Author: Susan Holloway Scott
First Published: 2007
Publisher: New American Library
358 pages (trade paperback)
This is a novel about Barbara Palmer, the Countess of Castlemaine, who was one of the main mistresses of King Charles II, during the period of Restoration England. Historically, she was known to have been a great influence on King Charles, so much so that people would call her the Uncrowned Queen. She was known to be promiscuous and extravagant, leading her to have left a rather negative view of herself throughout the centuries.
Royal Harlot is not a novel that seeks to bring “another side” to the story of Barbara Palmer (at least, I did not get that impression). She is presented just as negatively, I think, in this novel as in history. It is a straightforward story about Barbara’s life as King Charles II’s mistress, beginning from when Oliver Cromwell’s government was still in power. 15 year old Barbara is stunningly gorgeous, but is not the “proper lady” that her mother would have liked her to be. Barbara is spirited and cheerful, but also self centered, calculating and very good at stringing men along by their noses. She’s terribly unfaithful to her husband, Roger, and has all sorts of sexual relations with men. Her biggest catch of all is, of course, the king himself.
Barbara and Charles begin a not-so-secret relationship. Barbara is pleased to be the center of Charles’ life and enjoys being at court, throwing parties, showing off, and accepting lavish gifts from all sorts of people hoping she can wave some of her influence over the king. Barbara has the most power over Charles and she knows it. She is perfectly happy to use her relationship with Charles to her advantage.
If liking the main character, who is in a first person voice, is very important to you, then you may struggle a bit with Royal Harlot. Barbara is not easily likeable in this book. As mentioned earlier, she is self centered and enjoys playing the role of a poor little victimized woman. She remembers all the slights and insults people have done to her and is perfectly willing to wait patiently, even for years, to get her revenge. Even her moments of generosity seemed fake to me; to me, every time she was nice, she did it just to look nice. Barbara was every bit the vixen in this novel. I don’t even think she truly loved the king — certainly she liked him and thought he was attractive and had a great personality. However, from what I can tell from this book, Barbara was more attracted to the fact that he was king and had all this wealth and power. She also didn’t seem to care that he had other mistresses as long as she didn’t have to run into them, and she wasn’t above taking other lovers as well.
Normally such a petty character would annoy me, but I think because Barbara was the first person narrator, it was tolerable. She explained her rationale and reasoning for why she did certain things, so that it made some sort of sense, rather than leaving the reader to conclude that she’s being a bitch “just because she can”. No, I didn’t agree with everything she did, sometimes it was downright childish. For example, there was a scene where she decided to basically brag to Charles’ queen how Charles always visits her in the night and they have all these lovely children, while the queen hasn’t been able to give Charles a single baby. I remember thinking, “Oh come on … she’s the queen and Charles’ wife! Stop being so immature!” (Though I do have to admit, one could argue that the queen is the “other woman” since Charles and Barbara met and hooked up way before he even married his queen).
Even though Barbara is not a very nice character in this book and all that, I was still engrossed in the story. Partly, this has to do with the fact that I haven’t read very many (if any … can’t remember) books having to do with the Stuarts of Britain, so all these stories regarding this part of British royalty history is new to me. With a character like Barbara, you can surely expect lots of court drama. I never felt a dull moment in this book! So yes, I did actually enjoy reading this book a lot, even if I wasn’t particularly crazy about Barbara, heh. The strange thing is, this book made me feel incredible pity for Charles’ queen, Catherine, even though she was mostly a peripheral character, and now I want to read more about her!
My Rating: 4/5
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