Uneasy Lies the Head

by Jean Plaidy

Summary

A royal father and his golden heir battle for a woman's hand—and a nation's future.

The red rose of the Tudors bloomed triumphant over England. With the white rose of Richard III trampled at Bosworth Field, Henry VII of Lancaster sat upon the English throne. Weakened by failing health, menaced by corrupt advisors and false pretenders, Henry strove to govern fairly the country he loved so well. But the deaths of his wife and of his eldest son had left the King a bitter, lonely man, frightened for his own safety and wary of the dazzling new Prince of Wales, Henry, who embraced the promise of power as unabashedly as he embraced music and poetry and love.

But when their seething rivalry burst into flames, it was over the woman they both sought as a wife—widow of the Prince's brother and the monarch's son—the Spanish princess Katharine of Aragon. Cast onto alien shores, a pawn in a massive power play that would ultimately determine the shape of Europe, Katharine's own desperate desires were merely strings in the hands of the master-manipulators who would see her wooed, and won by father or by son, in the service of their own jaded ambition.

The tragic fall of Henry VII and the meteoric and romantic rise of Henry VIII have never been captured as vividly as by master-chronicler Jean Plaidy, whose best-selling historical novels are praised on both sides of the Atlantic for their vitality and meticulous attention to the periods they illuminate.