![]() ![]() Certain he was a ‘true’ king, he believed that his marriage must be false, and therefore cursed. ‘We think all our doings in our lifetime are clearly defaced and worthy of no memory, if we leave you in trouble at the time of our death’, Henry once commented. The trigger for Henry’s tyranny was – naturally – his anxieties concerning his inability to have a son with Katherine of Aragon. ![]() Even today, we still prefer to remember the young and virile Henry VIII to the old, impotent tyrant. It is impossible to imagine such a play being written about Henry VII. Samuel Rowley’s Jacobean play, When You See Me You Know Me, which helped inspire Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, depicted a king going out in disguise to mingle with his subjects, getting into brawls and even being arrested. ![]() “The myth of the convivial ‘bluff King Hal’ lived on in national memory into the next century. What I liked most about this book was highlighting the brutality and beliefs of this period that so often are neglected in place of a more clean version. And goes into all of their descendants’ (and Owen’s illegitimate son) lives, including those we rarely hear about like Meg Douglas and the Brandon sisters, and their place in English history. It starts at the beginning with the event that changed history, Owen and Katherine Valois’ meeting. An excellent book that covers ALL the Tudors! Not just the ones in movies. ![]()
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