Vulgar History Podcast
The Women Behind the Tudor Dynasty
July 15, 2026
Ann Foster:
Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women’s history comedy podcast. My name is Ann Foster; I’m a historian and an author, and I’ve been curious about the Tudors since I was a little kid. This season on the podcast, we will be talking about the Tudors, the notorious dynasty of English monarchs. We’re going to be talking about who they were, what the times were like that they lived in, and what was happening elsewhere in the world at the same time. Some of you know about them, and some of you don’t know much about them, and some of you know, like, a middle amount about them, so I hope that this podcast series is going to have something for everyone, no matter what your knowledge base is of the Tudors themselves and the times in which they lived.
So, to kick it all off, this week we’re going to talk about where the Tudors came from, why this dynasty exists, how they ended up being in charge of England. And like everything else to do with them, it’s kind of convoluted, it’s complicated, and at the heart of it are some very strong women. So, it all begins… You might think this is going to begin in England, but in fact, part of what’s complicated about this whole dynasty is that it doesn’t.
So, we’re starting with Catherine de Valois. So, Catherine de Valois was the youngest daughter of Charles VI of France and his wife, Isabeau of Bavaria. So, she was born in Paris; she’s the youngest of these siblings, and her father, Charles VI of France, was known as Charles the Mad. He had some mental illness going on, which involved, maybe I’ll do an episode about him later on, but part of this mental illness was he thought he was made of glass, is the particular manifestation of his mental illness. This led to her mother kind of helping out a lot. With the father, obviously, thinking he was made of glass, going through all this stuff, he couldn’t really be there as a king, so her mother sort of took over. Catherine de Valois saw that sort of role model of just what a wife can do. But also, I want to mention, like Catherine de Valois, we’re talking about her because she is an ancestor of the Tudor dynasty, and there is some mental illness that manifests throughout the Tudor dynasty, so perhaps this is where that gene comes from.
Anyway, Catherine was only three years old when her father’s illness made it so he had to whisk off on public life. Like, he just couldn’t be around; he had to kind of be protected and kept away. So, her mother, Isabeau, tried to wrest control of the government. This didn’t go well. People in France at this time were not into the idea of a woman being in charge, and so there’s always – we’re going to see this again when we get over to England – there’s always ambitious people, ambitious family members, when they see that there’s kind of a power vacuum, and maybe they could have more power. Anyway, this all led to a civil war in 1407 in this part of France, which weakened France to the point that England was able to come in and conquest and take over.
So, as part of this conquest of England, Catherine’s older sister Isabella was married to King Richard II, and she was briefly Queen of England, her sister Isabella. But then… It’s just, there’s so much, like, seizing of thrones going on here. When people talk about who the monarch is of a country, it’s like, “Oh, it’s divinely ordained,” it’s like, was it? Or was it just, like, a power struggle and somebody won in an arm-wrestling match, basically.
So, eventually Henry IV, who you might know from the Shakespeare plays, seized the English throne, at which point Isabella, Catherine’s sister, came back to France. It’s just, like, a lot of England-France stuff going on, and we’ll see this a lot in this story and throughout the Tudor dynasty, it’s kind of like, two places are at war, and it’s like, “How will we solve this war? I don’t know. What if we marry the daughter of one team to the son of the other team?” This is why plans are hatched to marry… So, King Henry IV has a son called King Henry V, who is very famous from the Shakespeare play, and so the plan is like, let’s marry Henry V’s son to— Wait, no, Henry IV’s son to Catherine. Basically, it’s like, let’s marry Catherine to the prince in England. Too many Henrys, honestly. So, Henry IV is the king; they want to marry Catherine to his son, Henry V.
And then, another thing that happens a lot in the story is that people just suddenly die in the middle of various negotiations, and this happens again. So, Henry IV dies before the marriage negotiations had been completed. His son, Henry V, becomes King of England; he’s 26, Catherine is 11. And I mean, they’re going to get married, but she’s not 11 when they get married. Things basically happen. So, Henry V is like, “Okay, if you want me to marry your daughter, here’s what I also want.” So, Charles VI, who’s technically still the king of France, and I’m not sure (you tell me), there’s a Netflix film version of the Shakespeare play, Henry V, with Timothée Chalamet, and Lily Rose-Depp plays Catherine de Valois, and I believe Robert Pattinson, with a preposterous and really enjoyable French accent, might be playing Charles. I’m not sure.
Anyway, so Charles, who thinks he’s made of glass, is still technically the King of France. And so, Henry V sends him this list of demands, and he’s like, “I want you…” At this point, France and England are constantly fighting over those bits of what we now consider France that are on the coastline towards England. So, Henry wants Aquitaine and Normandy returned; he also wants Catherine’s hand in marriage, and he also wants an enormous dowry because England’s been at war for so long, they need some money. Anyway, so he goes to France.
This is like, there’s so many battles in this episode, y’all, I can’t… This is not a battle discussion podcast, so I will say the names of them, and if you or someone you know is a fan, you can be like, “Hell yeah, I know that,” but I’m not going to get into it. A thing happens: The Battle of Agincourt. Henry V wins. So, it’s like, five years’ worth of battles. But eventually, eventually, Henry V defeats the French, conquers Normandy, names himself the heir to the French throne, and he finally marries Catherine de Valois. And because the battles have been going on for so long, at this point, he’s now 33, she is 18. They get married in the French village of Troyes, and then Catherine leaves France to go to England. And then, there’s a coronation ceremony for her at Westminster Abbey in 1421.
