forth between various castles, her return to Scotland always imminent until each grand scheme fails. Meanwhile, the reader marks time waiting for the queen's inevitable walk to the scaffold. Gregory vividly evokes her three protagonists, but their personalities remain static to the point of tedium; however, it's fair to say that each one's inability to change is the very thing that leads to their joint tragedy. Mary believes that her beauty and royal status allow her to do whatever she likes with impunity; Bess, despite her wealth and title, can never surmount herhumble origins; and George, in the face of obvious evidence that his way of life is dying, stubbornly insists that noble blood, not ambition, must determine rank. Not without interest, but this claustrophobic novel should be more intriguing than it is.

(Source: Kirkus Reviews)

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