The Crown (56 page)

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Touchstone Reading Group Guide

The Crown

When Joanna Stafford, an aristocratic young novice, learns that her rebel cousin Margaret Bulmer is condemned by King Henry VIII to be burned at the stake, she makes the decision to break the sacred rule of enclosure and run away from her Dominican Order to stand at her cousin’s side.

Arrested for interfering with the king’s orders, both Joanna and her father are sent to the Tower of London. During their imprisonment, Joanna meets Stephen Gardiner, the powerful Bishop of Winchester, who allows her to leave the Tower on one condition: that she return to Dartford Priory to search in secret for the lost crown worn by Saxon King Athelstan. In order to save her father, Joanna must become a pawn in a struggle between religious extremes. As she faces challenges on every front, Joanna must determine whom she can trust and how far she is willing to go to protect the life that she loves.

For Discussion

1. What does Joanna Stafford’s decision to flee the Dartford priory to attend Margaret’s execution reveal about her character? Why is she willing to compromise her position to bear witness to her relative’s last moments? Why do you think Nancy Bilyeau chose to begin her novel with Joanna’s journey to Smithfield?

2. “[Margaret Bulmer] sought to harm no one. She and the others wanted to preserve something, a way of life that has been honored for centuries. Which gives comfort to the poor and the sick. They rebelled because they felt so passionately about their cause.” Why do the Catholics in England face political persecution at the hands of Henry VIII and his government in the aftermath of the annulment of his marriage to Katherine of Aragon? Why does Joanna risk exposing her own religious beliefs in her spirited defense of Catholic rebels like her cousin Margaret Bulmer?

3. Were you surprised when Geoffrey Scovill came to Joanna’s aid in Smithfield? To what extent does his decision to protect her seem selfless? Do you agree with Geoffrey that Joanna’s decision to attend the execution as an unescorted gentlewoman was ill-advised? If you were in a situation in which a relative in the last moments of her life depended on you for spiritual sustenance, would you take the same risks? Why or why not?

4. “I said nothing. There was no amount of abuse, no device of torture, that would ever make me disclose what had happened on the single day that I spent in royal service ten years ago.” Why does Joanna choose to conceal this? How does that episode affect her ability to trust men? How does this foreshadowing affect your feelings when the facts of Joanna’s having been sexually abused by George Boleyn are revealed much later in the novel?

5. How would you describe Joanna’s experience in the Tower? Why does Lady Kingston’s servant, Bess, agree to help Joanna try to make contact with her father, Sir Richard Stafford, in the White Tower? What do you think of Joanna’s experiences in the Tower tunnels and chambers? Which aspects of those scenes were especially evocative for you?

6. Why does Bishop Gardiner seek out Joanna in the Tower? Why does he use Joanna’s father to blackmail her into doing what he asks? What does her decision to go along with his requests and deceive the prioress at Dartford, among others, indicate about her sense of filial obligation?

7. How does Joanna’s intimacy with the disgraced and dying Katherine of Aragon make her vulnerable to Gardiner’s quest for King Athelstan’s missing crown? What complicated motives might be behind Gardiner’s quest for the crown?

8. On her deathbed why does Katherine of Aragon urge Joanna to “protect the secret of the [Athelstan] crown” for the sake of her daughter, Mary? Why does Katherine choose to reveal the possible existence of the Athelstan crown to Joanna?

9. How does Joanna Stafford get along with Brother Richard and Brother Edmund, when they all return to Dartford Priory on Gardiner’s orders? How does their friendship change when Joanna discovers that Edmund sends her letters to Bishop Gardiner and Richard oversees their exchanges and facilitates their work? Why does Gardiner choose not to tell the three of them that they are all working for him, in search of the Athelstan crown at Dartford?

10. How does Lord Chester’s murder affect the mood at the priory? How do Joanna’s and Edmund’s interpretations of the Dartford tapestries help to uncover both the murderer and the motivation?

11. How does the revelation of the Athelstan crown’s existence—and that it contains thorns from the crown Jesus wore—make Joanna’s quest more urgent? When Bishop Gardiner discovers Joanna and Edmund disguised at the Howard home, why doesn’t he punish or attempt to detain them? What role does Mary, daughter of Katherine of Aragon, play?

12. Did you like the ending of
The Crown
? What do you think will become of Joanna? What could her return to Dartford suggest about her aspirations—spiritual, romantic, and otherwise?

A Conversation with Nancy Bilyeau

What attracted you to historical fiction as a genre and to the Reformation era in English history?

