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If you like historical fiction I would consider the Wolf Hall books. Told from the perspective of Henry VIII's Prime minister. Written by a woman but no wokery or historical anachronism in sight.
Uhhhhh...
Okay, admission of bias time up front: I am a St. Thomas More stan and Catherine of Aragon stan, so a novel which is a love letter to Thomas Cromwell is going to have a hard time winning me over from the start.
The trilogy is good, and it's a great primer in the absolute snake-pit that the Tudor court was (I was going to say "under Henry VIII" but I think that during the War of the Roses and when his father, Henry VII, was the last man standing, things were not too peachy either). It deals with the religious upheaval and the rise and fall of great families, as well as Henry's marital travails and why these mattered, and it's all from the viewpoint of Thomas Cromwell, one of Henry's New Men who came from humble beginnings, rose to the heights and - like his patron Wolsey - fell at the moment his influence and power was at its zenith.
Mantel is a Cromwell stan, there's no denying that; she's half in love with her character (you can always tell when an author fell in love with their character). He was genuinely smart and capable, but she makes him omnicompetent, he's a Marty Stu. The one good trait she gives him that I can appreciate is his loyalty to his old master, Wolsey.
It's very good on how Cromwell both was an innovator, who updated the bureaucracy and laid the foundations for the modern parliamentary system, and how he bent the laws around to serve Henry's purposes in a very nasty way, so that it's satisfying (if you're like me) to see him hoist with his own petard. Bills of Attainder are a lovely little legal device where we don't need to give you a trial, we've already decided you're guilty, now just confess like a good chap (or lady).
Mantel tends to slide over the nasty implications of what her boy is doing; she dislikes More (being a Cromwell stan, and for the same reasons I dislike Cromwell, being a More stan) so he gets to be a bigot fanatic torturer etc. etc. etc. while Cromwell, well gosh gee he just sort of had to do these things, you know? Seemingly she's ex-Catholic so that explains a lot of her attitudes to "bad old church, bad old pope, Reformation great, we'll just pretend it was all about now you can read the Gospels in English and be vaguely uplifted spiritually".
I would recommend the trilogy but with the caveat that Mantel thinks Cromwell was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
EDIT: I'd recommend, as non-fiction, the biography by Diarmaid Macculloch; a 1523 letter shows that politics hasn't changed much in 500 years 😁
I completely agree with your assessment. Mantell definitely seemed like she was trying to rehabilitate Cromwell, and her depiction of Moore was cartoonish.
In particular, the (not) torture of Mark Smeaton before he confessed to adultery with Anne Boleyn was absurd. The idea that he would confess to a crime that guaranteed his death due to being put in a scary cellar wasn't exactly convincing.
The BBC miniseries was also fantastic. They really went all in on the historical realism, including things like not having any artificial lighting, and even refusing to use modern candles in place of historically accurate tallow candles.
I might give Macculloch's biography a read, the reviews on Amazon seem positive.
It is good, and I say that as someone who is probably on the exact opposite of Macculloch in every way (he's English of Scottish descent, former Anglican, Unionist etc.) It's fair to Cromwell and also shows the environment he was working in, the changes going on not just in England but in Europe, and the reasons both for his success and his fall. It does show his flaws, too. And he was ruthless, there's no two ways about that. Throughout his career, he was a fixer for a lot of people, he was lobbied by people for that purpose, and he worked as Henry's fixer and his downfall came when he made missteps and could no longer provide the 'fixes' Henry wanted.
Henry VIII really is a fascinating character and despite reading a couple of biographies, I can't really get a handle on his character because nobody seems to be able to do that; one writer will describe him as a man's man, impatient of the world of women, while another will write him as brought up in a woman's world and thus being less sure of his position in the all-male world of the court. Nobody could really claim to know him, or be able to control him. And whatever one's opinions on their merits, I think More made a better end by standing up for his principles even though he knew this would probably end in his death eventually, as against Cromwell who went with the king on everything he asked and still ended up begging for mercy in one last, pathetic letter because his downfall, too, was assured.
I don't have much sympathy for Anne Boleyn because she did a lot to get herself into the position she ended up in (whatever about family pressure, and all the highborn families were dangling their daughters in front of Henry for hopes of getting advancement, she was - if we believe her supporters - smart and capable, so she was not some delicate blossom forced into chasing the king, she went for it too with her full consent). But her end was miserable, and the list of ridiculous charges was just Henry's ego at work. Smeaton is a victim, too; a bit of a cocky idiot who liked the idea of chasing the queen, did too much bragging, and ended up being used by men much cleverer and more powerful than him because he was a weak link who could be used for their purposes. I don't think anyone really believed that Smeaton was Anne's lover, but he could be portrayed as such, and coerced into a confession about it all, and that was what they wanted: the excuse to prosecute her.
Yes, I don't think it's at all credible that "we'll just sit him in a spooky cellar" was as far as Cromwell went, because (1) he was fighting for his survival against Anne himself and (2) he was not the kind of man to be squeamish about what needed to be done to get what he wanted.
There's a good video about the Holbein Tudor portraits here. I didn't see the BBC series, but I did read somewhere that the visual of Cromwell was, ironically, based more on the More portrait than the Cromwell portrait. It is fascinating to compare the two pictures, the one of More seems a lot more detailed and realistic than the one of Cromwell which is a lot flatter and old-fashioned. Does that mean Holbein preferred More to Cromwell, or that Cromwell made sure the painting would not reveal more than the surface he wanted to present?
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