Mostrando resultados por autor "Sylvia Barbara Soberton" en Todas las categorías

Some ladies who served at the Tudor court are only faceless silhouettes lost to the sands of time, but there are those who dedicated their lives to please their royal mistresses and left documentation, allowing us to piece their life stories together and link them to the stories of Tudor queens. These female attendants saw their queens and princesses up close and often used their intimate bonds to their own benefit. Some were beloved, others hated. This is the story of the ladies of the Tudor court like you've never heard it before.

Jacquetta Woodville, Margaret of Anjou and Cecily Neville are among the best-known female figures during the Wars of the Roses, a dynastic conflict that raged in England from 1455 to 1485. Jacquetta was the mother of Edward IV’s much-hated commoner queen, Elizabeth Woodville, and she is most prominent in this triple biography. Jacquetta’s story is inevitably linked to the lives of two other women: Margaret of Anjou, Henry VI’s queen, and Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, mother of Edward IV and Richard III. Set against the rich background of fifteenth-century court life are the ...

The Tudor dynasty died out because there was no heir of Elizabeth I's body to succeed her. Henry VIII, despite his six marriages, had produced no legitimate son who would live into old age. Three of the reigning Tudors (Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I) died without heirs apparent, the most tragic case being that of Mary Tudor, who went through two recorded cases of phantom pregnancy. If it were not for physical frailty and the lack of reproductive health among the Tudors, the course of history might have been different.

Everyone knows that Henry VIII had six wives, two sisters and two daughters. All of these women received attention in academic circles and are the subjects of countless biographies. Not many people, however, realize that Henry VIII also had a niece, a daughter-in-law and a mistress, who were close friends, but who today remain on the fringes of history. Margaret Douglas was the daughter of Henry VIII’s elder sister Margaret, Queen of Scotland. She was imprisoned thrice, and each time, as she admitted, “not for matters of treason, but for love matters”. Her legacy includes marrying her...

“Two such courts as those of France and England have not been witnessed for the last fifty years.” Niccolo Sagudino, 1515 They had to be strong if they wanted to make it in a man’s world. They lived on the brink of the golden age of the European Renaissance and witnessed social and religious upheavals as the medieval world they knew crumbled to dust, replacing the old with the new. In this new book, Sylvia Barbara Soberton paints a vivid picture of the rivalry between the courts of England and France during the reigns of Henry VIII and Francis I. Set against the backdrop of sixteenth-...

Anne Seymour, Jane Dudley and Elisabeth Parr all have their own unique stories to tell. Born into the most turbulent period of England’s history, these women’s lives interplayed with the great dramas of the Tudor age, and their stories deserve to be told independently of their husbands. Anne Seymour served all of Henry VIII’s six wives and brushed with treason more than once, but she died in her bed as a wealthy old matriarch. Jane Dudley was a wife and mother who fought for her family until her last breath. Elisabeth Parr, sister-in-law of Queen Katherine Parr, married for love and ...

Step into the dazzling world of Tudor England, where art and power intertwine. In Secrets of the Tudor Portraits, Sylvia Barbara Soberton uncovers the hidden stories behind some of the most iconic images of the Tudor period. From the commanding presence of Henry VIII in Hans Holbein’s Whitehall Mural to Elizabeth I’s carefully crafted image as the Virgin Queen, these portraits are more than mere likenesses—they are coded messages, political propaganda and deeply personal reflections of their sitters. Through meticulous research and vivid storytelling, this book delves into the lives ...

Gertrude Courtenay led a dangerous life, both in a personal and political sense. Daughter of a prominent courtier, she started her career as maid of honour and then lady-in-waiting to Katharine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first wife. She sided with the Queen during the Great Matter, as the divorce case between Henry VIII and Katharine of Aragon was then often known. A bitter enemy of the King’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, Gertrude plotted and intrigued with Henry VIII’s enemies, brushing with treason on many occasions. Wife and mother of the last Plantagenets of the Tudor court, Gertrude ...

Anne Boleyn was raised in Belgium and France, spending seven years at the most glittering and progressive courts of Europe. Her mentors were the most brilliant and fascinating women of the sixteenth century: Margaret of Austria, Louise of Savoy, Claude of Valois and Margaret of Navarre. It is from them that Anne received a spiritual and humanistic education and learned how women could wield power and use it for greater good. When she returned to England, Anne was equipped with knowledge and Continental gloss that most of her female contemporaries lacked. In The Forgotten Years of Anne ...

“Partners both in throne and grave, here rest we two sisters Elizabeth and Mary, in the hope of one resurrection.” This inscription is visible on the tomb where Elizabeth I and her half sister, Mary I, lie buried together in one vault in the North Aisle of Henry VII’s Lady Chapel in Westminster Abbey. It is the relationship between Elizabeth and her Scottish cousin Mary Stuart that is often discussed and pondered over while the relationship between Elizabeth and her own half sister is largely forgotten. Yet it is the relationship with Mary Tudor that forged Elizabeth’s personality ...

The aspects of Anne Boleyn's life and death are fiercely debated by historians, yet her ladies-in-waiting remain an understudied topic. Much emphasis is usually put on Anne's relationships with the men in her life: her suitors, her royal husband, her father and brother, and her putative lovers who were executed on May 17, 1536. By concentrating on a previously neglected area of Anne Boleyn's female household, this book seeks to identify the women who served Anne and investigate what roles ladies-in-waiting played in this Queen's household.

The newly-wed Anne Hastings faced her husband's wrath when her affair with William Compton was made public. Mary Tudor married to satisfy her brother's political need to ally with France, but when her decrepit royal husband died, she married the dashing Charles Brandon for love. William Parr, humiliated by his wife's extramarital affair, sought a divorce to marry the woman he loved.

Queen Victoria was a figure larger than life, and her enduring legacy has proven larger than death as well. Yet, despite countless biographies, the real woman behind the regal persona still remains elusive. This book offers a unique approach to Queen Victoria and explores her extraordinary life and long reign through the most personal objects of all – her surviving clothes and jewels. In this book, we follow Queen Victoria’s life through a unique lineup of dresses charting her journey from an oppressed teenager to the Queen who became a legend during her own lifetime and lent her name ...