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The biggest surprise of Firebrand is that it’s taken this long for Katherine Parr, sixth and final wife to Henry VIII, to receive her own revisionist portrait. She comes with her own tagline, after all: “survived”. It’s catchy. But the “girlboss at any cost” manifesto starts to look a little less rosy when you present the idea that Parr, through her Protestant sympathies and love of Henry’s children, paved the way for Elizabeth I’s rule as a fist-pump feminist victory. Firebrand tosses around the words “hope” and “tolerant” in reference to “Good Queen Bess”. I’m not sure the many, many thousands of Irish people who perished under her colonial thumb would agree.
