Why the Tudor Obsession?
Since 1066, there have been many dynasties that have ruled England: Normans, Plantagenets, Stuarts, Hanoverians, Mountbatten-Windsors. All of them have made their mark but none has been able to match the fame or the level of public fascination that continues to cling to the House of Tudor, a dynasty that spawned five monarchs and came to an end 411 years ago. Why?
The Tudors came to power when the forces of Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, the last viable male Lancastrian claimant to the throne, defeated those of Richard III at the battle of Bosworth. Richard was slain and then carted off to an ignominious grave, only recently discovered underneath a carpark, and Henry spent the rest of his reign defending the crown he had supposedly picked up from under a hawthorn bush on Bosworth Field. He was a man who was forever looking over his shoulder but, despite that, he was in many ways a successful ruler and he certainly left a healthy treasury for his son, Henry VIII, to inherit. And that was when things got interesting.
Henry VIII 'achieved' the following over the course of his 38 yr reign: married six times, had two wives beheaded, broke with the Church of Rome, abolished the monasteries, founded the Royal Navy, built numerous palaces, and largely squandered the vast wealth his father had left him. All three of his children succeeded to the throne but none provided any heirs and the direct line died with Elizabeth I in 1603.
So the Tudors were the people who changed everything and perhaps that explains part of the obsession with them. They laid the foundations of modern day Britain and they literally turned the existing order upside down to do it. Their story is colourful and dramatic and replete with tantalising 'what if' scenarios: what if Prince Arthur, Henry VII's eldest son, had lived and Henry VIII had therefore never become king? What if one of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon's sons had survived? What if Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn had had a son? What if Edward VI had grown to maturity? What if Elizabeth I had married? Events would have turned out very differently if even one of those scenarios had come to pass.
For me, I love the theatre and the pageantry of the Tudors, the stark contrast they make between splendour and savagery. They themselves are intriguing enough figures on their own but they also surrounded themselves with an equally interesting cast of supporting characters: Thomas Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, Anne Boleyn, Lady Jane Grey, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Essex, the list goes on. All of them virtually jump off the page and demand the attention of the reader. There is, quite simply, just something about them, about all of them, that still speaks to us from across five centuries. We still want to hear the story of their lives no matter how often it has been told to us before. We still wonder about, for example, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. What were they really like? Did she really love the king? Why did Henry turn against her so brutally? All unanswerable questions but we still hanker for the truth. We still try to discern the echo, however faint, of their long lost voices. Hopefully we always will.
The Tudors came to power when the forces of Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, the last viable male Lancastrian claimant to the throne, defeated those of Richard III at the battle of Bosworth. Richard was slain and then carted off to an ignominious grave, only recently discovered underneath a carpark, and Henry spent the rest of his reign defending the crown he had supposedly picked up from under a hawthorn bush on Bosworth Field. He was a man who was forever looking over his shoulder but, despite that, he was in many ways a successful ruler and he certainly left a healthy treasury for his son, Henry VIII, to inherit. And that was when things got interesting.
Henry VIII 'achieved' the following over the course of his 38 yr reign: married six times, had two wives beheaded, broke with the Church of Rome, abolished the monasteries, founded the Royal Navy, built numerous palaces, and largely squandered the vast wealth his father had left him. All three of his children succeeded to the throne but none provided any heirs and the direct line died with Elizabeth I in 1603.
So the Tudors were the people who changed everything and perhaps that explains part of the obsession with them. They laid the foundations of modern day Britain and they literally turned the existing order upside down to do it. Their story is colourful and dramatic and replete with tantalising 'what if' scenarios: what if Prince Arthur, Henry VII's eldest son, had lived and Henry VIII had therefore never become king? What if one of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon's sons had survived? What if Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn had had a son? What if Edward VI had grown to maturity? What if Elizabeth I had married? Events would have turned out very differently if even one of those scenarios had come to pass.
For me, I love the theatre and the pageantry of the Tudors, the stark contrast they make between splendour and savagery. They themselves are intriguing enough figures on their own but they also surrounded themselves with an equally interesting cast of supporting characters: Thomas Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, Anne Boleyn, Lady Jane Grey, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Essex, the list goes on. All of them virtually jump off the page and demand the attention of the reader. There is, quite simply, just something about them, about all of them, that still speaks to us from across five centuries. We still want to hear the story of their lives no matter how often it has been told to us before. We still wonder about, for example, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. What were they really like? Did she really love the king? Why did Henry turn against her so brutally? All unanswerable questions but we still hanker for the truth. We still try to discern the echo, however faint, of their long lost voices. Hopefully we always will.
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