Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

A visitor to the Tower of London or Windsor Castle today can see the gargantuan suits of armor Henry commissioned around the time of his last military campaigns in France in the 1540s—armor that would have been quite useless had the king ever been hit with a cannonball but that advertised his self-image as a chivalrous soldier in the romantic tradition stretching back centuries before his birth. Nor was Henry the last English king to indulge in medieval cosplay. The Tower of London also displays fine, ornately decorated suits of armor made for Charles I (r. 1625–49) and James II (r. 1685–88), neither of whom, despite the troubles of their reigns, had much real use for medieval armor beyond ceremonial showboating.