Historical fiction was my first love. I found it so exciting to enter those richly imagined worlds of the past. When I was a teenager, I voraciously read books by Jean Plaidy; Mary Stewart; Susan Howatch; and, of course, Daphne du Maurier. I’d read in bed, and nod off with my head in a book—literally. In the middle of the night, I’d turn over and the book would fall off the bed. My parents got used to that thumping noise. In college and afterward, my tastes broadened to all sorts of fiction, but I always loved discovering a finely crafted historical, whether it was Mary Renault’s or Robert Graves’s enthralling books on the ancient world or the beautiful stories of A. S. Byatt. Part of it is that I am fascinated by history, with examining the differences in the daily lives of people who lived long ago, their values and beliefs, and yet finding how we are the same. Love, fear, greed, hope, ambition: a well-done historical novel makes you aware of the contrasts as well as of those uniting threads. The historical novelist closest to my heart is Norah Lofts, who wrote about everyone from Eleanor of Aquitaine to Hortense de Beauharnais. In fact, I named my daughter Nora in tribute to her.

I picked England’s Reformation for my first novel because the Tudor period is so mesmerizing. I’ve been fascinated with sixteenth-century Europe for many years. I am especially drawn to writing about a society under great strain—and what greater turmoil could be caused than the English church’s split from Rome? There were grisly executions, imprisonments, and martyrs from every level of society, a serious rebellion, and the king’s excommunication by the Pope. Yet Henry VIII would not stop. I found myself wondering what happened to the thousands of nuns and monks and friars who lost their way of life, some of them turned out into the world with no idea of what to do or where to go. It’s hard to imagine living through that kind of rupture.

How did you first become interested in the Athelstan crown? How much is known about Athelstan’s reign?

The early Middle Ages intrigue me. Because of the comparative scarcity of written sources, we don’t know that much about the kings of England in the first millennium—not as much as we know of the Plantagenets and certainly not as much as we know about the Tudors. In my research I was struck by how few books have been written about Athelstan, who accomplished such significant things in his sixteen-year reign. I wanted to shine a light on this pious and fearless warrior king known as “the English Charlemagne.” Yet there is a swirl of mystery around Athelstan that extends to the crown. Historians believe he received objects of great religious value from Hugh Capet, the father of the French royal line. The crown of thorns has been mentioned, as well as the lance of Longinius and other relics of the Passion. But exactly what the relics were, and what became of them, no one is sure. We don’t even know where the historic Battle of Brunanburh took place—or what happened to Athelstan’s corpse! He requested burial at Malmesbury Abbey instead of with the rest of his family at Winchester. But the tomb, which you can still see today, is empty. Makes me shiver.

The Crown
reads like a sixteenth-century thriller. Did you make a conscious decision to depart from the more usual romance-driven plot for a female protagonist?

I love thrillers almost as much as I love historical fiction. Weaving a story that is filled with suspense is what I wanted to do. And it was important to me that a woman be at the center of the book and that she be very active. I wanted my protagonist to be strong and intelligent and courageous—and yet vulnerable. She isn’t always allowed the luxury of developing a sound plan and carrying it out in a clear way. Events move quickly in
The Crown
and people’s motives aren’t clear. Joanna has to think on her feet.

Having said that, Joanna has romantic feelings in this book, though her being a novice sworn to chastity obviously complicates whether she acts upon such feelings.

A lot of people die in
The Crown
—many of them in gruesome ways. Did you regret killing off any of the characters? Why or why not?

I’m afraid that I’m a bit of a sadist. I think it’s thrilling to write a strong death scene. I believe a book of this sort must feature high stakes and plenty of shocks and twists. I wasn’t always planning to kill off Brother Richard. But then, while in the thick of it, I suddenly decided that he had to be murdered too. I was jumping around the room, waving my arms over my head, yelling, “Brother Richard is going to die!” Probably anyone witnessing this would have questioned my sanity.

I suppose the person I most regret making an end of is Margaret Bulmer, and that is because she really was burned to death at Smithfield in 1537 for high treason.

She had young children and by all accounts loved her husband. And she didn’t do anything that other wives of rebel leaders weren’t doing. Yet Margaret was singled out among the women for a terrible death. It’s very disturbing.

You open the novel with a scene of a religious execution, while the conclusion alludes to a sense of religious optimism—that perhaps the old ways and Catholic faith will not be permanently extinguished in England. Can you talk about how you chose to begin and end
The Crown
?