But as keeps… Like, when I tell you that people keep dying at the most inconvenient times, it happens perpetually. So, she goes to England; she is Queen of England. But then, what happens is Henry’s younger brother, Thomas, was killed in battle in France. And Henry V is like, “God damn it. I’m going to avenge you, my brother Thomas!” So, he goes back to France in 1421, leaving Catherine. She’s pregnant, and she gives birth to a baby boy, named Henry, because God forbid anyone in this lineage be called anything other than Henry. So, she has a son, and then she’s like, “You know what? My husband’s in France on this vengeance mission. I’m going to go to France to be with him.” And so, she leaves the son in the care of his uncle Humphrey, the Duke of Gloucester, who is like… I did an episode years and years and years ago, it was a Patreon special episode, but Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, marries this woman, Eleanor Cobham, who ends up being tried as a witch. It’s an interesting story, and I believe Philippa Gregory has a new book coming out called The Royal Witch that’s about all of that, so maybe we’ll wrap it around and include that back here on the main feed.
Anyway, what happens is Henry V contracts dysentery, which, if you don’t know, that’s a disease that you get from when you’re living too close to where people are peeing and pooing, and then you all get sick. It happens a lot in wartime situations. So, he gets dysentery, he dies. Catherine is now a widow, and her son is less than nine months old, and he becomes the new king. So, he’s baby King Henry VI of England. She’s, like, the mother of the king, she’s, at this point, in her early twenties, if even that. And then her father, who thinks he’s made of glass, back in France, dies, which, according to the various treaties that happens means Henry VI is now also the King of France. So, this little baby has all these little baby crowns on his head. I don’t know, literally. I don’t know, you know, you tell me, were the baby crowns for baby kings? I’m not sure.
But now we’ve got a baby king scenario, which is kind of, like, the worst thing because of the power vacuum and all the people scheming and stuff. But where this leaves Catherine is that Humphrey, who’s, like, the babysitter of the baby king, he’s like, “Okay. Well, if Catherine remarries, then whoever her husband is might get too much control and power because he’d be the stepfather of the king.” He felt, Humphrey, because Humphrey wanted to be in charge, frankly, but guess what? There never was King Humphrey of England. Anyway, so he is kind of like, in charge, though, and he passed a law that says that Catherine is not allowed to marry without the consent of the king and his council, AKA him. So, Catherine is just, like, young, hot, early twenties, and forbidden from marrying, which, you know, would be the really great beginning of a really sexy romance novel. And guess what? It is. So, she’s just like, she’s living on her own, she’s being the mother of the king, but in this era, she’s not, like, politically allowed to be involved in that. So, she’s just this French person living in England, just being like, “What am I going to do?”
And then, she meets a young Welshman of “obscure birth” named Owen Tudor, who becomes her head of household. Rumours begin to circulate that he was her lover, and in fact, they do have children together, her and Owen Tudor. I want to pause. There’s not a lot known about Owen Tudor, but I am obsessed with the fact that the Tudor dynasty, this like, ultra-English dynasty comes from a French woman and her Welsh lover. Like, that’s where it begins from. The name Tudor comes from Wales.
So, Owen Tudor, not a lot known about him, but I will say that, as we will see throughout this series, there are two flavours of Tudor men. You’ve got your Edward IV, you’ve got your Henry VIII; these are tall, athletic, like, handsome, charismatic, capable people, who can lead armies and are, you know, like, the quarterback of the football team, these hot guys. And then you’ve got your, like, Prince Arthur, you’ve got your Edward, King Henry VIII’s; you’ve got these little sickly guys who, like, don’t live to adulthood and are sort of more fragile. You’ve got two flavours of Tudor men. No one’s in the middle; these guys are either one or the other. And so, I have to presume that Owen Tudor was hot because that just makes the story more fun for me.
Anyway, so Catherine de Valois, she’s forbidden from marrying anybody. She meets Owen Tudor, and apparently, well, clearly, factually, they have three children together. They have three sons, Edmund, Jasper, and Owen Tudor Jr; they also have two daughters, Jacinda and Margaret. But the thing is, there’s this law that says she can’t get married, but it’s unlikely that a French princess and the Dowager Queen of England would just, like, have illegitimate children. So, it’s widely assumed that she and Owen had what we call on this podcast, a secret sexy marriage. There’s no documentation of this ceremony because it’s secret and it’s sexy and it’s olden times. This is a time where you could just, like, say to somebody like, “I marry you,” and they’re like, “For sure. Bet.” And it’s true. Like, there maybe isn’t paperwork.
So, she’s just living this beautiful life with her hot Welsh lover/secret husband, but eventually, the rumours of her secret family, which is pretty hard to hide the fact you have, like, five children. So, this reaches the court, or Humphrey, who is still in charge, and he has Owen imprisoned for, you know, secretly marrying the Queen maybe. Catherine herself, she is just like, “Well, fuck this.” She goes to a place called Bermondsey Abbey, and she has some sort of illness, we don’t know what, because people didn’t give a fuck about women in the past, but also everyone’s dying all the time, so you don’t really write stuff down. You know. Anyway, she dies. She’s buried at Westminster Abbey.
