Sex.
Blood. Intrigue. Fanaticism.
These
are the associations which have made the Tudors
England’s most famous
ruling family, a perennial
subject of bodice-ripping
mini-series & fanciful
historical romances. But
behind the technicolor story
of Queen Bees & Alpha
Males lies a more important
and serious one: how a third
rate power, the military
equivalent of contemporary
Denmark, the economic inferior
of contemporary Belgium,
emerged from thirty years
of bloody civil strife known
as the Wars of the Roses & began
to transform itself into
a constitutional monarchy,
a wealthy & powerful
nation, and what one recent
book has called “the
first modern society”.
The Tudors, by their decisions & their
indecisions, by their fearlessness
and their failings did much
to propel that story.
