a marathon of a book.
upon finishing it, i feel both relieved it's over, and proud i made it through
that said, the content is so dense, and my grasp of the politics of King Henry VIII's court is so tenuous, that i often felt out of my depth. yes, i better understand the papacy and it's underlinings as a power source rather than a religious one. yes, i see the political alliances (and debts) of marriages within European powers. yes, i better understand the era's superstition - mired in the plague and other easy deaths. but these were things i did know, however casually. new information was harder to process... the king, in his need to be exalted, has no real friends? the construction of the Church of England was more a money grab than a new marriage for Henry VIII?