Yes. If I told you a certain 1527 event is occurring now... and lasting much longer... would that be a sufficient answer?
An Heir To Rule
- Thread starter Tudorfan
- Start date
No; I didn't so much as change my mind as I did get a date wrong - I thought Maria of Portugal, Duchess of Viseu, was born earlier than she was. Unless I gave Eleanor a 12 month pregnancy, I had to change it.
I’d say sacking Rome would be a pretty good reason for the Pope to grant Charles a dispensation...
Well, Rome is going to hold out longer than expected... and France has got to get involved - the Italian Wars of 1521 - 1526 are coming up, after all.
Great chapter, interesting to see that John isn't at all eager to support his brother-in-law, though I can see why he wouldn't; why anger the Pope when you at least got what you wanted from him?
Oh FFS!
Was that whole, rather indifferently written bit of bodice ripping prose actually necessary? This isn't a Harlequin romance site.
Yeah; he got what he needed, now he'll keep the Pope onside. Why wouldn't you do that?
Yes. Yes, it was. That was quite a nasty reaction to that, by the way.
I would strongly disagree. It was utterly unnecessary, not unlike the pointless scenes in movies showing attractive women changing clothes (the infamous Alice Eve scene in Star Trek Into Darkness springs to mind as an example). The passages in question reads like a series of too often used phrases taken from paperbacks featuring Fabio on the cover.
I will, however, refrain from further literary criticism.
This, however is me wearing my Mod Hat:
Soft core porn, even of the Fabio cover variety ,really has NO PLACE on this Board, There are myriad ways to show that characters are having an affair that are far less likely to trigger any of the various "Nanny-Ware" software programs in use. Given the number of members who access this site from schools, libraries, and public wi-fi sites, keeping clear of that software is strong positive.
Please keep this in mind going forward.
Book The First: Katherine of Aragon - The Pomegranate Queen
I am sorry this took so long to get out. With being swamped with work, starting a new diet (which, frankly, I need), and a family member trying to commit suicide, I haven't had much time to write lately. I hope you like this.
Also @FalconHonour, I hope you like the brief appearances of Princess Elizabeth. More of her coming soon.
"God, what is wrong with me?" he thinks. He's grown up at the Tudor Court, played with Prince Edmund when he was just a child, accompanied him to every banquet and state occasion his presence was required for; he is an expert at these things. He's never felt this nervous before. Never!
"The day's never been solely about you before, though," a little voice in his head pipes up. Harry gulps and shakes his head to clear it as his sister, seventeen-year-old Lady Mary Neville, Baroness Bergavenny, enters his apartments, dipping him a shallow curtsy, dress curving over her heavily pregnant belly, as she reaches him.
"Harry."
"Mary!" he exclaims, raising her up and kissing her on both cheeks. "You don't need to curtsy to me!"
"Yes, I do, my Lord Daubney!" Mary laughs, linking her arm with that of her brother's and leading him to the door. Just before they leave the room, however, Mary turns Harry around to look back at the rooms.
"Just think, Harry, the next time you step through this door, you'll be doing so as Marquess of Daubney. My brother, Henry Stafford, Marquess of Daubney!" Mary smiles happily, before kissing her brother swiftly. "I have to go. I'm attending Queen Catherine. Good luck, Harry!"
The two men watch their lively sister and daughter's dark green and cream skirts vanish around the corner before walking on together.
Neither man speaks however, even though they both know that the other is thinking the same thing as they themselves are, and before they know it, they have arrived at the Great Hall of Whitehall.
Buckingham slips in ahead of Harry, who waits for the herald to announce him before striding forwards, clad in a new doublet and hose of scarlet velvet trimmed with russet brown that he has had commissioned for this very occasion.
As he reaches the dais, he sinks to one knee, glancing up to catch sight of his beloved where she is seated beside the Queen. She beams down at him as the King rises to his feet, lifting a hand to tell the herald that he is ready. The Herald coughs and unrolls a heavy scroll of parchment. "It is the pleasure of our Sovereign Majesty, King Henry VIII, on this day, the Ninth day of September in the eleventh year of his reign, anno domini 1520, to create thee, Henry Stafford, Marquess of Daubney!"
As he finishes, Harry hears the King come down off the dais and then feels first the light weight of the silver Marquess's coronet come to rest on his head and then the heavy warmth of his new robes of state being draped around his shoulders, before King Henry says "Arise, My Lord Daubney" and helps him up, kissing him in friendship and handing him the patent of his newfound nobility. Henry accepts them with gracious thanks, and then the King steps back.