And so, a couple of things I want to say about her corpse, because if you’re new to this podcast, welcome. There is a long history of stories on this podcast involving fucked up things happening to dead bodies, and this is one of those things. So, she has what’s called a funeral effigy. This is, in this era, and for like, the next couple hundred years, when a notable person died, they would make sort of a wooden mannequin that looked like them, and then put that person’s clothes on. So, you have, like, a parade, or you lay it in the state, and people can like… So, you’re not seeing the person’s body, but you’re seeing sort of a statue that looks like the body. So, her wooden funeral effigy is currently still around. It’s on display in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Gallery at Westminster Abbey, which is like, if you go to Westminster Abbey, it’s like, upstairs in kind of the attic, there’s this gallery, and one of the things that’s there is Catherine de Valois’ wooden funeral effigy.
Her tomb is, like… Because there is a scandal about, like, did she marry Owen Tudor? Did she just fuck Owen Tudor? But like, good for her. And again, if there’s a romance novel about this, tell me the title, this is a great saga. But she’s still the mother of King Henry VI, so she’s, like, an important figure. Anyway, so she had a tomb. It was this beautiful alabaster memorial, and it was apparently deliberately destroyed when the Abbey was getting some renovations done during the reign of her grandson, Henry VII. It seems like he might’ve deliberately destroyed this because he wanted to sort of like, distance himself from his illegitimate ancestry and just be kind of like, “Let’s just forget that the Tudor dynasty started from this French woman having this affair with this Welsh guy. Like, don’t think about that too much.”
So, at the time that these, like, renovations happened, her coffin lid was “accidentally” lifted, which revealed her corpse. And then for generations, like, literally hundreds of years, her actual corpse, not her wooden effigy, but her actual skeleton, became a tourist attraction in 1669, which is, like, more than 200 years later. The diarist/pervert, Samuel Pepys, went to visit, and he kissed her corpse on his birthday, which feels to me like a cursed thing to do that would maybe kill you, but it didn’t. Anyway, her remains were not properly reinterred until the reign of Queen Victoria. So, this is like, 400 years of her body just being, like, there, and it’s like, “Hey, look who it is! It’s the body of this famous whooore,” which is how some people saw her, if they believed that she and Owen Tudor weren’t actually married. Anyway, it’s fucked up, but like, guess what? This is English history.
So, once she died, Owen Tudor kind of didn’t have this protection. He was arrested for violating the law of the remarriage of the Queen Dowager. Their sons… So, they had three sons, Edmund, Jasper, and Owen Jr. Owen Jr. seems to have died in childhood because you only ever hear about Edmund and Jasper. So, Edmund and Jasper Tudor were raised by relatives, but bear in mind, like, their half-brother is King Henry VI, who became king at nine months old, they’re half-siblings. And so, the king, boy, took a role in, like, their upbringing, so they all knew each other, and eventually, Owen Tudor was pardoned and released, and he became a member of the household of his stepson, King Henry VI. Edmund and Jasper Tudor were given earldoms, like, they became earls by King Henry VI, their half-brother. So, the Tudor boys, Edmund and Jasper, things are maybe kind of looking up for them. But to explain what happens next, we need to get into the Wars of the Roses, which is like, again, this is not a talking-about-battles podcast, but we need to get into this.
So, it’s a civil war, it’s an English civil war about who’s going to be king next. So, Henry VI, Catherine de Valois’ son with Henry V, had been king since he was almost nine months old. When you have a baby king… There had been instability, there had been, like, advisors and regents who were just battling against each other for power, because the king himself was a little baby, and then a little boy, and he was really raised… He was raised in a way to not really be a strong king, because it was to the advantage of all the adult men around him that he would be kind of weak and indecisive and that they could do everything for him. So, that was kind of how he was groomed, that’s how he was raised. In addition to that, his personality was just, like, not the sort of decisive ruler who you might need during times of civil war. So, there just had been instability.
When he came of age, like, when he became an adult man, it was clear that this guy did not have the personality, or the skills, or temperament to be the king during this really dangerous time, which was kind of like when England took over France during that civil war. Lots of ambitious people saw that. Henry VI, the son of Catherine de Valois, was just like, “Oh, we could maybe take over from this guy.” A lot of people were kind of thinking that. The major issue during his reign was France. So, there had been a thing, like, when Catherine married Henry V, that was like, “Okay, this is peace between France and England. Everything’s cool.” But then remember, Henry V went over, and there was more wars and more battles. And so, even though Henry VI was technically the heir, or the King of France, it was just kind of like, France was like, “Fuck that, no.” So, there’s just, like, England is at war with France again/constantly.
At this point, England had three options. They could take a more aggressive approach, like, go and just attack France; or they could negotiate some sort of deal; or they could just, like, peace out and abandon mainland Europe altogether. And so, Henry, with his advisor’s advice, he decided to, “Let’s try to have peace.” And how do you have peace? By marrying somebody from that country. So, Henry VI marries Margaret of Anjou, who is a French princess.
Several years ago – this podcast has been on for a very long time – I did do an episode about Margaret of Anjou a while ago, and I recommend you listen to that if you want to hear more about her story and her historical story. Anyway, people – by people, I mean like, his advisors, et cetera – they didn’t like this decision, they thought that he was giving into France, they wanted him to take this more aggressive stance. So, they thought that Henry VI and his advisor hoped that by marrying Margaret of Anjou, this would be like, “Now there’s peace between France and England.” There was not. The war recommenced. Eventually, all English territory in France was lost, other than the small town of Calais.
