England’s 16th-century King Henry VIII fathered four children, each with a different mother: Mary, daughter of Henry’s first wife, Katherine of Aragon; Henry Fitzroy, illegitimate son of Henry’s mistress, Elizabeth Blount; Elizabeth, daughter of Henry’s second wife, Anne Boleyn; and Edward, son of Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour.

King Henry VIII wanted legitimate heirs to perpetuate his Tudor dynasty. In this book, historian John Guy wants to narrate a family drama focused on the need for legitimate successors to the throne. He warns the reader that the story of Henry VIII’s children isn’t simply a story of royal personalities but “is also the dynastic history of England.”

Everyone in England, including King Henry, disliked the idea of a woman ruler. Even before third wife Jane Seymour gave birth to the son that neither the first nor the second wife could produce, Henry cut both of his daughters out of the succession. He declared Mary and Elizabeth illegitimate so that only Jane Seymour’s offspring could inherit the throne. Elizabeth was still a baby, but Mary, age 20, was asked to sign a statement declaring her parents’ marriage incestuous and unlawful. When Mary said no, her father’s councilors threatened to beat her until her head was “soft as baked apples.” Mary signed the paper.

As Guy narrates the struggle for dynastic stability, he gives glimpses of the royal children’s personalities. The young Henry Fitzroy liked to ride, hunt and hawk much better than he liked studying. Edward, by contrast, worked hard at his Latin and Greek. He also spent a lot of time outdoors, determined, Guy says, “to hunt, joust and excel in war like his father.” He was preparing to be king.

But kings, no matter how hard they try, cannot control birth, disease and death. King Henry died when Edward was 9 years old, having left instructions for a set of privy councilors to govern in Edward’s name until he was 18. The councilors ignored instructions, manipulating the boy king to their own ends. Guy retells a story that circulated about Edward’s plucking alive a prize falcon. He tore the falcon into four pieces while declaring that everyone plucked him in the same way. “I will pluck them too hereafter,” he said, “and tear them in four parts.” He never got a chance to “pluck” anyone. King Edward VI died at age 15 of the same disease — a complication of pneumonia — that killed his half-brother Henry Fitzroy as a teenager.

Could a daughter of Henry VIII rule England? Yes, in order to perpetuate the dynasty! Better a legitimate heir, even a woman, than an outsider. Before his death, Henry VIII had gotten Parliament to pass a new Succession Act, which put Mary and Elizabeth back in the line of succession to the throne after Edward and his lawful heirs.

Mary became queen but did not help to fulfill her father’s wish to perpetuate Tudor rule. She and her husband, Philip II of Spain, had no children. Moreover, she imprisoned Elizabeth and considered putting her on trial for treason because Elizabeth was a Protestant heir to the throne in a country that Mary had returned to Roman Catholicism. Guy argues that Elizabeth survived to become queen because Philip thought she could make a politically useful marriage.

Protestant John Knox called Elizabeth’s reign a special miracle sent from God. Elizabeth would have none of this. She believed that not religion, but hereditary right, determined the legitimacy of her rule. Her reasons, Guy writes, “were not feminist, but dynastic.”

Her father’s daughter through and through, Elizabeth cared about perpetuating the dynasty, yet she, too, failed at the task. Never married, she never gave birth to an heir. When Mary Queen of Scots conspired against her, Elizabeth ordered Mary’s execution. Guy shows Elizabeth’s ambivalence and distress about putting to death a woman with a legitimate dynastic title, noting that Elizabeth “knew she had fatally attenuated her father’s legacy.” When Elizabeth died, the Tudor dynasty ended. About Elizabeth and her siblings, John Guy writes that “for all their father’s valiant attempts to produce legitimate heirs who would perpetuate his dynasty, not one of them managed to have even a single child themselves.” 

Guy marshals his historical evidence in just under 200 pages of elegant prose, never indulging in extraneous anecdotes, always keeping his focus on the problem of dynastic continuity. Footnotes document his meticulous research. The book has color plates with paintings of HHeHhHenry VIII and all four of the children, plus black-and-white illustrations that include photos of letters written by Mary, Henry Fitzroy and Elizabeth, and Edward’s handwritten plan for the succession.

Persuasive in argument and handsome in appearance, The Children of Henry VIII brilliantly illuminates the connection between a powerful idea and the persons who, for good or for ill, were required to implement it.

Ann White is the retired chairwoman of the history department of Edmund Burke School in Washington, D.C. She holds a Ph.D. in Far Eastern history from the University of Pennsylvania.

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