As if she's been waiting impatiently for the ceremony to be over, which indeed, she probably has, Ursula, seven months pregnant, leaps up and waddles down the steps of the dais, dashing over to Harry as best she can and flinging her arms about his neck, all dignity forgotten in her great delight. Harry slips his one arm around her and rests the other on her heavily pregnant belly, and meeting the King's twinkling eye over her flaxen head, tips Ursula's head up and kisses her full on the mouth, putting everything he wants to say but can't, not in public, into the kiss instead.
"Well, My Lady Marchioness? Does this please you?" he murmurs daringly into her ear as they break apart.
"It pleases me greatly, My Lord Daubney," she whispers back, entwining her arm with his as they turn together to greet the next group of people coming up to them to offer Henry their congratulations on his new peerage. "And, if I wasn't already big with your child, I'd show you how much it pleases me."
"By the God of Grace," the Herald, leading everyone from the ceremony, begins. "I give you Matilda Tudor; may she be eternally blessed and loved."
Matilda, sleeping soundly and encased in a bundle of blue blankets, was carried from the ceremony in the arms of her mother's sister and godmother, the future Duchess of Norfolk, Elizabeth Stafford.
"Make way for Their Majesties!" the crowd parts to allow the royal family to walk through the newly created space. At the sight of the King the crowd bursts into applause, which becomes even louder when the Queen passed them. However, when Prince Edmund exits, the applause becomes thunderous, as the crowd cheers for their beloved Prince. Once he reaches the castle he turns, gives a practised bow and falls to his knees in a sign of acknowledgement and the crowd thunders with applause again.
"Your Majesties, Your Highnesses, may I propose a toast?" Harry Stafford, new Marquess of Daubney, whom King Henry has raised to a Marquess so that he can be of a high enough standing to be the uncle of a Princess, rises to his feet and glances at the six people – King Henry, Queen Catherine, Prince Edmund, Princesses Mary and Elizabeth and the Dowager Queen – sitting on thrones. The two day old Princess Matilda, too young to have a seat of her own, is now sleeping on the lap of her grandmother, Dowager Queen Elizabeth.
Henry nods his consent, so Harry Stafford raises his glass. "To England's newest Princess! God Bless the Princess Matilda!"
"God Bless the Princess Matilda!" the crowd roars the sentence back at him, raising their own glasses.
Edmund beams widely at the courtiers' obvious love for their new Princess. However, the Princess whom the joyful bellow is meant for doesn't even wake. Matilda sleeps straight through it with all the poise of a true Princess of England, Ireland and France.
Edmund's eyes slid across to his infant daughter for a moment, proudly taking in every feature of her small face. Unlike his father and brother, he intends to groom Matilda to be a Queen, just in case anything should, God forbid, happen to Henry and his Princesses.
"How proud Kate would be of her, if she could only see her now." He thinks, wishing his wife was there by his side. But no, Katherine is still trapped in her suite of lying-in chambers, convention deeming her "dirtied" by the birth and unfit to preside at a public feast such as this one. She won't be allowed to be by his side again until she's been churched, which is still a full six weeks away at least.
Thinking on his wife makes him glad that he had not chosen to marry the Duke of Valois's sister or the other French ladies offered to him; they are wilful, headstrong. Edmund knows why, of course. Barely more than girls, years of being honoured and deferred to in everything does that to a person – or at least, a person of the French Royal Family's character. It spoils them, makes them vain and too self-assured for their own good. The French Princesses are affectionate, it is true, but the affection they lavish on everyone is the affection of a slightly spoiled, slightly vain girl. If he is brutally honest, it would have been beginning to bore him by now if he had married one of them. He needs something different. A different kind of affection – an affection like a simple country girl might give her sweetheart; unlimited, uninhibited - the kind of affection that Katherine gives him.
"Your Royal Highness! Your Royal Highness!"
Startled, Edmund looks up, breaking out of his reverie to find Harry Stafford calling his name. He glances across at Henry and he chuckles merrily. "Where have you been, brother? They're asking your permission to start the dancing."
"Oh! Yes, yes, of course."
Henry would never normally allow Edmund to take the precedence before him, but this is Edmund's day - and he's a big enough man to let this one slide.
Edmund waves a hand distractedly and the first set immediately starts to form; The Dowager Queen Elizabeth stands, hands the young Princess to her nursemaid, and takes the hand of Margaret Pole's son, twenty six year old Arthur Pole, asking him to partner her in a basse dance.