Meanwhile, Henry VI, like, he was just not a strong ruler; he was not a strong leader. He was cool at lots of other stuff, I’m sure, but not at being the king. And so, the nobles were lobbying for power; things are just getting more and more sort of precarious there. So, his wife, thank goodness, somebody in here is like a strong, capable leader, Margaret of Anjou was strong-willed, she was smart, she knew what was up. And so, she took on more power and influence, kind of like Catherine de Valois’s mother did when her father was in his, like, “I’m made of glass” phase. Anyway, Margaret of Anjou was kind of taking over and trying to help out, but people were distrustful of her because she was French, and they were at war with the French.
Starting with 1453, Henry VI has a series of mental breakdowns, I would call it. It was a situation where he just, like, became unresponsive. He would just lie in bed and just, like, not engage with people. He was awake, he was not in a coma, but he was just, like, peaced out. So, before it was sort of his personality made him sort of, like, not super capable of being a king, but now he just physically was not capable of anything. Tensions mounted between Margaret of Anjou, who’s this strong-willed woman who’s just like, “Well, fuck this, I’ll take over,” and everyone’s like, “A, you’re a woman. B, you’re French. C, we hate you. We’re not going to.”
Her main hater was Richard the Duke of York. So, they were just like, “Who’s going to be in charge of the government, et cetera?” Part of the issue is just like, who’s going to be the heir to the throne? Because at this point, Margaret of Anjou and Henry VI did not have any children, so it’s like, who’s going to be the heir to the throne? Is it going to be maybe the half-brothers, these Tudor guys? Like, maybe that’s going to happen. That’s part of why they were named Earls. Richard Duke of York is just kind of like, “But what if I’m the next king?”
So, he’s named Lord Protector, which is sort of like, he’s acting as the king when the king’s not able to be the king. 14 months later, Henry VI recovers. He’s like, back on… He’s back. He’s talking, he’s walking, he’s like, you know, back in society. But during those 14 months that he was sort of, like, not able to do anything, the two sides really coalesced of, like, people who supported him, and people who supported Richard, Duke of York. So, the people who supported Richard, Duke of York, that’s the Yorkists, and the people who supported him are the Lancaster side. Those two names are similar. If you watched Game of Thrones, there’s the Starks, and there’s the Lannisters, and that is exactly what this is. So, these are enemies; these are two teams of people.
And if you’re like “Why would Richard Duke of York think he could be king? He’s just, like, the Duke of York. He’s not really the king.” But the thing is, like, there’s past kings who had numerous sons, and so the way that the succession worked in England was it always went to kind of the oldest son, unless one of the other sons gets an army and starts a war, and then he takes over. So, Richard, Duke of York, was descended from the same king from a while ago. So, he feels like “I should be king.” Anyway, so we’ve got the Lancasters; their king option is Henry VI, who was the king. And then, the York side, Richard, Duke of York, is who they think should be the king. So, ultimately, wars break out.
This is the Wars of the Roses. It’s called the Wars of the Roses because one side has a white rose and one side has a red rose. They didn’t call it this at the time, but later on, it became known as this partially because Shakespeare calls it this. So, there’s the Battle of St. Albans, famous battle. During this battle, Henry VI, the King, was captured by Richard, Duke of York. And then Richard, Duke of York, named himself Protector of England, but he kept Henry alive because at this point, if Henry VI died— So, Henry had a son; he and Margaret of Anjou eventually did have a son. I believe the son is called Edward because everybody is. Anyway, Henry has a two-year-old son, and they’re like, “Okay, if we kill Henry, then this two-year-old son is going to be king, and no one wants a baby king.” That’s not what you want during a time of crisis. But then, Henry… There’s a lot of back and forth here. Again, I’m not here to be a military history podcast. What is going on is just, who’s going to be the king? Henry is just like, “I’m going to be the king.” A Great Council was announced, but the Yorks weren’t invited, which is sort of like Maleficent vibes, so then Richard, Duke of York, leads forces to attack. He lost, he fled, he’s declared a traitor, but then he returned, stronger than ever, with forces, wanting to be named the king. But instead, what happens is he’s named Henry’s heir; he’s named Lord Protector again. Henry is captive again.
Meanwhile, Henry is just kind of like, he’s truly a gender-reversed, like, damsel in distress. He just keeps being kidnapped and held hostage by people. The person who’s in charge is goddamn Margaret of Anjou. So, she’s just like, “Fuck this, Team Lancaster forever. I’m going to ride or die for Team Lancaster.” So, there’s the Battle of Wakefield. During this battle, Richard, Duke of York, is killed, his forces are decimated. Like, fuck yeah, Margaret of Anjou. As a result of this… So, Richard, Duke of York, is dead, but then his son, Edward, who, in past seasons of this podcast I’ve talked about Edward. The way that he’s portrayed in The White Queen, the Stars series based on Philippa Gregory’s books, and also in The Hollow Crown, which is a TV adaptation of the Shakespeare plays, he’s always played by very hot actors. So, I always think of Edward as Hot Edward, and that’s what I’m going to call him. So, Hot Edward takes over leading the House of York, and you know what he’s got? He’s got the looks, the charisma, he’s tall. He’s like… If someone’s going to get it done, he’s going to get it done. You know, he’s like the Mamdani of the situation. It’s just like, “Oh fuck, this guy knows what he’s doing.”
