“The Tudors: The Complete Story of England’s Most Notorious Dynasty” by G. J. Meyer
There were only 5 Tudors who ever occupied the English throne: 1. Henry VII (reigning between 1485-1509) 2. Henry VIII (1509-1547) 3. Edward VI (1547-1553) 4. Mary I (1553-1558) 5. Elizabeth I (1558-1603).
That is, 3 kings followed by 2 queens. As the author G. J. Meyer describes them, “one was an epically tragic figure in the fullest Aristotelian sense, two reigned only briefly and came to miserable ends, and the last and longest-lived devoted her life and her reign and the resources of her kingdom to no loftier objective than her own survival. Theirs was, by most measures, a melancholy story.”
In short, England was arguably in its most crazy interesting chaotic era during the reign of the Tudors.
As Meyer further remark, “[i]t matters also that both Henry and his daughter Elizabeth were not just rulers but consummate performers, masters of political propaganda and political theater. They created, and spent their lives hiding inside, fictional versions of themselves that never bore more than a severely limited relation to reality but were nevertheless successfully imprinted on the collective imagination of their own time. These invented personas have endured into the modern world not only because of their inherent appeal—it is hard to resist the image of bluff King Hal, of Gloriana the Virgin Queen—but even more because of their political usefulness across the generations.”
This is the premise that the book is being set up. It covers the entire Tudor dynasty in an attempt to paint the big picture of these 5 Tudors into 1 readable volume. It tells their tales right from the beginning, where Henry Tudor emerged out of the ruins of the Battle of the Flowers and became the unlikeliest person to rise up to the throne, then covering many imaginable things from the backstory of all Henry VIII’s 6 wives, to the sexual adventures of Elizabeth I.
Along the way, the book intermittently provides the background context in between chapters, painting a picture of the environment in which the Tudors’ stories are being told. Including the crucial behind-the-scene politics that often ignored by history books, the truly deep schism between Catholics and Protestants, and the disastrous finances during their reigns (especially during Henry VIII and Elizabeth I).
It is a perfect way to show the overall big picture of what those days looked like, including the complicated web of European monarchy that is more complicated than the plot of the Game of Thrones, and of course the Tudors’ (and England’s) roles within this web of power.
THE CHAOS THEORY 