Do I see the gears turning? You can shoot me a line if you need it...
Titulus Princeps: Bessie Blount Has A Girl
- Thread starter FalconHonour
- Start date
Wouldn’t the Hal Fitzroy of this TL be the exact same age?
XII: Spring-Summer 1530
Bridewell Palace, April 1530
“Her Grace has given birth to a healthy baby girl.”At the herald’s determinedly cheerful announcement, it took all Henry had not to snarl in fury.
Mary promised him a son! She promised him a boy, a healthy, squalling boy to be his Prince of Wales, and he married her on the strength of that promise. He married her, when he could have had any Princess or Lady in Europe after Katherine died! God, Charles, Joao, and Francis must be laughing themselves sick already.
And that wasn’t even the half of it. Not only is Mary of lower birth than is ideal for England’s Queen and not only has she broken her promise, but she’s not even a decorous consort. In the eighteen months since their Christmas wedding, she’d quarrelled with at least half the lords on his Council. Henry had had to appease more than one of them, making excuses about how hard her new royal state and pregnancy was being on his darling. Christ, he felt a fool, knowing how he’d pandered to Mary’s every whim, particularly over the last few months, quashing any doubts about her conduct with the thought that her fractiousness just proved how strong their son was growing within her.
All this for a girl! Another useless girl!
He turned on his heel without a word, stalking away from the still-chattering page.
The hours passed, and still Henry did nothing about his new-born daughter. Oh, he knew he ought to at least visit and name the child so that the announcements could go out, lest tongues start wagging, but he couldn’t bring himself to, not when the baby’s sex was such a crushing disappointment.
At last, as Vespers neared, he knew he could put it off no longer. With dragging feet, he presented himself at the door of Mary’s lying-in chambers.
Mary was asleep. Her sister, Lady Dacre, flushed when she told him, pleading excuses about it having been a hard birth, one that went through the night and most of the morning, but Henry waved her excuses away with no small degree of relief. At least he wasn’t likely to lose his temper with Mary and risk unbalancing her already precarious humours even further.
“Don’t trouble yourself to wake the Queen, Lady Dacre,” he shrugged, “I’ll come and see her again, when she’s rested. But if you could point me in the direction of England’s newest Lady, I should be most grateful,” he waved a hand and relief flashed in the younger woman’s eyes.
“Of course, Your Grace,” she curtsied, “Her Highness is over there, in the cradle.”
She nodded him in the direction of the fine beech cradle standing in the window embrasure and Henry crossed the room to look down at his new daughter.
Unlike her mother, she was awake, and gurgled up at him, her big blue eyes blinking intently.
She was long for her age, and the fuzz that showed through her lace mobcap was dark – darker than that of any of Henry’s other children – suggesting that she was going to be a brunette like her sharp-tongued mother.
Still, despite her resemblance to Mary, Henry found his heart softening at the sight of her. She might be a girl, but at least she was here and alive. That was a good sign for the future. After all, a healthy daughter was more than Katherine managed at the first time of trying. And Mary was still young. There was no reason the next one shouldn’t be a boy.
“Elizabeth,” he spoke for the first time since laying eyes on the infant and Lady Dacre jumped to attention.
Not for the first time, Henry couldn’t help but chuckle to himself at the absurdity of just how many young women at Court bear his mother’s name.
“Not you, Lady Dacre,” he clarified, nodding towards the cradle, “Elizabeth. We’ll name her Elizabeth, for my mother. Tell the Queen when she wakes.”
“My Lord,” Lady Dacre curtsied and Henry paused, lost in thought for a moment, before exhaling.
“Well, I suppose if we can have a healthy daughter, we can have a healthy son.”
He left Mary’s apartments without another word.
Windsor, June 1530
Mary Talbot sat in the Queen's throne in the tiltyard, surrounded by her ladies. Newly released from her lying-in-chambers after giving birth to her daughter, the Lady Elizabeth, she was still somewhat exhausted - and the heat of the day was doing little to help keep her awake.
However, when the trumpets blared and Henry trotted up to the pavilion, lowering his lance to her, she was as alert as she could be. She rose, untying the lace from around her waist, and tied it around the lance.
"So that my King might win the day," she said, leaning forward to kiss Henry’s cheek.
He clapped a hand against his chest in salute, then trotted back and took his place, eyeing his next target - the Queen's brother, Francis, who had made comments about his waistline during little Elizabeth’s christening feast.
"His Majesty makes the challenge, à la guerre!" declared the herald.
"Here we go again," sighed Norfolk.
Next to him, Brandon smirked, "Even though his sister is married to the King, Talbot must remember he cannot criticise him."
