The Fifth Queen Crowned is Ford Madox Ford's masterly recreation of Tudor England's most dangerous court. Katharine Howard arrives at Henry VIII's palace as an impoverished Catholic noblewoman, devout and barely aware of the wolves surrounding her. What follows is her gradual, almost unwilling ascent through the labyrinth of court politics, each step bringing her closer to the king, and closer to destruction. Ford renders the political machinations of Cromwell, Cranmer, and Gardiner with shadowy precision, while Katharine's faith and forthrightness make her both magnetic and doomed. The novel builds toward her coronation and the inevitable fall that history has already written. This is historical fiction as psychological thriller: the tragedy lies not in what we don't know, but in watching a good person swallowed by machinery she cannot escape.
