Episode 21A: Teeny Tiny Tudor Tutorial

We do typically talk about the women. History Chicks: It’s not just who we are, but what we discuss. But this time? We needed to talk a bit about The Roosters.

Yes, we will devote the rest of this series to the women, but we have to give you a teeny, tiny Tudor tutorial to set the stage. And that kind of talk requires us to focus on the men.

But before we do all that, can we just carry on..again…about the names? It wasn’t just our imagination!  We’ll throw out some stats in the podcast about the repetitiveness of certain names. In this case: Richard and Henry, with a few Edwards thrown in for good measure. Really! It makes looking back so very confusing!

Back to the Tudors. As a family, they only ruled for a historically short period of time- only three generations, 118 years. That’s it. But in that time we had some seriously note worthy rulers! But first, they had to take power. The Wars of the Roses had been going on for a few decades. Unlike the. fairly easy to understand line to the throne of the modern British monarchy,this time period was rather fuzzy. Two houses, Lancaster and York, played a tug of war of sorts back and forth for quite some time.  We give you the skinny on the real flags they fought under (the macho red dragon), but time has simplified  the images down to two roses: The House of Lancaster represented by the red rose badge, The House of York by the white.  Years later Shakespeare would use picking of roses as a choosing of sides analogy, and many years after that the phrase,”Wars of the Roses” was coined in a Victorian novel by Sir Walter Scott. But the real battles were neither cute nor as sweet as a rose.

Perhaps just a convenient twin?

The real deal; the Yorkists' white rose.

The new and improved royal brand identity.

We talk about all of it in the podcast: how the two branches of the same family, fueled by generations of feuding  and slaughter, eventually ended up in a battlefield with two men in the lead: Richard III (York) and Henry Tudor. How Henry Tudor whipped himself up a nice little army, and how Richard III had lost some admirers (that happens when you kill them) and didn’t really have the military backing necessary to fight. Richard fell. Hard. Dead. And Henry picked up the crown.

As Henry VII, the first of the Tudor kings, he married Elizabeth of York. This union combined the Houses and (someone, maybe his PR people) developed the the emblem that we associate with the Tudors, the combined white and red roses.

Richard vs. Henry

Don't see this movie. That's WAR of the Roses..not WARS.

In the podcast we give a little bit  more detail into these lives and times that are quite complicated; but if we had to sum up all those men in just a few words it would look like this:

Henry VI- Coo Coo

Edward IV-Not taking anyone’s crap

Richard III- Scar, from The Lion King

Henry Tudor/ Henry VII-  Grandpa King

Henry VIII- Dirty Rotten Scoundrel

Edward VI-Child Puppet

THEN we get to the women, the first British Queens:

Mary I

Elizabeth I

Henry VII - warrior, businessman, miser.

Henry VIII. Egotist, reformer, serial monogamist (mostly).

Edward VI, who ruled from the age of 9 until 15.

Mary I ruled from the age of 37 to 42.

Elizabeth I ruled from the age of 25 to 69.

And that is where the Tudor Dynasty ends. But not our series! Next time we dive back into the founding mother and grandmother of this family!

Time Travel With The History Chicks

Honestly, we could list and list and list, and where to start?  We thought a good idea might be to read some historical fiction to begin. Yes, it’s fabricated stories, but they might give you an image to hang facts on, give you colorful ideas about the times.  Who do we like?  So many to pick from…how about Phillipa Gregory?

Phillipa Gregory, The White Queen

The Red Queen

Of course, we also like Non-fiction for this background study (of course we do!) Alison Weir!

The Princes in the Tower, Alison Weir

The War of the Roses, Alison Weir

For you visual learners, skip on over to Netflix and stream David Starkey’s: The Monarchy. If you only have a little time, and want to be topic specific watch Season One- Episode Six, then Season Two- Episode One.

Got kids? Or just like your information boiled down to the basics?  Project Britain is a website jam packed with information.

And for a website with lots and lots of information (as well as daily Today in Tutor History tweets) The Tudor Tutor

Shownotes: Season Three Introduction

Welcome back!

At the end of last season ( not that long ago, mere weeks) we never wrapped things up in a nice neat little package. Sorry about that! One of us had family to visit in New England, and the other needed to breathe for a bit without posting deadlines looming. Plus she had a castle to build.

Beckett's requested gift from New England: Coffee Syrup, the official drink of Rhode Island

How one of us has been using the hiatus.

But we got back together in the House of Wood the other day and caught up with our lives. We also finalized plans for the ten full length episodes of Season Three, and left ample room for minicasts sprinkled throughout.

We are VERY excited! We discuss some upcoming plans on this podcast, as well as sharing some stories that happened behind the scenes.

On to Season Three!

We can’t tell you who made the Season Three list, but we can remind you that, as promised, we will begin with a series on the Tudors! Also, as voted upon in our Guaranteed Content Poll, we will discuss the Romanovs at some point during the season.  As for the rest of the ladies- keep an eye out for clues that appear here and on all of our social media pages (facebook, twitter, and googleplus) shortly before we post episodes on this website, Itunes, and now, Stitcher!

You are just going to have to trust us, Season Three will be fun and we are thrilled to have you along for the ride!

Thank you (again and again and again) for listening!

Beckett and Susan