Tudor, by Leanda de Lisle – review

As parvenus, the Tudors were unsurpassed. In the early 15th century no one would have predicted that within a couple of generations these minor Welsh land-owners would mount the English throne and rule the kingdom for more than 100 years. Notwithstanding their ‘vile and barbarous’ origins, their name would become synonymous with historical glamour and the ruthless exercise of regal power.

The family started their precipitous ascent when young Owen Tudor was taken to England by his father and secured himself a position as a chamber servant to Henry V’s widow, Catherine de Valois. Having opportunely tripped and fallen into her lap while dancing, he secretly married her and had four children. Only when his mother died in 1437 did the teenaged Henry VI discover that he had a stepfather and several half-siblings, whom he took under royal protection.

Owen’s eldest son, Edmund Tudor, was married to the redoubtable heiress Margaret Beaufort. Like Henry VI, she was descended from Edward III’s son, John Duke of Lancaster, and though in theory her branch of the family was debarred from claiming the throne this would not stop her son from doing so.

With the advent of the Wars of the Roses, Tudor fortunes wavered. Henry VI was supplanted on the throne and ultimately murdered by his Yorkist cousin Edward IV. By 1471 so many of Henry’s supporters had been killed that one observer assumed ‘no one from that stock remained who could now claim the throne’. In fact, Margaret Beaufort’s son Henry Tudor had escaped to exile in Brittany, and remained — at least in her eyes — a viable candidate for the crown.

Margaret saw her chance after Edward IV’s death, when the late king’s brother Richard usurped the throne of his nephew Edward V.