Catherine Howard followed her cousin Anne Boelyn in two ways, as wife to the mercurial and cruel Henry VIII and to the executioner's block for adultery. Unlike Anne, there may be some truth to the charges against the younger and less educated Catherine. Katherine Howard - The Scandalous Queen is the fifth book in Alison Weir's Six Wives series and as with her other novels (and occasionally non-fiction books) about Tudor women, she has to fill in some gaps.
We first see Kathryn at her mother's deathbed. Her father, a disreputable member of a good family, has no way to support his children from two marriages while looking for an heiress to marry so the children are sent out to various relatives. After her protective and much older half-sister Isabel marries, Kathryn ends up in the household of the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk where late night parties teach her about sex and sexual politics at a young age. As a flirtatious young woman, she takes part in these games and becomes involved with two very different young men. This comes back to haunt her as Queen to a besotted but jealous Henry VIII when she carries on an affair with one while being threatened with blackmail by the other. Young, shallow, and uneducated it's no surprise she found better company with a dashing courtier than with her much older, physically failing but intellectually-minded husband, but when that husband is Henry VIII, doing so meant death.
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