Book Review: 'The King's Concubine' by Anne O'Brien

Book Review: ‘The King’s Concubine’ by Anne O’Brien

Historical author Anne O'Brien is as comfortable capering around the courts of the Tudor Kings and Queens of England, as she is tending the country herb patch at her UK home - unsurprisingly fashioned on a genuine Tudor knot garden.

The King’s Concubine by Anne O’Brien, MIRA/Harlequin, $29.99

Historical author Anne O’Brien is as comfortable capering around the courts of the Tudor Kings and Queens of England, as she is tending the country herb patch at her UK home – unsurprisingly fashioned on a genuine Tudor knot garden.

And in this the latest scandalous yarn from the House of Plantagenet, O’Brien charts the unbelievable rise of “tavern whore bastard” Alice Perrers, the real-life teen concubine of 50-year-old Edward III, whose grip on the monarch was made all the more powerful because of her cast-iron guile, rather than any lustful looks.

When sickly consort Queen Philippa gives her blessing to the union, as a silent partner in the “menage a trois”, gifted convent raised Alice builds a protective moat around herself, and her four subsequent illegitimate – yet recognised – royal babies.

Ambitious yet fiercely loyal, O’Brien has found a truly liberated subject matter in plucky, spirited Perrers – a fourteenth century nobody whose fervent belief in manipulating a higher station for herself in life, is breathtaking even by twenty-first century cunning.