Edmund lazily allows his gaze to wander over the many different girls surrounding the grand tables and the dais, enjoying the way they all flush and curtsey the second they realise that he is looking at them.
"Do I want to dance with any of them?" he asks himself. With a sigh, he realises the answer is no. He's never been the greatest of dancers anyway, and when one can only do so by leaving a number of heartbroken girls behind – the ones one hadn't asked – well, then the whole affair gets extremely tiring extremely quickly, especially when one is loyal to a wife.
Trumpets blare and Queen Catherine looks up from talking with Sir Thomas Boleyn's wife, Elizabeth Howard, as Edmund trots into the lists on horseback; the herald bellows across the lists: "The Duke of Somerset has entered the lists. His Royal Highness makes the challenge a la guerre!"
Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, narrows his gaze at the Royal Duke and accepts the challenge. King Henry and Charles watch from across the lists as Edmund is handed a lance, lowers his visor, adjusts his seat and lance, pats the snout of his horse affectionately, and thunders down the list.
Surrey sets off at the same time, slamming his visor shut, his own lance lowered.
Both sets of eyes narrow; Edmund lowers himself in his saddle and Surrey does too.
Elizabeth Boleyn sees it before it happens and everything seems to happen in slow motion as disaster strikes: her brother's horse rears back and he fights to regain control as his lance drops.
Edmund's lance strikes Surrey's neck as Surrey's own dropped lance pierces his leg - both lances snap in unison and Surrey roars in pain. Edmund drops the remnants of his own lance to restrain his own sorrel horse, which is fighting to stay standing, as Surrey drops from his horse.
Surrey hits the ground, unconscious, with a dusty thump, as Edmund soothes his horse to a stop, throws off his visor and leaps from the horse, face contorted in shock under his red haired fringe.
Queen Catherine gasps in horror; Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, in chairs next to their mother, exclaim in shock - "Oh my!"; "Suwwey!" - and Elizabeth Boleyn hears the scream of shock from her sister-in-law as she faints, crumpling in her chair.
She vaults to her own feet, sprinting across the lists in a manner completely unladylike that would have made her late mother scold her severely, hearing her husband shouting for Doctor Butts. She sinks to her knees and rips the helmet off her brother's head.
By the time Doctor Butts and the others have rushed across the lists to Surrey, the blood pooling around him and staining Elizabeth Boleyn's cream and green dress gives everyone the answer to the question they're all thinking: it is too late - Surrey is dead.
All Sir Thomas Boleyn can do is hold his wife as she cries into her brother's blood stained corpse.
Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, is dead at forty seven, leaving a grieving widow and three children - Henry, Mary and Thomas - under the age of three.
Also @FalconHonour, I hope you like the brief appearances of Princess Elizabeth. More of her coming soon.
Book The First: Katherine of Aragon - The Pomegranate Queen
Chapter VIII: September 1520
Whitehall Palace,
England,
9 September 1520
"You look very fine, son," Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, assures his son, clapping him briefly on the shoulder in a gesture of manly, fatherly pride. Harry Stafford flashes him a quick smile of thanks, not wanting to speak lest the tremor in his voice give away how nervous he is feeling.England,
9 September 1520
"God, what is wrong with me?" he thinks. He's grown up at the Tudor Court, played with Prince Edmund when he was just a child, accompanied him to every banquet and state occasion his presence was required for; he is an expert at these things. He's never felt this nervous before. Never!
"The day's never been solely about you before, though," a little voice in his head pipes up. Harry gulps and shakes his head to clear it as his sister, seventeen-year-old Lady Mary Neville, Baroness Bergavenny, enters his apartments, dipping him a shallow curtsy, dress curving over her heavily pregnant belly, as she reaches him.
"Harry."
"Mary!" he exclaims, raising her up and kissing her on both cheeks. "You don't need to curtsy to me!"
"Yes, I do, my Lord Daubney!" Mary laughs, linking her arm with that of her brother's and leading him to the door. Just before they leave the room, however, Mary turns Harry around to look back at the rooms.
"Just think, Harry, the next time you step through this door, you'll be doing so as Marquess of Daubney. My brother, Henry Stafford, Marquess of Daubney!" Mary smiles happily, before kissing her brother swiftly. "I have to go. I'm attending Queen Catherine. Good luck, Harry!"
The two men watch their lively sister and daughter's dark green and cream skirts vanish around the corner before walking on together.
Neither man speaks however, even though they both know that the other is thinking the same thing as they themselves are, and before they know it, they have arrived at the Great Hall of Whitehall.
