The children of Henry VII had a monumental run of bad luck - Arthur, Prince of Wales, dies of a sweating sickness mere months after his wedding in 1502 and Henry, Duke of York, at that point betrothed to his brothers widow, Catherine of Aragon, dies after a fall from a horse in 1507. This leaves Henry VII convinced Catherine is seriously bad luck and the new heir being Edmund, Duke of Somerset, barely ten when his father dies in 1509.
The choice of Regent was a difficult decision for the Privy Council to make - a choice from the Tudor line was unthinkable and a Yorkist selection would be problematic at best. A happy medium was a joint recency between Edmunds aunt, Anne of York, and her husband, Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk. The Regent and his Regent Consort saw the betrothal of the young King (which had been curiously overlooked until then) as their first task - and their sights settled on a French match, offering Calais to the French King in return for breaking his daughters engagement to Francis, son of the Count of Angouleme. But this consideration was countered by the presentation of Eleanor of Austria, who had previously been courted as a wife for the deceased Duke of York,to the court of the Regents.
In the end, France triumphed - Edmund was betrothed to Claude of France, Calais was returned to the French and Edmunds sister was betrothed to Claudes former betrothed, Francis, who later became the King of France.
With the attempt to broker a betrothal to Claude of France, Anne of York and Thomas Howard refused to participate in Pope Julius II's Anti-French Holy League in 1511 and the ensuing tense relationship between England and the devoutly Catholic Spain was the major factor in determining the choice of Claude of France as Edmunds bride - or so the Regent and the Regent Consort would claim, despite latter historians claiming it was because Eleanor was tainted by her familial connection to Catherine of Aragon.
Major milestones in Edmunds thirty-seven year reign was the 1535 Laws in Wales Act which combined England and Wales into a single country and the following years 2nd Succession Act which set out the order of succession to the crown (after exhausting all claimants derived from his own issue, moving via the descendants of his elder sister Margaret and subsequently his younger sister Mary) and the brief hostilities with France in the final few years of his reign (precipitated by the marriage of Eleanor of Austria to King Francis following the death of Edmunds sister Mary and Eleanor's first husband, King Manuel of Portugal), culminating in the Treaty of Calais in 1546 and the return of Calais to the English for a period of ten years.
Edmund and Claude had seven children but only four of these lived past thirty: one would be destined to become the [King/Queen] of England and another would inherit the Dukedom of Brittany. When Claude died in 1534, Edmund sought a second marriage and settled on Mary Howard, the daughter of his former Regent, Thomas Howard (through his second marriage), who had been betrothed to Edmunds son, Richard, until his death of consumption in 1534 mere weeks after his mother. Mary and Edmund produced no surviving heirs and she outlived him by just short of a decade - being granted the courtesy title of Duchess of Somerset, Edmunds pre-regnal title, for the final ten years of her life.
Edmund dies of consumption (much like his son Richard twelve years earlier) in 1546 and the throne passes to ...