Charlie Fenton’s Reviews > The Last Tudor > Status Update

'Of course, our cousin the queen gives Katherine a magnificent funeral. How she does love a funeral, especially family! ... Elizabeth does not allow me to attend. Of course not. She only loves her heirs when they predecease her. The last thing she wants is someone pointing out that if Katherine was a Tudor princess then her little sister is one too - and the last of the line.'

'They have made her abdicate in favour of her son and she has agreed to be as nothing, a prisoner with no title. They think this is their triumph but it turns Elizabeth against them in a moment. Now she refuses to recognise the little Prince James as King James VI of Scotland... Never, never, never can an heir be put in the place of a monarch - it is the greatest fear of her life.'

'Mary has given birth. Even worse for Elizabeth, who urged Mary's husband to fire a gun into her belly, the young woman has survived the birth. Worse still, it is a healthy baby. And worst of all for Elizabeth: it is a boy. The papist cousin, just like the Protestant cousin, has a healthy son and heir to the throne of England. Elizabeth, thirty-two years old, unmarried, unloved, now has two cousins with boys'

'Mary Ratcliffe, the maid of honour with the steadiest hand, comes forward with a pot of fresh-mixed ceruse, and Elizabeth sits still, closes her eyes, as Mary paints the white lead and vinegar from her plucked forehead to her nipples in painstaking gentle strokes. It is a long process. The queen's neck, back, and shoulders have to be painted too; the gown she has chosen is low cut'

'Robert Dudley, for his part, is desperate not to be banished to Scotland and married off to a woman who must despise him as an adulterer and a wife murderer. He knows that, whatever she says now, Elizabeth would never forgive him marrying another woman. He is gambling everything on her inability to let him go. He urges her to send Henry Stuart to take his place, as a diversion in Mary's court - nothing more.'

'My baby, Viscount Beauchamp, is to be called Edward for his father and his forefathers. He can trace his line back to Edward III and beyond. Royal on both sides, his birth should be greeted with celebrations, with the salute of cannon and announcements all around Christendom, but they put me into my bed, and tuck him in beside me, and nobody even visits.'

'the baby will be the next heir to the throne and she tells me that a woman can count how long it takes. She says it is ten months from your last course, and I will be able to tell if it is a boy or a girl by how it lies in the belly, and whether I crave sweet things or salt. If I feel seasick in the first months the baby will not die at sea. If I put away my kittens from my rooms he will be an honourable man.'

'They have to be together, they cannot help themselves; everyone can see that. But there will be no talk of marriage ever again: William Cecil had seen to that. It was he who spread the rumours that Dudley would kill his wife, and it was he who told everyone that the country would never bear a Dudley as king. It doesn't really matter if either of these things is true or false: the whole of Christendom believes it'

"I know that the queen won't want to marry you to a lord who has his own claim to the throne. And she won't let you marry while she is unmarried herself, and risk you having a son who would have a stronger claim than she does. I can see what the Seymours are thinking: obviously the queen won't want a Tudor-Seymour boy at court until she has a husband and son of her own."

'Elizabeth chooses this moment to restore our title as Princesses of the Blood. In death, my mother has achieved the ambition of her life: to have us recognised by Elizabeth, named as her cousins, defined as royal, titled as 'Princess', and so the first of all the possible heirs. My mother, God forgive her, would have thought it cheaply bought by her death, well worth the sacrifice.'