Buckingham slips in ahead of Harry, who waits for the herald to announce him before striding forwards, clad in a new doublet and hose of scarlet velvet trimmed with russet brown that he has had commissioned for this very occasion.
As he reaches the dais, he sinks to one knee, glancing up to catch sight of his beloved where she is seated beside the Queen. She beams down at him as the King rises to his feet, lifting a hand to tell the herald that he is ready. The Herald coughs and unrolls a heavy scroll of parchment. "It is the pleasure of our Sovereign Majesty, King Henry VIII, on this day, the Ninth day of September in the eleventh year of his reign, anno domini 1520, to create thee, Henry Stafford, Marquess of Daubney!"
As he finishes, Harry hears the King come down off the dais and then feels first the light weight of the silver Marquess's coronet come to rest on his head and then the heavy warmth of his new robes of state being draped around his shoulders, before King Henry says "Arise, My Lord Daubney" and helps him up, kissing him in friendship and handing him the patent of his newfound nobility. Henry accepts them with gracious thanks, and then the King steps back.
As if she's been waiting impatiently for the ceremony to be over, which indeed, she probably has, Ursula, seven months pregnant, leaps up and waddles down the steps of the dais, dashing over to Harry as best she can and flinging her arms about his neck, all dignity forgotten in her great delight. Harry slips his one arm around her and rests the other on her heavily pregnant belly, and meeting the King's twinkling eye over her flaxen head, tips Ursula's head up and kisses her full on the mouth, putting everything he wants to say but can't, not in public, into the kiss instead.
"Well, My Lady Marchioness? Does this please you?" he murmurs daringly into her ear as they break apart.
"It pleases me greatly, My Lord Daubney," she whispers back, entwining her arm with his as they turn together to greet the next group of people coming up to them to offer Henry their congratulations on his new peerage. "And, if I wasn't already big with your child, I'd show you how much it pleases me."
*~*~*~*~*
Whitehall Palace,
England,
10 September 1520
Whitehall Palace,
England,
10 September 1520
"By the God of Grace," the Herald, leading everyone from the ceremony, begins. "I give you Matilda Tudor; may she be eternally blessed and loved."
Matilda, sleeping soundly and encased in a bundle of blue blankets, was carried from the ceremony in the arms of her mother's sister and godmother, the future Duchess of Norfolk, Elizabeth Stafford.
"Make way for Their Majesties!" the crowd parts to allow the royal family to walk through the newly created space. At the sight of the King the crowd bursts into applause, which becomes even louder when the Queen passed them. However, when Prince Edmund exits, the applause becomes thunderous, as the crowd cheers for their beloved Prince. Once he reaches the castle he turns, gives a practised bow and falls to his knees in a sign of acknowledgement and the crowd thunders with applause again.
"Your Majesties, Your Highnesses, may I propose a toast?" Harry Stafford, new Marquess of Daubney, whom King Henry has raised to a Marquess so that he can be of a high enough standing to be the uncle of a Princess, rises to his feet and glances at the six people – King Henry, Queen Catherine, Prince Edmund, Princesses Mary and Elizabeth and the Dowager Queen – sitting on thrones. The two day old Princess Matilda, too young to have a seat of her own, is now sleeping on the lap of her grandmother, Dowager Queen Elizabeth.
Henry nods his consent, so Harry Stafford raises his glass. "To England's newest Princess! God Bless the Princess Matilda!"
"God Bless the Princess Matilda!" the crowd roars the sentence back at him, raising their own glasses.
Edmund beams widely at the courtiers' obvious love for their new Princess. However, the Princess whom the joyful bellow is meant for doesn't even wake. Matilda sleeps straight through it with all the poise of a true Princess of England, Ireland and France.
Edmund's eyes slid across to his infant daughter for a moment, proudly taking in every feature of her small face. Unlike his father and brother, he intends to groom Matilda to be a Queen, just in case anything should, God forbid, happen to Henry and his Princesses.
"How proud Kate would be of her, if she could only see her now." He thinks, wishing his wife was there by his side. But no, Katherine is still trapped in her suite of lying-in chambers, convention deeming her "dirtied" by the birth and unfit to preside at a public feast such as this one. She won't be allowed to be by his side again until she's been churched, which is still a full six weeks away at least.
