THE TUDORS IN LOVE

Love and diplomacy in Tudor England.

Five Tudor monarchs ruled England from 1485 until 1603. Like most rulers of the era, they chose consorts as a matter of international diplomacy and national stability—i.e., to produce an heir. Genuine love rarely played a role, but this hasn’t prevented a steady stream of authors from writing books about Tudor spouses or about Elizabeth’s stubborn refusal to choose one. British journalist and historian Gristwood, author of Game of Queens: The Women Who Made Sixteenth-Century Europe and other books, has produced another, but with a significant variation. Without ignoring the lives of these consorts and candidates and Renaissance European politics, the author emphasizes that, among the upper classes, courtship aimed to follow the medieval code of courtly love. Arthurian legends of knightly chivalry and passionate, more or less chaste, romance experienced a revival in the 15th century. Bloody tournaments flourished throughout Europe, and royal courtships featured prolix exchanges of picturesque rhetoric. Gristwood begins with a literary history of the Camelot legend. This traditionally dates from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s 12th-century narrative of Arthur’s life but includes generous contributions from Dante, Chaucer, Malory, and Tennyson. This book includes more literary scholarship than the average history buff expects, and most readers will be relieved when, around Page 80, Gristwood reaches the late 15th century and begins an appealing account of the Tudor years. The author covers politics, war, and religion but also emphasizes royal matrimony as well as the obligatory mistresses and purported affairs. Except perhaps in the case of Anne Boleyn, passion was absent in the often interminable negotiations for a royal consort, but there was no shortage of oratory, correspondence, and poetry extolling the glories and painful sacrifices of courtly love. Inevitably, most involve Henry VIII’s dogged search for a wife to produce a male heir, but readers may wince at the flowery exchanges between royal suitors and the increasingly elderly and unavailable Elizabeth.

A solid, uniquely focused study of the irresistible Tudors.