So, he had an ally, Richard, the Earl of Warwick. Richard, Earl of Warwick, is AKA the Kingmaker, which is like, do you remember in High School Musical, did they not call Troy the Kingmaker or something like that? That’s where I first heard it, High School Musical, but it means the same thing here. It just means Richard, Earl of Warwick, is so influential and such a good, like, politician that he could determine the next king because he is just so influential. Anyway, Hot Edward, he is good at war, he’s good at battles, he wins the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross, but then Warwick is defeated at the Second Battle of St. Albans, during which time… So, Henry VI, still alive. Remember, they’re keeping him alive. He’s just, like, flopping around from prison to prison. But at the Second Battle of St. Albans, the Lancastrians regain custody of Henry VI.
Do you know the thing in, like, screenwriting and movies, people talk about a MacGuffin? It’s like, if you’re writing a movie and there’s, like, one thing everybody wants, it’s like, this briefcase, or it’s this bomb, or it’s this formula… When you watch like, James Bond movies or anything, it’s like, everyone’s always after this thing. The word that they use is just the MacGuffin, like, what’s the kind of thing the plot arises around? In the War of the Roses, like Henry VI himself is the MacGuffin. He’s just, like, being kidnapped and held hostage and saved again. But he’s already not thriving mentally, so just imagine the state he’s in right now. Although I will say, if you watched The Hollow Crown, again, the TV movie version of the Shakespeare plays, the guy who plays Henry VI is also really hot. So, it’s like, I don’t know how you choose… If it’s a hotness contest.
So, the two sides meet in London: the Yorks, the Lancasters. Edward York, Hot Edward, is crowned king, and then they all head off to fight the Battle of Towton in the middle of a snowstorm in March. This is the bloodiest battle ever to take place on English soil; people talk about the blood on the snow. This battle ends with, finally, a decisive victory for Team Hot Edward and the Yorks. It’s so decisive, Margaret of Anjou flees to Scotland, Edward goes back to London, and he’s crowned Edward IV. He becomes the king for real this time. Henry VI remains at large, and he’s not, like, running around hiding in trees like the later King Charles II does, he’s just kind of like, again, I don’t know, picture people just piggybacking him around. He would have had a nice life being a monk and just like reading books all day, but tragically, that was not his life. Eventually, he’s caught and imprisoned in the Tower of London. Again, they don’t kill him because his son is still alive and they don’t want a baby king. They want the Lancastrian, like, team captain to be this frail, mentally ill captive instead of, like, a young, free young man. I guess his son is not a baby anymore, he’s like, a teenager now.
Meanwhile, Hot Edward, remember his BFF, Warwick the Kingmaker, falls into trouble. So, because the Kingmaker, Warwick, had been arranging a match for Edward to a foreign princess, probably someone French based on history, he’s like, “Guess what? I found you this princess you can marry. It’ll be great for our alliances. It’ll strengthen your claim to the throne.” And Edward’s like, “Nnhh, sorry, I can’t do that. I’m already super secret sexily married to hot English widow Elizabeth Woodville,” allegedly a witch. Not really. But if you scroll back in your podcast, I did an episode about Elizabeth Woodville a few years ago, as like, a Halloween special. Elizabeth Woodville, allegedly descended from Luxembourg mermaid witches. Anyway, but what’s important here is that Edward, super secret sexily married… This is a thing! This is a thing that Tudors do, and you’re going to see people do that throughout this series. They love their secret marriages. So, it’s a bit Love Island vibes. It’s like, when everyone’s really hot, you just can’t stop them from hooking up.
Anyway, so Edward is like, “Oh, I can’t do a political marriage because I married for lust reasons this hot widow Elizabeth Woodville.” Warwick is so mad. Big mad about this because he’s like, “What? Marriages aren’t about love and lust. Marriages should be about alliances!” And he’s so mad, he completely switches teams. He switches from Team York to Team Lancaster. He finds Margaret of Anjou and the Lancastrians, and they team up. No one saw this coming. Together they get Henry VI back on the throne! He’s still alive. Just prop him up like Weekend at Bernie’s. Anyway, this period is known as the Redemption.
But then, more battles ensue. Edward is good at battles; he wins the throne back at the Battle of Tewkesbury, during which, at the Battle of Tewkesbury, many, many deaths, including the teenage son of Henry VI. So, now he’s not an option, Margaret of Anjou’s son. Warwick, the kingmaker, also killed. Margaret of Anjou, taken captive, put in prison. And then, Henry VI is put in prison, where he mysteriously dies, question mark, murdered, question mark. So, this is really clearing off the chessboard of people. There’s a lot less options of who will be… Team Lancaster is just decimated, right? Warwick was on the team, he’s dead. Margaret of Anjou is in prison. Henry VI is dead. His son is dead. It’s like, who’s going to be the champion? Team Lancaster, it’s like, who’s left? Who’s left? And so, for 12 years, Hot Edward, he and Elizabeth, they have various children, including their oldest daughter, Elizabeth of York, and then he dies suddenly. Again, the worst timing possible, because his heir is his oldest son, 13-year-old, also Edward.
So, you know, there’s kind of basically peace for 12 years because Hot Edward is capable and good at being king. His oldest son, 13-year-old Edward, is going to be the next king. But you know, who’s waiting in the wings is goddamn Richard II from Shakespeare’s plays, and also from history, and also there’s a lot of people in modern times who don’t think he was an evil murderer, and like, shout out to those people. You’re probably not listening to this podcast.
