Book Review – ‘The Nine Day Queen’ by Ella March Chase


'The Nine Day Queen' by Ella March Chase (2013).

This is the story of the Nine Day’s Queen, Lady Jane Grey, and her sisters, Katherine, and Mary. They all encountered the wrath of queens themselves and this is a fictional retelling of how they all dealt with that and how the legacy of the Nine Day’s Queen influenced her sisters.

I think I was expecting more from this book as I so enjoyed ‘The Virgin Queen’s Daughter’. Perhaps I enjoyed that one more because it was based on an idea that there is no historical evidence for, rather than following the historical timeline.

This book, according to the title, you would expect to focus on Lady Jane Grey, but she dies about halfway through, so it is actually the story of the three Grey sisters and how Jane’s legacy affects her surviving sisters, Katherine, and Mary. The basic storyline is historical fact but there are several instances where this deviates. Some are covered in the afterword by the author, but some not, so don’t take this as being historically accurate in all cases.

As to the writing, it is engaging to read, but I did feel that it was lacking in some storyline respects especially in the second half of the book. Katherine and Mary Grey are two very intriguing characters that not enough is really written about, so it would have been nice, as their stories after Jane’s death were covered, to get a little more. It almost felt as though the writer wanted to cover their stories but didn’t have the same knowledge as for Jane’s story. The second half felt lacking somehow as a result.

Not the best fictional rendition of the story of Lady Jane Grey and the Grey sisters – I much preferred ‘The Lady of Misrule’ by Suzannah Dunn and I am looking forward to reading ‘Sisters of Treason’ by Elizabeth Fremantle.

Discussion Questions – ‘The Virgin Queen’s Daughter’ by Ella March Chase


1. When The Virgin Queen’s Daughter begins, Nell is imprisoned in the Tower of London. How does this set the tone of the book? Compare Nell’s perception of the fortress as a child with her feelings about it upon her return. Contrast Elizabeth’s experience as a prisoner to Nell’s.

White Tower at the Tower of London
White Tower at the Tower of London

The tone is set because you know what will happen and what it is all leading to. It sets the tone because you know things before they happen. It is more hindsight than we have even with history, because it’s debatable. The tone at the beginning is a sense of sadness and inevitability. It makes you wonder and question what you thought you knew. The Tower of London as a child, Nell saw it as a place of wonder, magical and special. It is the place of the menagerie, creatures she is unlikely to have seen before. It is the environment which she doesn’t know but really wants to that makes it so special for her. As an adult, however, she returns to it as a prisoner, and sees it more as forbidding and a symbol of power. Elizabeth believes in destiny. Nell thinks of experiences in the past – Elizabeth has locked people up before (Katherine Grey had been in the Tower for several years). Elizabeth was a valuable prisoner to her sister, Mary I, whereas Nell was very disposable, unless the truth eventually came out.

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