Thinking on his wife makes him glad that he had not chosen to marry the Duke of Valois's sister or the other French ladies offered to him; they are wilful, headstrong. Edmund knows why, of course. Barely more than girls, years of being honoured and deferred to in everything does that to a person – or at least, a person of the French Royal Family's character. It spoils them, makes them vain and too self-assured for their own good. The French Princesses are affectionate, it is true, but the affection they lavish on everyone is the affection of a slightly spoiled, slightly vain girl. If he is brutally honest, it would have been beginning to bore him by now if he had married one of them. He needs something different. A different kind of affection – an affection like a simple country girl might give her sweetheart; unlimited, uninhibited - the kind of affection that Katherine gives him.
"Your Royal Highness! Your Royal Highness!"
Startled, Edmund looks up, breaking out of his reverie to find Harry Stafford calling his name. He glances across at Henry and he chuckles merrily. "Where have you been, brother? They're asking your permission to start the dancing."
"Oh! Yes, yes, of course."
Henry would never normally allow Edmund to take the precedence before him, but this is Edmund's day - and he's a big enough man to let this one slide.
Edmund waves a hand distractedly and the first set immediately starts to form; The Dowager Queen Elizabeth stands, hands the young Princess to her nursemaid, and takes the hand of Margaret Pole's son, twenty six year old Arthur Pole, asking him to partner her in a basse dance.
Edmund lazily allows his gaze to wander over the many different girls surrounding the grand tables and the dais, enjoying the way they all flush and curtsey the second they realise that he is looking at them.
"Do I want to dance with any of them?" he asks himself. With a sigh, he realises the answer is no. He's never been the greatest of dancers anyway, and when one can only do so by leaving a number of heartbroken girls behind – the ones one hadn't asked – well, then the whole affair gets extremely tiring extremely quickly, especially when one is loyal to a wife.
*~*~*~*~*
Whitehall Palace,
Tiltyard,
England,
11 September 1520
It's a warm day with barely a breeze in the air and the jousts for the celebrations of the birth of Princess Matilda are in full swing.Whitehall Palace,
Tiltyard,
England,
11 September 1520
Trumpets blare and Queen Catherine looks up from talking with Sir Thomas Boleyn's wife, Elizabeth Howard, as Edmund trots into the lists on horseback; the herald bellows across the lists: "The Duke of Somerset has entered the lists. His Royal Highness makes the challenge a la guerre!"
Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, narrows his gaze at the Royal Duke and accepts the challenge. King Henry and Charles watch from across the lists as Edmund is handed a lance, lowers his visor, adjusts his seat and lance, pats the snout of his horse affectionately, and thunders down the list.
Surrey sets off at the same time, slamming his visor shut, his own lance lowered.
Both sets of eyes narrow; Edmund lowers himself in his saddle and Surrey does too.
Elizabeth Boleyn sees it before it happens and everything seems to happen in slow motion as disaster strikes: her brother's horse rears back and he fights to regain control as his lance drops.
Edmund's lance strikes Surrey's neck as Surrey's own dropped lance pierces his leg - both lances snap in unison and Surrey roars in pain. Edmund drops the remnants of his own lance to restrain his own sorrel horse, which is fighting to stay standing, as Surrey drops from his horse.
Surrey hits the ground, unconscious, with a dusty thump, as Edmund soothes his horse to a stop, throws off his visor and leaps from the horse, face contorted in shock under his red haired fringe.
Queen Catherine gasps in horror; Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, in chairs next to their mother, exclaim in shock - "Oh my!"; "Suwwey!" - and Elizabeth Boleyn hears the scream of shock from her sister-in-law as she faints, crumpling in her chair.
She vaults to her own feet, sprinting across the lists in a manner completely unladylike that would have made her late mother scold her severely, hearing her husband shouting for Doctor Butts. She sinks to her knees and rips the helmet off her brother's head.
By the time Doctor Butts and the others have rushed across the lists to Surrey, the blood pooling around him and staining Elizabeth Boleyn's cream and green dress gives everyone the answer to the question they're all thinking: it is too late - Surrey is dead.
All Sir Thomas Boleyn can do is hold his wife as she cries into her brother's blood stained corpse.
Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, is dead at forty seven, leaving a grieving widow and three children - Henry, Mary and Thomas - under the age of three.
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I'm assuming you enjoyed the death then?
I, originally, had gone darker. Originally Edmund's lance was meant to pierce him through the face and take his head off. Then the head was meant to hit the floor and the force of the head landing shoved the lance deeper in. I decided on this instead.
Well, it means that, when he dies in 1524, Anne Boleyn's grandfather, Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, is succeeded... by his seven year old grandson, Henry.
Don't juvenile nobles usually end up Wards of the King? If so, then Henry VIII will have at least temporary control of the Norfolk Estate...