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Of late I've been reading the second of the Tudor dynasty series of novels (buggered if I can remember the name of the author at the moment), The King's Curse. I didn't read the first of the set, A Winter King, and I'm guessing I'm glad I didn't. Either way, if you didn't know, the Tudors were a "noble" family from Wales who came to the royal court, Owen married Dowager Queen Catherine de Valois, and had a couple kids. Their eldest son, Edward?/Edmund? marries Lady Margaret Beaufort - cousin to Henry VI, and their son was earl of Richmond. In this set of books, Tudor somehow winds up as king of England, and goes on to establish a new dynasty.

But back to the novel.

Henry VIII of England here is an absolute monster. I mean the guy can't get a son, so he basically tears the world apart. He marries his older brother's virginal widow, Katherine of Aragon (yeah, the OTL duchesse d'Orléans and later queen of France) shortly after coming to the throne in 1509, and things go well for the next decade or so. However, in the mid-1520s a young lady by the name of Anne Bolwyn comes on the scene. Henry doesn't have a son with Katherine. He asks the pope for a dispensation to divorce Katherine. Katherine's nephew (OTL Charles of Burgundy), the Holy Roman Emperor (who's also the king of Spain - though they never say how he got that title) prevents this. Henry then flicks the bird at the pope and starts his own church, divorces Katherine, and marries Anne. But Anne only gives birth to a daughter.

Now here's the part that I really find hard to swallow. I mean, it's not as though there haven't been royal mistresses who aim for the crown. Following a couple miscarriages and the arrival on the scene of a new lady at court, Jane Seymour, Anne's out and Jane's in. Anne gets divorced, accused of sleeping with her own brother - and what must be half the male population of the court - and her head gets chopped off. Henry then marries Jane. Jane gives him a son. Happiness. But then Jane dies, and Henry goes on the lookout for a new wife. Of course, no girl's exactly jumping at the chance to wed him, but he finds a German princess who's up to the task. Said princess arrives in England and she's barely wed to Henry before Kitty Howard makes her appearance on the scene. The German princess is divorced, and Henry marries Kitty Howard. Then, surprise, Kitty Howard's ex-lovers (and husband) come crawling out of the woodwork, and the king divorces Kitty, has her, her husband and her lover's heads chopped off. And Henry marries again, to Kate Neville. Who gets accused of being in favour of the reformed religion, so what does Henry do? You guessed it, the proof is barely in hand when he's calling for Kate Neville's head on a spike. Then, Henry weds again (some serious issues this bloke has, I'm just saying) - at nearly sixty, to the dowager duchess of Suffolk (whose husband - not a de la Pole - was Henry's BFF). He dies leaving an underage son, two daughters (both called bastards) and a young wife (who ironically, is much like Kate Neville in her favouring of the reformed religion).

Now, after this, I was just thinking that I sure am glad that King Edward V succeeded without a problem that we ended up with a period of Plantagenet stability during the time that the events in the novel are going on. Yeah, things weren't always rosy: there were wars with France and then a union with Scotland, and a war with Scotland when the union broke. But in comparison with what was going on in France and the Empire, England's transition to Protestantism was a lot more peaceful than what it's made out in the novel. I mean, it was only after the union with Scotland fractured in the 1580s that King Henry VII came out as Protestant.
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