He wouldnt get away with that behavior now the #MeToo movement would scupper him and take him down.
I thought someones got to have already done that because theres been retellings of Shakespeare stories and so on.
As soon as I got out of the shower, I Googled it and nobody had done it before.
Credit: Getty Images
So I thought I have to do this.
It kind of wrote itself once I got started.
I had an absolute ball writing it.
Did you have a favorite wife before you started writing?
And did it change after writing your book?Ive always been an Anne [Boleyn] fan.
I went to seeAnne of the Thousand Dayson a school trip.
It really stayed with me.
How can a man treat a woman that he loved that much like this?
She was kind of part of my upbringing, so I was always fascinated by her.
She was very forward-thinking with her reformist views.
She knows what shes getting into.
She knows what hes like.
Shes kind of this wise owl figure, so I really love her.
Im very fond of Caitlin [the equivalent to Catherine Howard].
She gets a lot of flack.
Im reading Alison Weirs latest book about her, and its quite cruel.
It was just awful.
She just did what any impressionable young girl would do.
I just feel very, very sorry for her.
And why she would behave like she did.
There are the big beats that you get in there each wife, how they moved on.
How did you decide to reinterpret things like the beheadings?
I didnt want to have him murdering them.
He turns his back on Brussels.
If the other person contests it in the U.K., it can take up to five years.
So I had the two lawyers on the case mirroring Wolsey and Cromwell.
But I always intended to have it working on two levels.
Anne was definitely the hardest one to come to grips with.
That really came across in the editing process because everybody has an opinion about Anne.
Did she know what she was doing?
Was she really ambitious?
I had to sift through all that and decide what I felt about her.
Everybody has an opinion.
Not the wives, but Harry for sure.
I set out to write a comeuppance.
That was what I was going to do.
I was going to reincarnate him and I was going to bring him down.
So I actually had probably three different endings along the way.
Then I started to get this feedback on my initial draft.
The first one, which really made me laugh, was Can we lose the gout?
We lost the gout.
And then I was getting, Can we make him less obese?
Can we make him less nasty?
Over the rewrites, he became a lot more personable.
I had a really big comeuppance for him at the end.
That was toned down a lot.
Hes lost everything but theres hope.
My opinion of Henry VIII changed a lot.
Almost everyone is a match to a figure in Tudor history.
How did you work out which figures had to be included and what form theyd take?
She wasnt paralleled at the start, but was towards the end.
I wanted to give everyone I could a parallel.
What do you think is the best adaptation of this story besides your book?I absolutely lovedWolf Hall.
Im still working my way through everything Tudor I can see and all the Elizabethan ones too.
I do enjoyPhilippa Gregorys books.
I liked her bookThe Kings Curse, which is told from the point of view of Margaret Pole.
Some of Philippas stuff can be a bit out there, but its always highly readable.
Lastly, youre working on a sequel.
It was out of the blue; I hadnt even considered the idea.
This was my first adult novel.
I usually write for children and teens, and it was such a different experience.
It was so intense.
I mostly did it for fun.
Then, they came back and said we want a sequel.
Suddenly there were all these expectations on me, and it was a whole different ballgame.
Eliza was the obvious person to [focus on].
I started reading everything I could find on Elizabeth I.
Because Henry VIIIs story is so well known; everybody knows it.
Elizabeth, not so much so.
Characters like Walter Raleigh and Francis Drake, I turned them into girls and have them as her mates.
Its been an amazing experience.
Its been really intense.
I actually prefer book two to book one because its got such a strong female protagonist.
