Six Savage Thrones by Holly Race

Here is a summary with spoilers for Six Savage Thrones by Holly Race

Note this book changes narrative from the first book. The first book was Queen Boleyn and Seymourt. This book changes to Queen Anne of Cleves and Queen Katheryn Howard, and a girl named Cecilia who is Henry’s younger sister. Though Seymour continues to be central to the plot. 

Queen Boleyn is dead, Queen Seymour has fled, and the remaining queens (Aragon, Cleves, Parr, and Howard) are left to continue the conspiracy against King Henry. Henry now knows that the queens have discovered the truth about their powers and his theft of them, so he becomes increasingly suspicious and determined to locate Seymour. The queens' situation is complicated by the fact that Henry has deliberately kept them divided for years. Each queen has been given a portion of the goddess Medren's power when she marries him, but Henry has been using that system to control the women and maintain his own supernatural strength. After Boleyn's rebellion, the queens begin trying to understand their powers and how they can reclaim them while avoiding Henry's surveillance. 

Cleves has deliberately constructed a false public persona. She presents herself as eccentric, bookish, strange, and somewhat foolish, which allows other people at court to underestimate her. In reality, she is highly intelligent and politically calculating. Her marriage to Henry has also been fundamentally different from the historical version: Cleves is attracted to women, and she has resisted allowing Henry to possess her sexually. Her strongest emotional connection is with Seymour, who is grieving Boleyn and struggling to continue the rebellion after everything that happened in the previous book. Cleves and Seymour develop a mutual romantic and sexual attraction, but both hesitate to act fully on it. Cleves believes that Seymour is still deeply affected by Boleyn's death, while Seymour is dealing with grief, guilt, and the consequences of becoming Henry's most wanted enemy. The relationship nevertheless becomes increasingly important to Cleves, who gradually stops treating emotional attachment as something that must be sacrificed for safety.

Howard has a very different storyline. She is the youngest of the queens and has been dismissed by the other characters as naïve, frivolous, and primarily valuable because of her beauty. Her chapters reveal that this perception has been deliberately reinforced by the adults around her. Howard has been sexually exploited and groomed from childhood, including by older men who taught her to believe that her value comes from her appearance and sexuality. Her relationship with Henry is therefore particularly abusive: he treats her as an object while publicly presenting her as his beautiful young queen. Howard initially struggles to distinguish genuine affection from the attention she has been conditioned to seek. Over the course of the novel, she becomes increasingly aware that the personality others have assigned to her is not who she actually is. Her growing willingness to question Henry, resist men who attempt to control her, and make decisions for herself becomes one of the central character arcs of the book.

Howard's storyline also introduces Florin, a man whose treatment of her contrasts sharply with the men who have previously exploited her. Rather than treating Howard's body as something he is entitled to, Florin gives her space to establish what she actually wants. Howard gradually begins to understand that intimacy does not have to involve manipulation or the exchange of affection for protection. At the same time, another man connected to her past, Culpeper, represents the kind of sexual and emotional manipulation she has been conditioned to accept. Howard eventually turns against him rather than submitting to him. Her confrontation with Culpeper is one of the clearest indications that she has stopped seeing herself through the assumptions other people have imposed upon her.

Enter Cecilia, Henry's sister. Cecilia is the former queen of Capetia and has returned to Elben with her own ambitions for power. Unlike the queens, she does not begin from a position of rebellion against Henry. She has her own history with him and remembers him as the older brother she once admired. Her chapters provide additional information about Henry's childhood and help explain how the man he once was became the tyrant he is now. Cecilia is nevertheless ruthless and frequently cruel herself. She wants power, resents the authority denied to her, and is willing to manipulate or hurt other people to obtain it. Her perspective also shows that Henry's transformation is connected to forces and beliefs much older than his current reign.

As the queens investigate the source of their magic, the mythology surrounding Medren and Cernunnos becomes increasingly important. Henry's power is not simply the result of stealing magic from his wives. He is also connected to Cernunnos, a male deity whose followers have historically opposed Medren and the female divine power associated with her. The queens discover more about the ways in which women's divine power has been suppressed, transferred, and controlled by men. Their powers have different manifestations, and they gradually realize that possessing the power is not the same as understanding or controlling it. Their goal therefore changes from simply escaping Henry to eventually reclaiming and mastering the divine abilities he has taken from them.

