The Winter Queen (Different novel, different author from 6/30/12 post)

Brush up on your Latin if you read Jane Stevenson's novel about Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, sometimes called The Winter Queen (#214) due to the brevity of her reign with her husband, the Elector of Palatine.  Ms. Stevenson quotes extensively in Latin, Dutch and Yoruba without condescending to translate.

In this novel, the first of a trilogy, the book follows the fortunes of Dr. Pelagius van Overmeer, a former prince of Africa (He would have to be.) overthrown in a palace coup and sold to the "Portugals" as a slave.  He is sold on to the Dutch spice market in Batavia in the East Indies, where he becomes the property of the curmudgeonly Dutchman Comrij.  Comrij is obsessed with composing the definitive book on plants of the East Indies.  In service to writing this book, he converts Pelagius to Christianity, and educates him to be his assistant.  After twenty years, he frees Pelagius and allows him to travel to Holland to fulfill his dream of becoming a doctor of theology, and returning as a missionary to Batavia.  When Comrij returns to Holland to prepare his book for publication, he has no compunction about yanking Pelagius back to become his unpaid servant again.

About a third of the way through this philosophical discussion of religion and botany, Pelagius finally meets Elizabeth, the exiled Queen of Bohemia.  She has been widowed for many years now, and lives to further the Protestant cause in Europe through the careers of her oldest sons on a barely adequate pension from her brother, Charles I of England.  Pelagius has been supporting himself since the death of Comrij through interpretations of the Ifa, an African form of consulting the Sibyl, on  which his thesis is based.  Elizabeth sends for him, and the rest, as they say, is history.  Only it's not, of course.  One review called this a "fairy tale romance"  and this is definitely spun out of whole cloth.  To believe  Elizabeth and Pelagius would enter into a clandestine marriage on the advice of her chaplain strains credulity.  The pair have long and heartfelt discussions about the state of religion as they snatch nights together locked away in Elizabeth's room, hardly the pillow talk of romance.  They do however, manage to produce a child, Balthazar, promptly smuggled out of the palace to be raised by a poor couple far to the south who need the money from fostering this child, no questions asked. 

I understand Balthazar becomes a central figure in the rest of the trilogy, but I'll have to take that as a given, since I won't be reading the rest.  If The Winter Queen is any indication, I don't need to read any more of this insufferably tedious tale.  Disappointing, because the premise had such appeal...