re: #448 GeneJockey

I’ve long thought Henry VIII got a bad rap. Sure, he wasn’t somebody you’d want your sister to marry, but WRT divorcing Katherine of Aragon and getting rid of Anne Boleyn when they produced only daughters and stillborn sons - he was only king because his father had won after a long, bloody dynastic war, and the probability of a woman being able to hold the throne in those days was generally thought to be very low. Elizabeth I only managed to do it by being exceptionally good at it.

Some time ago I read “The Other Boleyn Girl” and I’m like all WTF at how all these courtiers are literally PIMPING THEIR OWN DAUGHTERS.

I love C. J. Sansome’s Shardlake series, about a lawyer in the Tudor era.