The Tudor Rose

When Henry VIII died in 1547, he left ten-year-old Edward to rule for six painful years. Edward was his son by Jane Seymour, whom he married the day after Anne Boleyn was beheaded. Jane Seymour, the Tudor Rose, as she has been called, has always been something of an enigma. Little is known of her early life, only that she attended the French court with Anne Boleyn and then returned to England to become maid-of-honour to Catherine, Henry's first Queen. This is Jane's story: of her rivalry with Anne, her secret ambition, her achievement in making Henry, already tiring of the Boleyn and plotting her downfall, notice her, and of her final triumph—her marriage to the King. It is, as befits a novel about the Tudor age, a story of cruelty and courage, defiance and ambition. The portrait of Jane Seymour that emerges is some way removed from the one we have come to accept.