TUDORS IN LOVE

The dramas of courtly love have captivated readers and dreamers over centuries. Yet often they’re dismissed as something existing only in books and song. In this ground-breaking history, Sarah Gristwood reveals how courtly love made and marred the Tudor dynasty. From Henry VIII declaring himself as the ‘loyal and most assured servant’ of Anne Boleyn to the poems lavished on Elizabeth I by her suitors, the Tudors re-enacted the roles of the devoted lovers and capricious mistresses first laid out in the romances of medieval literature, thereby changing the fate of England.