The political conspiracy becomes increasingly dangerous because Henry has discovered that the queens are working against him. He begins using spies and other trusted figures to determine who is loyal to him and who is secretly assisting the rebellion. Culpeper is particularly important because his apparent position as someone who can help Howard is complicated by his own motives. The queens cannot simply accept assistance without questioning whether the person offering it has been sent by Henry. Their attempts to coordinate are also hindered by the fact that their magical abilities remain incomplete. 

Cleves's relationship with Seymour eventually becomes sexual, but it is accompanied by significant danger. Cleves also develops a relationship with Johana, a man who is connected to her life and provides another form of companionship and trust. Johana's role becomes important because Cleves is forced to confront the difference between the safety she has built for herself and the emotional attachments she increasingly wants. Eventually, Johana is killed. His death occurs after Cecilia is being held and is able to move about more freely than she should have been permitted to, leading to consequences that some readers have described as avoidable. His death contributes to Cleves's increasing willingness to abandon the defensive identity she has maintained throughout her life.

Everyone gathers at High Hall, where the political conflict between Henry, Cecilia, and the queens becomes a supernatural confrontation. Cecilia is killed during the confrontation. Henry's closest male supporters (including Thomas More, Cromwell, Wolsey, and Charles Brandon) are transformed into monstrous beings connected to Cernunnos. The queens are caught inside the palace while these creatures attack. Goldfoot, Howard's small lapdragon, is killed while defending her. Howard is devastated by his death and carries his body with her as the queens attempt to escape.

The queens initially discover that their reclaimed divine powers are still difficult to control. Howard briefly accesses her power but cannot maintain it. Aragon recognizes that simply receiving the divine power does not automatically give them mastery over it. The queens therefore find themselves trapped inside High Hall with four monstrous enemies between them and the exits. Cleves finally understands that her lifelong instinct to build emotional and physical defenses has actually prevented her from understanding the nature of her own power. Her connection to Cnothan, her homeland and the source associated with her divine power, becomes stronger as she accepts that she cannot continue running from everything she loves.

Cleves then uses her restored power to create a massive wall of light between the queens and the monsters. The power manifests as a defensive barrier, reflecting her connection to home, safety, and the people she loves. The other queens escape through the doors while Cleves remains behind to hold the creatures back. Before they separate, Cleves tells Howard to protect Seymour. She then tells Seymour that she loves her. Seymour tries to return to Cleves, but Howard and Parr physically restrain her and force her to leave. Cleves shuts the doors behind them and remains inside High Hall with the four monsters. She accepts that she has spent her life running from danger and decides that she will no longer run. The book strongly implies that Cleves dies defending the other queens, although the exact aftermath of her death is left deliberately unresolved rather than shown directly.

After escaping High Hall, the surviving queens separate to continue the rebellion. Howard, Seymour, Parr, and Aragon recognize that there is no longer a living Tudor male controlling Elben's throne. Henry and the other men who represented the old political order have been defeated at High Hall, while the queens have publicly demonstrated that they possess divine power of their own. Howard recognizes that the rebellion is no longer simply a secret conspiracy: the truth about the queens' powers can spread throughout Elben, and the women now have a realistic path toward taking control of the kingdom. Howard also processes Goldfoot's death and recognizes how much she herself has changed. She no longer believes she has to sacrifice herself simply to prove her worth to other people.

In an epilogue the surviving queens begin experiencing the same dream. Aragon, Parr, Seymour, and Howard each see a disturbing procession traveling toward a remote mountain location. Another woman who is imprisoned and isolated, also experiences the dream. The vision shows Cromwell and Wolsey transporting Henry's body to a place associated with the followers of Cernunnos. Henry appears to be dead or nearly dead, but his body is taken into a sacred bathhouse where Cernunnos's followers prepare a ritual. Six women wearing doe-like hoods are present and appear to have been drugged or otherwise rendered suggestible. Six golden knives are prepared for the ritual.