Jane Seymour Announcing Her Pregnancy.

Jane Seymour announcing her pregnancy.

THE TUDORS - S03E04 “The Death of a Queen”

Requested by anon.

“When historical novelists are looking for ways to empower their heroines they opt for making them hotshot herbalists or minxy witches. But literacy was their usual weapon, not spells, and many of them picked up enough legal knowledge to fight their corner in civil disputes. As widows, or as deputies to living husbands, they handled complex legal and financial affairs with aplomb, while assenting – outwardly at least – to their status as irrational and inferior beings. Gaily agreeing that the chief female virtues are meekness and self-effacement, they managed estates, signed off accounts, bought wardships and brokered marriage settlements, all the while keeping up a steady output of needlework. In some cases, they conspired against the crown while claiming, if it went badly, that their weak female brains had been addled by male influence, and that ‘fragility and brittleness’ allowed their trust to be easily abused.”

— Hilary Mantel, How do we know her? The secrets of Margaret Pole

Henry VIII Week– Day 5: Henry VIII + twilight years

“Starkey and [Lacey Baldwin] Smith shared a fascination with the end of Henry’s reign. In Smith’s view, in Henry’s later years– and especially after his health began to worsen in 1541– the ‘mask of royalty’ began to slip and the monster began to emerge. Smith’s Henry VIII was at his worst– suspicious, vindictive, perhaps even paranoid– in his later years. The Renaissance prince of the early years gave way to a nasty and vicious man who went to his reward gracelessly– kicking and screaming almost to the end. Starkey also focused on the end of the reign to support his thesis of the limited degree of Henry’s control, and especially saw the last months of his reign, with the destruction of the Howards and the rigging of his will, as evidence of factionalism run rampant. A vigorous and healthy Henry VIII could control the shape and direction of politics, if not the details; a sick and dying king let events slip out of his hands, permitting a radically Protestant succession that he never intended and, had he been alive to see it, would never have supported.” – If a Lion Knew His Own Strength, David M. Head, 1997

♔  T H E  W A R S  O F  T H E  R O S E S  ♔

1464 - 1478: THE MIDDLE

The red rose and the white are on his face, The fatal colours of our striving houses: The one his purple blood right well resembles; The other his pale cheeks, methinks, presenteth: Wither one rose, and let the other flourish; If you contend, a thousand lives must wither.

Henry VI, Part 3 (2.5.97-102)

KEY LANCASTRIAN MALE FIGURES DURING THIS PERIOD:

❁ Henry VI of England - restored to the throne on the 30th of October 1470; deposed and imprisoned after Tewkesbury; probably murdered on Edward IV’s orders on the 21st of May 1471 ❁ Edward of Lancaster, Prince of Wales - heir apparent to the English throne under Lancaster; killed at the Battle of Tewkesbury ❁ Edmund Beaufort, 4th Duke of Somerset - title disputed as attainder had not been lifted on his brother; executed after the Battle of Tewkesbury ❁ Thomas Neville, Viscount Fauconberg - the Bastard of Fauconberg; executed after the Kentish Rebellion ❁ Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick - killed at the Battle of Barnet after turning coat to Lancaster and engineering Henry VI’s second reign ❁ George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence - turned coat to Lancaster and back to York during Henry VI’s second reign; executed in 1478 for treason, reportedly drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine ❁ John Neville, 1st Marquess of Montagu - killed at the Battle of Barnet ❁ John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford - escaped to the continent after the Battle of Barnet

BATTLES:

♔ Battle of Hedgeley Moor - 25th of April 1464 ♔ Battle of Hexham - 15th of May 1464 ♔ Battle of Edgecote Moor - 26th of July 1469 ♔ Battle of Losecoat Field - 12th of March 1470 ♔ Battle of Barnet - 14th of April 1471 ♔ Battle of Tewkesbury - 4th of May 1471

MARIA DE SALINAS in SIX WIVES WITH LUCY WORSLEY (2016)

every Byzantine empress consort, regnant & augusta → CONSTANTINIAN DYNASTY (from 324-363)