Number 21 is The Red Queen by Phillipa Gregory. This is a sequal to the her White Queen that I read earlier this year. The Red Queen in question is the heiress to the House of Lancaster, one of the two ruling houses (the other being the House of York) embroiled in the War of the Roses. Lady Margaret Beaufort (later Tudor, Stafford and then Stanley) is the mother of the future Henry VII, the first of the Tudor monarchs. She is (in Gregory's tale) an increadibly pious and ambitious woman. She feels it is her destiny to be important (else she would not have been born to such a high station in life) and if she cannot be Queen of England herself, then she will at least be mother to the King. Married at an extremely early age in order to bring forth the heir to the House of Lancaster, Margaret decides that this is her God given destiny (she has 'visions' of Joan of Arc and whatnot that prove the righteousness of her cause to her) to raise her son to the throne in place of the upstart Yorks. Basically, the be all and end all of Margaret's existence is seeing this through.

It's not a bad book. It's an increadibly quick read. The problem is the main character of Margaret is increadibly unsympathetic. I know that this is undoubtedly a stylistic choice on Gregory's part, but it made it rather difficult to be truly engaged in the book. Margaret is a vain, hateful, zealot who desperately wants power. When someone wants power that much, they probably shouldn't have it. She is also frighteningly un-self aware, ascribing vanity and hubris to everyone else but herself. She's obvioulsy smart (and historically she was said to be extraordinarliy leaned for a woman of the time), but you almost want her to fail (despite knowing very well that her son does triumph to defeat Richard III and start the House of Tudor) becuase she is so freaking insufferable.

It is an interesting look at the uses of the power of the women during the War of the Roses, but because Margaret was so unlikeable, I almost needed more focus on some of the male characters (or just other characters in general) to make the book more palatable.