So, what happens is Hot Edward dies. The heir is his 13-year-old son, but Edward’s brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, is like, “You know who should be king? Me!” And he’s been sort of like, in charge. He’s like the… I don’t know if he’s the Lord Protector or the Regent or whatever, but he’s kind of in charge because, you know, the new king is 13 and has not had a coronation, he is uncrowned. And so, Richard is like, “Hey, Edward, and you, your younger brother, also called Richard, why don’t you just come hang out in the Tower of London and you can be like the Princes in the Tower. [singsong] Doo-doo-doo! That’s not ominous.”
So, the Princes in the Tower, these two boys, they were seen a few times in the Tower grounds over the summer, like, playing baseball with each other or whatever, and then suddenly, they just stopped being seen. It was thought at the time that Richard had had them, whether he killed them himself or he had someone kill them. But seemingly, they were dead. And then, later, when William Shakespeare wrote plays about all this – notably the play Richard III – this became sort of the popular understanding of what had happened. And again, Richard III has various fans today who were like, “He didn’t do it,” but like, that’s not what this podcast is about.
What we’re going to say happened next is Richard did become king because these two little boys were out of the picture for some reason. This made people angry at the time because they were like, “This guy kind of clearly killed these two boys and took over, and we don’t want another goddamn civil war. Can people stop usurping the throne? Knock it off. We just want everything to be calm, and like, the country is in debt, we’ve been at war forever. Can we just, like, grow our crops and whatever?” Anyway, Richard III makes everybody… Him becoming king because everybody’s so mad that the old teams get back together. He’s York, right? Because he’s Hot Edward’s brother, but Team Lancaster reassembles, and they have a new leading man, they have a new hero leading the team, who is Henry Tudor. See, this all wraps back around. I promise you, this is the Tudor origin story.
So, who was Henry Tudor and what was his claim to the throne? Henry Tudor is the son of Edmund Tudor, so the grandson of Owen Tudor, the hot Welshman, grandson of Catherine de Valois, the French princess. So, that’s that side of the family. Henry Tudor’s mom is Margaret Beaufort, who we did do a podcast episode about back in the spring, we had Lauren Johnson on. She’s written a really good new biography of Margaret Beaufort. In the context of this, let’s explain who she is because Henry Tudor has a claim to the throne on both sides… Tangential claim to the throne.
On the one side, his dad is Edmund Tudor, and his grandmother is Catherine de Valois. So, technically, remember Henry VI was the King of France, so Catherine de Valois was the Queen of England, she’s a princess of France. So, the Tudors have this French royal blood, so that’s their claim on that side. Owen Tudor, just like, a hot Welshman and what he’s bringing to the party is just hotness, basically, and kind of messiness, which you’re going to see generation after generation. But Henry Tudor, like, that side of things, that’s not enough to, like, claim the throne and be the Lancastrian heir; he needs more bona fides, he needs more of a claim to the throne, which he gets from his mom, Margaret Beaufort.
So, Margaret Beaufort was the daughter of John Beaufort, the first Duke of Somerset. His grandfather was John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, and the son of King Edward III. So, this is like, going back, back, back a ways, but she is descended from King Edward III, but not via his actual wife. King Edward III was another messy bitch. He had a mistress called Katherine Swynford. They had children together before they were married. They later got married, and then the children they had before they were married were legitimized afterwards. So, it’s like “JK, those kids are legitimate because you did eventually marry her,” and that’s the Beaufort claim to the throne. It’s these people who were illegitimate turned legitimate. So, it’s sort of like, questionable. Like, yes, they were made legitimate, but they weren’t in the first place, so it’s not a full, clear path of like, “This is the heir, this is the heir.” So, because they weren’t legitimate all along, there’s kind of a little asterisk over this whole claim to the throne. Margaret Beaufort is the daughter and heir of John Beaufort because he dies, and that’s his only child. So, again, the messy bitches in this family tree.
John Beaufort was banished from royal court pending a charge of treason against him, and he died, probably took his own life, which was, at that time, very scandalous as well. This makes Margaret, his only child, heiress to both a fortune and also she inherited his claim to the throne, which was, like, asterisk, from this like illegitimate line turned legitimate, but also a lot of money. So, she has two things that make a lot of people see her as a really viable bride: the money, and also this claim to the throne. Like, whoever married her and had a child, that child would have that claim to the throne, especially if it’s a son, because people take sons more seriously.
So, at this point, we’re flashing back a little bit before Henry VI was, like, kidnapped constantly. He’s just the King, Wars of the Roses hadn’t started out yet, and he had these half-brothers, Edmund and Jasper Tudor, and they were all kind of growing up together, and they were pals. Henry VI at this point also doesn’t have a son, and it’s like, who’s going to be his heir? That’s a big question. And he’s like, “I don’t know. If I don’t have a son, maybe my heir could be my half-brother, my bro Edmund, because we share a mother and that mother is, like, a French royal. So, maybe Edmund will be the heir.” Anyway, so he’s just like, “But how can I solidify Edmund’s claim to the throne?” It’s like, well, if Edmund marries Margaret Beaufort, then he gets this sort of claim to the throne and also a bunch of money.
