Status Updates From Boleyn Traitor: A Thrilling...

'I realise that this is not a masque that has gone wrong; this has all gone exactly right.The king's first meeting with Cromwell's bride is a disaster; but the Howard girl saves the day. I have just witnessed the first move in the Howards' brilliant bid for the throne, and another Howard girl is in play.'

'The King declares that he will never marry again, that he has lost the love of his life. The part of heartbroken widower is new to him, though this is his third dead wife, and he takes to it as his greatest role. He orders her buried at Windsor and swears that he will lie beside her; they must enter heaven together. He likes her far better dead than he ever did alive.'

'But the advice from the Italian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli is that nothing is given for love: everything is traded for power, and a ruler who wants to command must promise anything and give away the least he can.'