The Dark Rose (Morland Dynasty)

In The Dark Rose Ms. Harrod-Eagles takes on Tudor England. It is one of my favorite time periods in history and I, like many others, have done a lot of reading on Henry VIII. So that in some ways made this book familiar. The fictional Morland family is inserted into history to be the axis upon which the story spins.

I so wanted to like this this because of my familiarity with the content. I love reading new takes on old stories. But the Morlands in this tale are, for the most part, very unlikeable. Paul Morland is the head of the household as the book unfolds and is feeling resentment towards his half brother Jack. He thinks Jack is trying to steal everything he has; Morland Place, the love of the people, his son. Everyone loves Jack but everyone merely obeys Paul because he is the master. Paul feels slighted because his wife has only given him one son while Jack has a large family.

Paul's son grows into an entitled, unpleasant young man. Paul also has an illegitimate son by his mistress who grows up resenting Paul and promising revenge for Paul's neglect. I don't want to give away too many plot points but with one exception most of the characters you could get behind end up dead. It's just plain depressing.

Paul's niece, Nanette ends up at court as a lady in waiting to Anne Boleyn. I was not fond of the characterization of Anne Boleyn. It ran contrary to most that I have read. Since the novel focuses more on Anne than Henry this was difficult.

Paul does end up softening towards the end due to a newfound love that will raise some eyebrows but the relationship would have been acceptable in its time. He and his son find themselves on opposite sides of the religious battles raging at the time with Cromwell doing his harm to England.

I still want to continue along in the series but if the third book is also full of unlikeable characters that will probably be the end for me. I just feel you need someone to like and root for in a book. It was easy to read and I enjoyed the history but I struggled a bit with this one.

Love it

This author draws you into the story for historical fiction she is very up to date with her facts. The family in the story are great and show how families were back then.

I loved this second in a long series of historical novels placed in northern England near York! It continued the saga of the Morland family from 1501 into the reign of young King Edward after the death of his father, Henry VIII. I love this period of English history so following the Morlands through it was especially enjoyable. I hope the next in the series will continue with Elizabeth I since she is my very favorite of all the English monarchs.

Others have summarized the plot of this novel so I will not repeat their efforts. This is a long book, a little over 21 hours on the audiobook, but I finished listening to it in less than 4 days. Although I do have a life, I found it difficult to take off my earphones and stop this story. I guess it’s a good thing that batteries do need to be recharged occasionally. I was even happy with the ending. I read the preceding book, but this one could stand on it’s own without losing much.

"He had been loved and he had been feared, but above all else he had been the King, and there was none to come after him, none but a small boy and a pack of ravening dogs."

"The Dark Rose" is the second book in the Morland family saga, and this one picks up in 1501, just before the reign of Henry VIII. It is the period of this Tudor monarch that is the focus of the story, as various members of the family enter life at Court and must bear the trials and tribulations of the mercurial king. As time goes on and the king becomes more and more desperate for an heir, as we all know, he takes drastic measures. With a member of the family serving as a lady-in-waiting first to Anne Boleyn and then to Katherine Parr, the Morlands are in the thick of what is happening at the center of the storm.

To understand this book, you don't really have to have read its predecessor. Harrod-Eagles does a good job setting up each character's story, and given that the main character, Paul, was just ten years old at the end of the last novel (and is married with children at the beginning of this one), enough time has passed that few characters overlap. It's certainly nice to have seen how the family developed, but if you're just interested in Tudor England, you should be fine following along with this story.

Where the first book focused mostly on Eleanor Morland and the family business, this one delves more into Court life and the turbulent times. There are essentially two protagonists in "The Dark Rose": Paul Morland and his niece, Nanette. Both characters are very flawed, and in some cases, do things that make you squirm. But as difficult as it can be to love one or both of them, they are developed enough that they come across as being very real people. While the family is too large to focus on everyone, when Cynthia Harrod-Eagles decides to develop a character, she does it very well.

More than anything, I loved this book for its historical perspective. I knew about Henry VIII, but not about how events unfolded, and even if there has been artistic liberty taken (and I have no idea if there has), it was an interesting way to see the events of the past. I came to both dislike and at the same time sympathize with Anne Boleyn, and it gave me a unique view on Henry himself. So many of these characters are well-known, but it seems we deal more with the events and less with the people involved in them. Given that half a century has passed, we'll never completely know these people, but Cynthia Harrod-Eagles gives us a glimpse of what they might have been.

Overall, "The Dark Rose" is an excellent installment into the Morland family saga. It gave me a new appreciation for Tudor England and I look forward to making my way through the series.

I read the first book in this series, and enjoyed it quite a bit. That was probably surprising, me being a guy who likes Bernard Cornwell novels, among others. But I could only get through 12 pages of this one. The author introduces dozens of characters at once, and I found myself going back and forth, back and forth, ad nauseum, to the family tree. It was only moderately helpful. The task of deciphering who is in what branch of the family is complicated by the fact that families intermarried, married cousins, etc. The more characters she introduced in Chapter 1, the worse it got. I was so thoroughly befuddled that I put the book down, placed it in the 'donate' stack, and found the other 12 I had as last year's Christmas presents, and put them in the donate pile, too. No more of this. No more!

Paul has inherited his family estate. When his wife gives birth to a son, they are proud to have someone to pass to him the family name and all luxuries and responsibilities that go along with it, even if he is a bit of an ass. Paul is unhappy that his wife has only given him one son. He ends up having another son by his mistress, who feels that he should be the one left in charge. As the hate brews, the brothers become lost in it.

I liked this book. The sibling rivalry was entertaining. Some parts could have been condensed but other than that, it's a winner.

The Dark Rose, Book Two in Cynthia Harrod-Eagles massive Moreland Family Saga begins in the year 1501 and brings all the intrigue of life at the court of Henry VIII to readers through the eyes of Nanette Moreland, who becomes lady in waiting to Anne Boleyn. Nanette is a good friend to Anne, and witness to her tantrums and triumphs as she leads King Henry VIII on a merry chase for many years. Meanwhile, at Moreland Place in Yorkshire, Paul Moreland works to build the family holdings and diversify their business in the wool trade, making the Morelands one of the most powerful families in their region. These successes are tempered with tragedies of illness and death, foolish, youthful indiscretions flowing into adulthood, and the love, resentment, and jealousies that can often be found in a large family who work and live together.
I enjoyed the way the lifestyles of the different classes were described in such detail. Not only do readers enjoy the pomp and intrigue of daily Court life with velvets and jewels, but the supposedly simpler life of those making a living from the land to support the lavish Court lifestyle. For Tudor lovers The Dark Rose brings us another perspective on life at Court with Henry, Catherine of Aragon, and Anne Boleyn and for lovers of romance there's plenty of love and lust both at Moreland Place and Whitehall Palace.
As with the other books in the Moreland Place series, a family tree is provided at the front of the book, to which I referred often while reading. On Cynthia Harrod-Eagles web site there is a map of the fictional Moreland Place and it's surrounding villages, which is fun to have as a reference, also.