So, at age nine, Margaret was required to formally accept this marriage. And she was a really religious person in a sort of spiritual, like “The angels are talking to me” sort of way. Later, she claimed that she was divinely guided to do this. And so, she’s nine, and there’s this kind of badass moment where she’s brought to the king, and he’s like, “Okay, you’re going to marry my half-brother,” and she’s like, “Let me think about it,” and she’s this nine-year-old. It’s a power move, and you see that she’s a powerful little girl who becomes a powerful woman, but first she goes through this traumatizing, horrible thing.
So, at age 12, she’s married to Edmund Tudor, who is 24. Usually in this scenario, like, when a very young girl is married to an adult man, you wait several years until she has the bodily ability to, like, have a baby and not die. But because the Wars of the Roses were happening and Edmund Tudor was just like, “I need to have a child as soon as possible with her,” for like, succession reasons, they consummate the marriage. She becomes pregnant, age 12, and then the Wars of the Roses are happening. And because he’s the half-brother of the king, like he’s on Team Lancaster, he’s taken captive, he dies of the plague in captivity. So, Margaret Beaufort is left, 13 years old, pregnant with her first child. And some 13-year-olds are tall and hearty; she was teeny tiny. Like, she looked much younger than 12, 13 when she was that age. Physiologically, it was really damaging for her to be pregnant and to give birth. She did give birth to a son, Henry Tudor, but the birth was extremely difficult, she almost died. It’s incredible she didn’t die, given the fact of, like, her size and her age and the fact that this is, like, the 1400s. It does seem likely that the trauma, the medical and/or physiological trauma, of her son’s birth caused some sort of physical injury to her. Like, she married again later, but she never had another child. So, this is where Henry Tudor comes from.
Margaret Beaufort, as we talked about in the Margaret Beaufort episode a few months back, she needs to be married. Like, in this society, for women, she just needs protection of a husband. And so, she marries Sir Henry Stafford, and they stay together for quite a long time. The Wars of the Roses are happening, they both survive it. But when Hot Edward takes over as king, Margaret knows that her son, Henry Tudor, might be a target because of his Lancastrian claim to the thrones. And he’s like, a teenager at this time, so she gets her brother-in-law, Jasper Tudor, to take teenage Henry Tudor to France just to keep him safe so that he wouldn’t be murdered as a possible Lancastrian threat.
Her husband, Lord Stafford, dies in a battle in the Wars of the Roses. By now, she’s age 28, a widow yet again, and she remarries quickly, again, just for her own safety, this time to Thomas Stanley. And because of his connections to Hot Edward and Elizabeth Woodville, she was able to return to court. She got on the good side of the Yorks; she was chosen by Queen Elizabeth Woodville to become godmother to one of her daughters. But then, the whole thing happens: Hot Edward dies, the Princes in the Tower scenario occurs, Richard III seizes the throne, and yet somehow, Margaret, who’s just like… And there’s a wheeling dealing that she does, I think we see this later on with some other Tudor descendants of theirs, especially Elizabeth I, she’s able to just stay on the good books just with her personal skills, and suddenly, she’s back in court, and she’s serving the new queen, Richard III’s wife, Anne Neville.
But behind the scenes, what Margaret Beaufort is doing, what she never lost sight of, is the fact that she knew that her son, Henry Tudor, if you combine her sort of tangential, her illegitimate turned legitimate claim to the throne, with the Tudor thing, being the son of Catherine de Valois, she knows, put those together, Henry Tudor has a pretty decent claim to the throne in this messy situation that they’re all in. And she’s like, the one thing that could really solidify Henry Tudor’s claim to the throne would be if he married Hot Edward and Elizabeth Woodville’s daughter, Elizabeth of York. The two of them together, the two sides, it would join the Lancasters and the Yorks. Elizabeth of York has… At this point, there’s a whole thing where it’s, like, Elizabeth Woodville… That marriage was declared illegitimate or something; a lot of messy ass stuff is happening. But basically, if you put all these quasi claims to the throne together, and these two people get married, if they have a kid, then that kid is a full, okay claim to the throne.
So, Margaret is scheming with former Queen Elizabeth Woodville to kick King Richard III off the throne, and with force, with all of their allies together, replace him with Margaret’s son, Henry Tudor. And so, they agree that they’re going to marry their kids to each other. And then, the now grown-up, and I would say, based on various films I’ve watched, hot, Henry Tudor lands in Wales with an army of French people. I love that he lands in Wales because the Tudors, Owen Tudor is from Wales, so they have this Welsh connection. So, he’s got an army of French people because he’s got the Tudor power, charisma, and he’s able to get people to follow him. So, they go to fight Richard, which they do in a very famous battle, the Battle of Bosworth Field. This is the final battle of the Wars of the Roses. Richard is killed, Henry Tudor takes over as King Henry VII, establishing the royal house of Tudor. Margaret Beaufort, for all her trouble, she was referred to in court as My Lady, the King’s mother, the Countess of Richmond and Derby. And as the two moms arranged, Henry VII marries Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Elizabeth Woodville and Hot Edward. So, she’s a York, he’s a Lancaster, they get married, and this unites, like we’ve seen so many times before, but this time successfully, the two enemies unite, King and Queen. The Wars of the Roses end, and so the King makes a new emblem for this era, the Tudor Rose, which is the combination of the white and the red, Lancaster and York rose.
I will just mention, between the two of them, Elizabeth of York had the stronger claim to the throne, she was a more legitimate heir. I’ve been talking for how long, like, 47 minutes, about the complicated weird way that the Tudors have this sort of claim to the throne, where if you add up all the weird illegitimate things together, it’s like, “Okay, sort of.” But Elizabeth of York is the daughter of the King and Queen. Anyway, so marrying her really legitimizes him.
