Melanie Clegg – Everything Is Better With Dragons

Published by: Pen & Sword
ISBN: 9781473893153
Published: 19th November 2018

Price: £19.99

Format: Hardback

Blurb

When the thirteen year old Margaret Tudor, eldest daughter of Henry VII and his wife Elizabeth of York, married King James IV of Scotland in a magnificent proxy ceremony held at Richmond Palace in January 1503, no one could have guessed that this pretty, redheaded princess would go on to have a marital career as dramatic and chequered as that of her younger brother Henry VIII.

Left widowed at the age of just twenty three after her husband was killed by her brother’s army at the battle of Flodden, Margaret was made Regent for her young son and was temporarily the most powerful woman in Scotland – until she fell in love with the wrong man, lost everything and was forced to flee the country. In a life that foreshadowed that of her tragic, fascinating granddaughter Mary Queen of Scots, Margaret hurtled from one disaster to the next and ended her life abandoned by virtually everyone: a victim both of her own poor life choices and of the simmering hostility between her son, James V and her brother, Henry VIII.

My Review

Margaret Tudor, the eldest daughter of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. Ever heard of her?

As a child she lived in luxury in the royal nursery with Prince Henry and Princess Mary. There were others but they died young, and Prince Arthur had his own household elsewhere. At the age of 13, after losing her brother Prince Arthur, her mother and then her grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, Princess Margaret married King James IV of Scotland, who was 29.

That’s about the time her life got complicated. Poor lass, her first husband slept around on her, her second and third husbands were abusive theives, her brother was a dick to her, she was separated from her daughter, and people who were supposed to support her didn’t. She wasn’t the most intelligent or educated woman and didn’t really care for politics, but she did her best when she was dropped in the muck, to help her son on to the throne and keep him there. She tried to act as peace maker between her husband, and then her son, and her brother, however the distrust between monarchs put paid to all her efforts.

This is a sympathetic and easy to read biography of a rather unfairly obscure but important woman in a formative time in early modern Europe.

Published By: Pen & Sword

Publication Date: 25th September 2017

I.S.B.N.: 9781473893115

Format: Hardback

Price: £15.99

Blurb

Henrietta Anne Stuart, youngest child of Charles I and Henrietta Maria, was born in June 1644 in the besieged city of Exeter at the very height of the English Civil War. The hostilities had separated her parents and her mother was on the run from Parliamentary forces when she gave birth with only a few attendants on hand to give her support. Within just a few days she was on her way to the coast for a moonlit escape to her native France, leaving her infant daughter in the hands of trusted supporters. A few years later Henrietta Anne would herself be whisked, disguised as a boy, out of the country and reunited with her mother in France, where she remained for the rest of her life. Henrietta’s fortunes dramatically changed for the better when her brother Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660. After being snubbed by her cousin Louis XIV, she would eventually marry his younger brother Philippe, Duc d’Orléans and quickly become one of the luminaries of the French court, although there was a dark side to her rise to power and popularity when she became embroiled in love affairs with her brother in law Louis and her husband’s former lover, the dashing Comte de Guiche, giving rise to several scandals and rumours about the true parentage of her three children. However, Henrietta Anne was much more than just a mere court butterfly, she also possessed considerable intelligence, wit and political acumen, which led to her being entrusted in 1670 with the delicate negotiations for the Secret Treaty between her brother Charles II and cousin Louis XIV, which ensured England’s support of France in their war against the Dutch.

Continue reading “Bonus Review # 3: ‘The Life of Henrietta Anne’, By Melanie Clegg”