My intended told me that I should filter my anxiety by writing about the Tudors. That sounds fine to me. So here goes.

Sarah’s Tudor History: The Essential Collection

Things you may encounter:

• What is a kirtle and how many should I own?
• How do I survive the plague?
• How much are tickets to a bear-baiting show?

I suppose we should start with good ole Henry the Seventh, as he was this club’s founding member. This is probably the murkiest part of my knowledge so I may have to make up some things.

Henry the VII was a pretty bad-ass guy. I’ve read that HT was a bit of a miser and not really that loveable. To me, those seem like pretty decent qualities to have in a king. We need someone sitting in a room counting sheckles! Before he came to power England was pretty much a dinky, little, former Roman outpost.  It wasn’t united and most Europeans hadn’t even heard of it. Not really the height of fashion or coolness.

Henry Tudor changed all that. Or at least he paved the way for his children to do that.

So HT was not really so much a legitimate heir to the throne as much as he wanted to be the king of it. He was part of the Lancaster family. The Lancasters were always fighting with the Yorks about who was supposed to be the boss of Merry Old Angland. Either way, they were both of the the Plantagenet House. Here’s the problem though, Henry’s claim to the throne wasn’t very strong. In fact Henry’s great-grand father was a bastard, making Henry not really well suited to inherit the throne.

Side note: The Lancasters represented themselves with red roses and the Yorks represented themselves with white roses.

But the Yorkist heirs were dead or missing. You may have heard of evil King Richard killing his nephews in the Tower of England. This is a pretty contentious and debated historical issue, but the fact remains the same…those princes were not around.Throughout the years some imposters came through and tried to brew up trouble, but they were quickly squashed. And you couldn’t really let women inherit the throne because of obvious reasons. (Their boobs got in the way)

So Henry took history into his own hands. Blah, blah, blah, some other stuff happened and Henry killed King Richard at Bosworth field in 1485. He then married the sister (Elizabeth of York) of the missing princes. This united the Red and White Rose, making way for the Tudors.

So things were good. Henry was king, he had a smokin’ hot wife and they had nice looking brood of children, of whom many of them survived infancy and childhood!  Three of them became kings and queens of some rad countries, including England. Nothing could stop them now.

Good-bye Dark Ages, hello Renaissance.