The Waiting Game Quotes

“Women's history does not need to be exceptional to be relevant.”
― Nicola Clark, The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens

“Much of women’s history leans on a trope of ‘exceptional’ women: ‘girlbosses’ who achieved incredible things against the impossibly patriarchal odds of their day. Such women did, of course, exist, and we should celebrate them. But we could easily describe all women in the past in this way. All of the women in The Waiting Game existed close to the centre of power and acted in ways that influenced the broader historical narrative. All occasionally stepped outside the boundaries that society allegedly dictated for their sex.”
― Nicola Clark, The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens: A History

“These women's long-standing ability to fade into the background has served them well. To follow them as a historian is often to see them slide out of view as soon as one tries to focus the lens. But allowing light into the darker corners of any history illuminates more than just one frame. To tell Henry's reign from the perspective of ladies-in-waiting is to see the familiar become unfamiliar. We were never supposed to know these stories like this. It's important that we do.”
― Nicola Clark, The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens

“Women could be villains as well as victims, sometimes both simultaneously, and could simply make bad decisions like everybody else; Jane Parker, Viscountess Rochford's involvement in Queen Anne Boleyn and Queen Katherine Howard's downfalls could be read as an example of all three things.”
― Nicola Clark, The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens

“Early modern Europe held that if a wife looked elsewhere for sex, her husband bore the blame for failing to satisfy her at home. This may even been part of the reason why Queen Anne was accused of straying with so many men. Just one liaison, and people would ask why the king had failed. Five, and attention turned to the queen's insatiable appetite, her carnal sickness, and the king became a victim of a wicked woman, not an example of failed masculinity. Anne's testimony ruined this tidy picture. Not only had the queen and her ladies-in-waiting been discussing Henry's abilities in the bedroom - something to make any man wince - but, far worse, they had been laughing at him, and now everybody knew it.”
― Nicola Clark, The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens

“The servants of a queen, even a queen under arrest, were not usually supposed to be physically higher than she was. Did the women with her sink to the ground as well, a startled beat behind?”
― Nicola Clark, The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens

“While popular conduct books might airily dismiss women's words as unworthy of male attention, here they had set the whole court aflame and even caused a man's death.”
― Nicola Clark, The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens

“Her death was described as 'one of the greatest blows the Duke has ever received', but nothing was mentioned about Elizabeth's undoubted grief. High mortality rates did not inure anybody to the loss of a child.”
― Nicola Clark, The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens

“The very same night, Hastings removed his wife from court and placed her in a convent sixty miles away, the early modern equivalent of being told to go and stand in the corner and think about what you had done.”
― Nicola Clark, The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens

“The Waiting Game" is designed partly as an example of what we might learn when we pay attention to those who spent much of their time in the background and who were never supposed to leave much trace behind.”
― Nicola Clark, The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens

“Opinions are swayed and decisions made as commonly in the pub after work as in the office boardroom, and 'soft power' is as crucial as formal hierarchical structures. A quiet word behind the scenes, an appropriately timed gift, a well-negotiated marriage alliance - the general management of the human networks so necessary in early modern society were all forms of political agency wielded expertly by women.”
― Nicola Clark, The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens

“But allowing light into the darker corners of any history illuminates more than just one frame.”
― Nicola Clark, The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens

“Women could be villains as well as victims, sometimes both simultaneously, and could simply make bad decisions like everybody else;”
― Nicola Clark, The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens: A History

“the past on their own terms there is no need for explicit ‘girlbossification’; they are a fascinating historical lens in their own right. Women’s history does not need to be exceptional to be relevant.”
― Nicola Clark, The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens: A History

“merry at dinner and dead by supper’.”
― Nicola Clark, The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens: A History