He Was Thirty-two Years Old, Had Reigned Two Years, One Month, Twenty-eight Days. The Only Language,

“He was thirty-two years old, had reigned two years, one month, twenty-eight days. The only language, it turned out, in which he had been able to communicate himself successfully to the world was the terse idiom of courage, and the chief subject he had been given to express was violence. It had begun for him as a child in violence and it had ended in violence; the brief span between had been a tale of action and hard service with small joy and much affliction of spirit. If he had committed a grievous wrong, he had sought earnestly to do great good. And through his darkening days he had kept to the end a golden touch of magnanimity. Men did not forget how the last of the Plantagenets had died. Polydore Vergil, Henry Tudor’s official historian, felt compelled to record; “King Richard, alone, was killed fighting manfully in the thickest press of his enemies.””

— Paul Murray Kendall

ab. 1705 Francois de Troy - Princess Louisa Maria Stuart

“During the first year of her marriage, Anne perceived no diminution in Henry’s attachment. The birth of a daughter, however contrary to his anticipations, [did not reduce] his tenderness [towards her]; and he received, with becoming gratitude, the infant Elizabeth, who was universally acknowledged his presumptive heiress.”

— Memoirs of the Life of Anne Boleyn, Vol II. Elizabeth Benger (1821)

Ruta Gedmintas as Bessie Blount in The Tudors

John Jackson by Sir David Wilkie (Scottish: 1785-1841) circa 1815-20. Coloured chalk on paper

“She has reigned for fourteen years in peace, and God has shown that in the midst of troubled, most dangerous times [a reference to the religious civil wars in France] he [God] knows how to rule and govern a monarchy under the authority of a princess, which is very rare, but this has made the said Lady the most famous princess who has ever ruled in the world a beautiful princess and full of majesty, whom they [her subjects] see filling this crown’s throne with dignity, [so] they have willingly obeyed her until now.”

— French ambassador Bertrand de Salignac de la Mothe Fénélon to Charles IX of France describing Elizabeth I of England, 28 August 1572. Quoted in Elizabeth I of England through Valois Eyes: Power, Representation, and Diplomacy in the Reign of the Queen, 1558–1588 by Estelle Paranque (via maximumphilosopheranchor)