The Young King He inherited £1.5 million pounds from his father and succeeded in the first peaceful transition of power after the Wars of the Roses. Henry brought a youth and vigor to the Court that had long been lacking and Henry dreamed of glory beyond the hunt and joust.
Such was evidently the view of King Henry VIII (1491–1547, Figure 1) who clearly blamed his wives for his lack of a healthy male heir. Henry is well-known for having married six times in his desperate quest for a son, disposing of wives who did not fulfill their royal and marital duty.
A theory by anthropologist Kyra Kramer and the bio archaeologist Catrina Banks Whitley, writing in The Historical Journal, suggests that Henry's blood group may have been the cause of his lost children and lack of heirs. A Kell-positive theory could also explain Henry's midlife physical and mental deterioration.
House of Tudor, an English royal dynasty of Welsh origin, which gave five sovereigns to England: Henry VII (reigned 1485–1509); his son, Henry VIII (1509–47); followed by Henry VIII's three children, Edward VI (1547–53), Mary I (1553–58), and Elizabeth I (1558–1603).
Henry VIII had many suspected illegitimate children but only acknowledged one, Henry Fitzroy the first Duke of Richmond and Somerset, born 15 June 1519. His mother was Elizabeth Blount, the lady-in-waiting of Catherine of Aragon. He was born in secret and his arrival was unmarked by most of the nation.
Henry VIII's Illegitimate Children
Henry also had an illegitimate son, named Henry Fitzroy (meaning 'son of the king') born in 1519. The King made Fitzroy Duke of Richmond, and ensured he was well provided for. Fitzroy enjoyed a 'prince's life' until his premature death at 17, probably from tuberculosis.
Roman Catholics, indeed, always considered her illegitimate and she only narrowly escaped execution in the wake of a failed rebellion against Queen Mary in 1554. Elizabeth succeeded to the throne on her half-sister's death in November 1558.
While there is no direct line between the two, the modern royals have a distant connection to the Tudors. They owe their existence to Queen Margaret of Scotland, grandmother of Mary Queen of Scots, and King Henry VIII's sister.
Anne Boleyn's sister Mary was Princess Diana Spencer's 13th great-grandmother on her father's side. Mary Boleyn married Sir William Carey in 1520 and the pair had two children, Catherine Carey and Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon.
Catherine Middleton may have royal ancestry, after all, with a line of descent from Henry VIII, Well, how can that be as Henry has no descendants. None of his three children, Mary, Elizabeth, and Edward, had issue, which means no descendants.
Elizabeth I was the daughter of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII. In 1536, Anne Boleyn was accused of treason and adultery and executed when Elizabeth was two years old. Elizabeth was disinherited and raised by her governesses and tutors and disinherited from the throne. Henry VIII's last wife, Catherine...
Katherine of Aragon was devoutly religious and was known to fast regularly and it has been suggested that this fasting while pregnant may have harmed the unborn child.
How many kids did she have? Anne had one living child—who went on to become the legendary Queen Elizabeth I. But historians also note that she also had a miscarriage in 1534 and gave birth to a stillborn boy in January 1536, per Brittanica.
Anne failed to produce a male heir for Henry VIII, and he grew interested in Jane Seymour. Henry had Anne confined to the Tower of London on charges of adultery. She was beheaded on Tower Green on May 19, 1536.
Execution and Burial
On 19 May 1536, Anne was beheaded on Tower Green. She protested her innocence until the last, but her final reported words were uncontroversial, “I am come hither to die, for according to the law and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it …
Jane's sweet and charming demeanor captured Henry's heart. Married just days after her predecessor's death, she was to become Henry's favorite wife. Jane, unlike any of Henry's other wives, gave Henry the one thing he wanted most -- a son, an act that would lead to her death.
Catherine, the Princess of Wales never met her mother-in-law Princess Diana but they share many similarities. The past and future Princesses of Wales have a lot in common.
Camilla Is Related to Both Diana and King Charles
Strangely, they are also both related to the late Princess Diana through shared ancestry dating back to King Charles II. Also note that Camilla's great-grandmother was a mistress to King Edward VII, the great-great-grandfather of King Charles.
Mary Boleyn, Anne Boleyn's sister, is the 12 great-grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II. Although it was Anne, not Mary that became the Queen Consort of Henry VIII and bore him an heir who became Queen Elizabeth I, there is no direct descent between Anne and Elizabeth II because Elizabeth I had no children.
Yes, Prince William is very distantly related to Henry VIII. Henry's sister, Mary, is one of William's ancestors. They are related through William's father's family. However, the Tudor line died out with the death of Henry VIII's daughter, Queen Elizabeth I.
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth II, and King Charles III are descendants of Mary Boleyn. Hever Castle in Kent was the family seat of the Boleyns and the childhood home of Queen Consort Anne Boleyn.
Around one third of the Black Tudors that we know about were found in London, with concentrations in southern port cities such as Southampton, Bristol, and Plymouth, but also in remote rural villages such as Bluntisham-cum-Earith in Cambridgeshire.
The Prince Tudor variant holds that Oxford and Queen Elizabeth I were lovers and had a child who was raised as Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton. The theory followed earlier arguments that Francis Bacon was a son of the queen.
While foreign negotiations continued, Elizabeth enjoyed the attention of young male courtiers like Thomas Heneage, Christopher Hatton and Walter Raleigh, and later Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, all of whom flirted their way into the queen's favour. But Robert Dudley remained the queen's first, and probably only love.
From the start of Elizabeth's reign it was expected that she would marry, and the question arose to whom. Although she received many offers, she never married and remained childless; the reasons for this are not clear. Historians have speculated that Thomas Seymour had put her off sexual relationships.