"Not all of the court is as loyal as you, Suffolk," Norfolk replied, though Brandon was smart enough to know the Duke wasn’t talking about himself. For all of Norfolk's many faults, disloyalty to the King was not one of them.
Down came the lances, Talbot and the King adjusting themselves on their horses. On the wave of the flag, the poor standard bearer ran backwards for his life and the two thundered down the lists.
They were halfway down the lists when it happened. The cloud above parted, exposing the sun. Talbot was blinded through the gap in his visor. So was Henry. Talbot yanked his horse back, attempting to stop the charge. The intention was a good one, but unfortunately, unable to see, all he achieved was to make his horse rear in shock. His lance wobbled in his hand as he fought to keep his seat.
Still, that’s more control than the King managed. Though His Majesty tried to rein back, it was too late and his horse collided with Talbot's. Henry's lance clattered to the ground; King and courtier were thrown; Henry sideways, crushed under his horse and Talbot's; Talbot backwards, lance leaving his grip as he hit the ground with an audible ‘thunk’.
The lance flew high into the air, over the gasp of the crowd who had all risen at the King and the Queen's brother having fallen from their horses.
Henry's scream pierced the air and Francis Talbot's heart simultaneously. He knew even before he had fully regained his senses that something had gone terribly wrong, but the court realised the full extent the disaster before he did. By the time he’d pulled himself together enough to rise, shakily, and look around him, chaos had struck. When he realised exactly what had happened, he barely managed to open the visor of his helmet in time to avoid soaking his own face in vomit as he heaved and retched at the sight before him
The King’s codpiece had come loose in the fall and Francis’s lance had impaled one of the King's testicles, splitting it open, blood pouring from the wound and pooling in a scarlet lake beneath the King’s prone form.
Of all the things to happen today, this was one of the worst. Still not quite with it, he fainted, clattering to the floor in his armour, vision swirling as courtiers heaved the King off the lists and into a nearby tent, the royal physician rushing ahead, shouting for his medicine box to be brought at once.
Bwahahaha thank you for this chapter! That harpy having a daughter and Henry getting his nuts damaged was hilarious. Not gonna be many children after this is it!
Yes, I'll be skipping town as well. Preferable to France or something.
If Henry can't get any more children with his fractured "crown jewels" so to speak, then his eldest child, Mary will become the next monarch. But since this is a @FalconHonour tl and there is a Boleyn bastard in the picture, I hardly think so.
France isn't far enough, IMO. That's why I'd go for the New World. I'd feel far safer with the Atlantic Ocean between me and Henry rather than just the English Channel.
Yes, I'm sure the men in the room did...
Indeed!
I promise you Mary will have *a* crown TTL. I'm just not specifying which.
Fair point. Maybe he can go and work for Portugal in Brazil or something.
Sadly for Francis, the antipodes of the British Isles, New Zealand, hasn't yet been discovered. Otherwise he could put the entire molten core of a planet between him and Henry.
Welp! It was inevitable that a girl would be named Elizabeth! It just makes sense really. Welcome to the world Elizabeth! Hopefully you’ll be nothing like your mother
And wow, that was a twist, I did not see coming! (And neither did Henry’s nads!) Talbolt might lose his head now, and Mary will certainly be in bad standing after she had a daughter and her brother semi-castrated her husband
And wow, that was a twist, I did not see coming! (And neither did Henry’s nads!) Talbolt might lose his head now, and Mary will certainly be in bad standing after she had a daughter and her brother semi-castrated her husband
I mean, as long as one ball is intact, then there is hope yet. Afaik it only takes one ball, but his fertility will likely be impaired yes. So not as many daughters for Henry and Mary as hoped
Princess Mary is promised for Portugal so she won’t come to power here. My money is on Mary B’s boy, likely the only one Henry will ever have
Lets put it this way, I asked @Tudorfan to write me a scene that made it all too clear that Henry would be impotent thereafter, so yeah. He's going to be stuck with Mary, Elizabeth and the little Duke of Pembroke and Richmond
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Ahh fair businessLets put it this way, I asked @Tudorfan to write me a scene that made it all too clear that Henry would be impotent thereafter, so yeah. He's going to be stuck with Mary, Elizabeth and the little Duke of Richmond and Pembroke
Long live King FitzRoy then!Unlike the Boleyn boy who is a illegitimate bastard, Mary is legitimate and is likely gonna have foreign support. So what we are gearing up for is another civil war between Mary and her supporters and the Fitzroy boy. And until Mary has a legitimate brother, no way is she getting sent abroad. She's still the heiress of the crown.