The following version of this book was used to create this guide: Mantel, Hilary. The Mirror and the Light. Henry Holt and Co, 2020.

England changes in an instant with the beheading of Anne Boleyn: once a queen, now condemned as an adulterous traitor. Her former husband, King Henry VIII, marries his new bride Jane Seymour almost immediately.

All this change has been engineered by Thomas Cromwell, a blacksmith's son turned lawyer turned politician, now Henry's right-hand man and the second-most-powerful man in England. Cromwell is keen to hold on to the power he has gained, but begins to feel the price of that power as he watches Anne's weeping ladies-in-waiting carrying her tiny body away.

Now remarried, Henry is keen to father an heir and consolidate his power. Because his past two marriages have been illegitimized (and his children from those marriages are both daughters anyway), he needs to have a son in order to secure the English throne for his dynasty. Both the lack of an heir and those two previous marriages mean his kingdom is in a dangerous spot. He has angered the Pope in seeking a divorce from his first wife, and both the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of France have an eye on conquest. There is also massive religious instability brewing: the Protestant Reformation is ripping Europe apart, as thinkers influenced by Martin Luther preach against the Catholic establishment and the Catholic establishment responds with Inquisitorial violence.

It is up to Cromwell to manage Henry's world and keep England afloat until a son arrives. Cromwell is the most competent man in the kingdom, but he's hampered by the people around him: the noblemen who work with him on Henry's privy council scorn his lowly background, and Henry himself is mercurial and dangerous. Once athletic and handsome, Henry now suffers from a gangrenous leg wound that won't heal; his fear of his own mortality means he's falling into denial, allowing his passions and whims to drive him. Cromwell also scents rebellion in the winds among the descendants of the Plantagenets, the royal house that preceded Henry's Tudor family. These noble families back Mary, Henry's fervently Catholic daughter by his first wife, and Mary seems to quietly agree. Cromwell, who promised Mary's mother Katherine that he would protect her daughter, is hard-pressed to keep Mary and the rebellious families quiet.

So it comes as a huge relief to him and to the whole kingdom when, after a long and anxious wait, Queen Jane falls pregnant and gives birth to a son. But the relief is short-lived. Jane dies only a few days later. While the prince survives, one heir is not enough to secure the kingdom, and Cromwell must again find Henry a wife.

Meanwhile, Cromwell is also working on altering the religious fabric of the country. A discreet Protestant himself, he persuades Henry to dissolve England's corrupt monasteries and redistribute their wealth to noble families, securing their loyalty. This move isn't too popular in the countryside, and discontent over religious and political instability leads to the "Pilgrimage of Grace," an uprising against Henry that takes a lot of time and money to quell. Henry is increasingly grim and sullen with Cromwell, and Cromwell is frightened: he knows that Henry has a way of casting people off when he tires of them, a process that usually seems to be fatal to the person who falls from favor.

After a great deal of wrangling, Cromwell secures a politically advantageous match for Henry: Anne of Cleves, a German lady whose family will ally with Henry against the Emperor and the French. But this plan blows up in Cromwell's face when Henry takes a dislike to Anne, and starts trying to find justifications for divorcing her. Cromwell's enemies in the court smell blood. At last, Thomas Wriothesely, once Cromwell's protégé, betrays him, and Cromwell is arrested on invented charges of treason, accused of conspiring to marry Mary and take the throne himself.

While Cromwell argues his own case as skillfully as ever, he knows it does not matter: Henry has decided what he is going to do. Cromwell resigns himself to his fate, and goes bravely to his own beheading. The King marries Katherine Howard, his fourth wife, that same day.