Charlie Fenton’s Reviews > Queen's Gambit > Status Update

‘When the girl makes to leave, Katherine says as an afterthought, “Be careful whom you agree to marry, Elizabeth, for once the ring is on your finger you lose everything. And you are a girl who likes to hold the reins.”’

‘The King was right, she supposes, for that instant was a whole, entire betrayal: Thomas may as well have been her lover then, and the King may as well have been a cuckold, for the merging of their eyes was more intimate by far than any night she has passed in the King’s bed. The thought is as good as the deed, some churchmen will tell you.’

‘Relief washes over her. She is reprieved - for now. But she is struck more than ever by the knowledge that her safety hangs on the whims of a volatile old man. The haste of Henry’s about-turn makes her wonder if this was more some kind of devious test than a trap. She wouldn’t put it past him. And what, anyway, is true friendship, in someone as mercurial as the King?’

‘Katherine has been determined to create a feeling of family for this disparate collection of souls who, for all their privilege, have been so lacking in love. Even Edward, the apple of his father’s eye, the answer to everything, has been so wrapped up, so kept away from things, that he has become uncomfortable with affection. She hopes that will change.’

‘Could she love him as a father, she wonders. At times she feels she could. But what of those moments when he is like an overgrown infant in a tantrum? What of the other side of him: the blustery, vain youth with a vicious streak? She cannot reconcile all the different parts of him into one person. She wonders if he is thinking of the marriage vows he has made five times before?’

‘There is not a shred of tenderness in him. His jaw is gripped tight; he is locked on to his prize and will not be turned. It only begins to fully dawn on her now that the King will take her for a wife and she will not have any choice in the matter. All these men - the King, her brother, Hertford - have sealed her fate. She is no more free than she was as a girl.’

‘Lady Mary sits in her bedchamber engulfed in a silk robe. She looks frail and puffy about the face; her youth seems to have deserted her entirely. Katherine does the mental calculation, trying to remember how much younger Mary is than her. It is only about four years, she thinks, but Mary looks wizened and had a feverish glaze to her eyes - the legacy of the treatment she has received at her father’s hands’