This is the weird, complicated, somewhat questionable way that the Tudor dynasty was created, and the fact that it was so complicated and messy and so many people died and so many of the claims are so tangential, like, you need to unfurl all these scrolls just to be like, “Who is the son of what and what’s happening? And who’s legitimate what?” This is part of why, as we’re going to see, especially Henry VIII, why the Tudor monarchs are so obsessed with who would be the next heir, because they knew that their claim to the throne was kind of so messy. This is why Henry VII maybe destroys Catherine of Valois’s tomb, and this is why Henry VIII is obsessed with having a son, because they know that if people don’t believe in the Tudor claim, then there could be another civil war. And like the Wars of the Roses went on for ages, so many people died; it devastated the country. They all just wanted things to just, like, continue on with this strong dynasty.
The Tudors themselves, I find interesting. Like, they’re such a famous dynasty, they’re such a famous group of people, and there are other equally messy, interesting dynasties, not just in English history, but in lots of countries’ history. So, like, why are these the ones that we always return to again and again? A large part of that is a certain William Shakespeare.
William Shakespeare lived during the reign of Elizabeth I, and he wrote a lot of plays about the Tudors and how great they were. This is because those are the sorts of plays Elizabeth wanted to see, because she really, by the time she was around and, like, Henry VIII was king for a really long time, Elizabeth was queen for a really long time, and that helped kind of solidify the dynasty. But she just wanted her family story propagandized to be like, yeah, they have these messy roots, but in these plays, you see the Tudors being these heroes, sort of divinely ordained. So, it just makes people just more accept the Tudors, like, “Yeah, she should be the queen. This is fine.” Especially when Elizabeth was the queen, because having a queen without a king was kind of questionable, but she’s like, “No. Look, this is fine. And here’s why it’s fine I should be the queen.”
So, Shakespeare’s plays were glamorizing the Tudors. And then, for reasons we’re going to get into actually in next week’s episode, why Shakespeare’s plays became so well-known and so famous, that the things that he was glamorizing became famous everywhere. So yeah, we’re going to be looking, next week, about some of the ways in which Shakespeare wrote about the Wars of the Roses, and especially how he made certain characters, certain real-life people, into heroes and villains in those plays. That’s next week’s episode on Vulgar History: Tudors, this new series that I’m really excited about. I think we’re all going to have a really fun time. There’s so much messy drama, and if you know me and this podcast, or if you don’t, here’s what you need to know: I live for it. I live for the drama.
Thank you for listening to this episode. I have news for anyone who’s listened all the way here to the end. So, I am going to be doing a Zoom Live this upcoming Saturday, July 18th at 7:00 p.m. Eastern. This is going to be for all paid members of my Patreon at the $6 a month or higher level, which actually is called the Glorianas, named after Elizabeth I. So, what I’m going to be talking about in the Zoom Live is I’ll be talking about the Tudor season, and what I have planned for it and kind of like, why I decided to do this season now for Vulgar History season nine. I’ll be answering your questions, I’ll take suggestions of people you want to hear me talk about. It’ll be a good time. I haven’t been able to do a Zoom Live because I’ve been… I have various secrets, but the secrets are all now revealed, such as the secret of what is this season going to be about. That is revealed.
The other secret I have that I can now reveal to you officially is that I am writing another book! My first book, Rebel of the Regency, came out earlier this year, and I’m so excited that I’m going to be writing another historical nonfiction book. It’s going to be a biography of another queen that people underestimate and don’t realize how cool she was. Her name is Anna of Denmark. So, she was the wife of James VI of Scotland, James I of England. She was the queen just as the Tudor era turned into the Stewart era. And I’m so excited to write this book. If you have questions about that, too, I can answer those on the Zoom Live.
If you’ve been meaning to join the Patreon, if you just want to watch the Zoom, this is a great time to join because for the month of July, you can get 30% off Patreon membership with the code TUDOR. Yeah! So, I hope to see a lot of you there. After we do it, if you can’t watch the Live, I’ll post the video there on the Patreon as well. But honestly, we have a good time on the Patreon. There’s a bunch of bonus episodes there where I talk about… We have Vulgarpiece Theatre where we talk about films and also sometimes books with my friends, Lana Wood Johnson and Allison Epstein. Those episodes are always a good time. We also have a Discord that you can join when you join the Patreon. You get ad-free episodes, you get early episodes; it’s just a nice time. And that’s where a lot of the updates, especially updates about my plans for this book and how that’s going, I’ll be updating everybody on the Patreon. So, you can join that at Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter, use code TUDOR for 30% off your paid membership plan, and I’ll see you on Zoom Live, Saturday, July 18th at 7:00 pm Eastern. Until next time, keep your pants on and your tits out.
Vulgar History is researched, scripted, and hosted by Ann Foster. Editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. Vulgar History artwork by Karyn Moynihan. Social media videos by Magdalena Denson. Transcripts of this podcast are available at VulgarHistory.com by Aveline Malek. You can get early, ad-free episodes of Vulgar History by becoming a paid member of our Patreon at Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter. Vulgar History merchandise is available at VulgarHistory.com/Store for Americans and for everyone else at VulgarHistory.Redbubble.com. Follow us on social media @VulgarHistoryPod. Get in touch with me via email at VulgarHistoryPod@gmail.com.
References:
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