Reader Review: A Royal Passion

A Royal Passion is Katie Whitaker's second biography (her biography of Margaret Cavendish, Mad Madge, was published in 2002). Her latest, however, is a study of the unprecedented union between Protestant and Catholic royals, King Charles I and the French Princess Queen Henrietta Maria, rather than a traditional biographical account of a single figure. By focusing on the marriage and emotional experiences of the pair, Whitaker offers an interesting and persuasive account of the causes and courses of the English Civil War (1642-48).

Her narrative is based primarily on almost 350 surviving letters that passed between Charles and his queen. Some of these letters predate the marriage of the royal pair. Others were written during their frequent absences from each other, both during the regular routines of courtly life, and after the pair had been forcibly separated by Civil War, when Henrietta Maria was declared a traitor and forced to flee to France. This allows Whitaker to sketch the vicissitudes of their marriage, from the early frost which only thawed after the murder of Charles’ favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, to the heartrending sadness following Charles I's execution on January 30th, 1649. She uses these sources in an effort to challenge the traditionally accepted harsh caricatures of the royal couple and images of a cold and passionless king and his domineering and tyrannical wife. Whitaker is largely successful, enhancing our perception of the passion that underlay the marriage and humanising both figures.

Whilst recent studies have suggested the importance of the imagery of the royal family as propaganda during the reign of the early Stuarts, Whitaker reveals the real emotions and sentiments beneath this display. But Whitaker also stresses the political importance of the union and suggests that it was at the heart of the descent to civil war that occurred in the 1630s and 40s. She portrays Henrietta Maria as a dedicated and strong-willed participant in the political machinations of the period and reveals how, because her activities were often linked to her faith (in the case of the conversion of the Countess of Newport, for example), this had a destabilising effect within the wider political sphere.

Whitaker is a skilled writer and subtly leads her narrative towards the tragic end of their ill-fated marriage. She possesses a wonderful eye for detail and successfully sketches a realistic account of Charles I's court. Not only does Whitaker capture something of the physical world of the couple, but she also manages to describe their emotional world and their passionate, yet turbulent marriage, revealing the deep love between Charles I and his queen, which was both a source of strength and a deadly political hindrance.

A Royal Passion, Katie Whitaker (Weidenfeld & Nicholson)