Classic Histories
2 total works
Jane Grey’s tragedy was her royal blood. As Henry VIII’s great-niece she stood perilously close to the throne and from early childhood was used as a pawn in the deadly power game of Tudor politics. Jane was not happy at home – she once famously remarked that she thought herself in hell in her parents’ company – and sought consolation in her studies and the uncompromising Protestantism fashionable in the 1550s. When it became clear that her cousin Edward VI was dying she was forced into marriage with a son of the powerful John Dudley Duke of Northumberland and confronted with the news that the king had made her his heir. So began her reign as the Nine Days Queen, leading to her imprisonment in the Tower and execution at the age of sixteen. Alison Plowden reveals with insight and skill the complex intensity of the woman behind the myth, the brilliantly gifted child who was developing into a passionate, forceful young woman.
'I delight in this work', wrote the young Victoria shortly after she became Queen. She was an engaging creature, high-spirited and eager to be 'amused'. But her early years were difficult ones. Fatherless from the age of eight months, she was brought up at Kensington Palace in an atmosphere thick with family feuds, backbiting and jealousy - the focus of conflicting ambitions. Though her uncle William IV was anxious to bring her into Court circles, her German mother and the calculating John Conroy were equally determined that she should remain under their control. The 'little Queen', who succeeded to the throne a month after her eighteenth birthday, was greeted by a unanimous chorus of praise and admiration. She embraced the independence of her position and often forced her will on those around her. She met and married Albert, marking the end of her childhood and the beginning of a glorious legend.