Tudor Thursday Visits Westminster Abbey

Tudor Thursday and Brazen Welcomes You To Visit...

Westminster Abbey

I have been SO fortunate to be a part of Tudor Thursday again to help promote Katherine Longshore's newest and final book in the Tudor Court series...BRAZEN. Y'all I am SO freaking excited to read this. I fangirl'd ALL OVER THE PLACE for Tarnish and I adored Gilt. Katherine has this way of looking at the Tudor court with fresh eyes from intricate and complex young women at the time. I am absolutely foaming at the mouth to get my hands on Brazen. Eeep!

So without further ado, Katherine has been working her way through London each Thursday via various blogs and this week, Belle of the Literati bring you another stop on the tour...Westminster Abbey. Gah! I was SO excited when I found out I would be hosting this spot because, HELLO, I have a healthy obsession with all that is Kate Middleton and she was married there! And I've visited it myself and it is beautiful!

Katherine tell us about Westminster Abbey...

'Technically no longer an Abbey (Henry VIII and the Reformation saw to that), Westminster is one of my favorite spots in London, hands down. It’s the site of the coronations of every British monarch (save the two who were never crowned) since William the Conqueror in 1066. It’s also the site of royal weddings (most recently, Prince William and Kate Middleton), and the burial site of many monarchs, poets, writers and actors (including Geoffrey Chaucer, Robert Browning, Rudyard Kipling and Lawrence Olivier) and other national figures (including Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and William Pitt).

Walking through Westminster is like walking through a roll call of all the people you’d want at an historical dinner party.

Margaret Douglas (Henry VIII’s niece and later Countess of Lennox) rests near her daughter-in-law, Mary, Queen of Scots. But long before she married Matthew Stuart and helped create the Stuart dynasty, she was a friend of Mary Howard’s. In BRAZEN, Mary begins the friendship by asking Margaret for help in acting like a true royal and gets an unexpected answer.' 

Copyright Katherine Longshore

EXCERPT FROM BRAZEN

“Margaret,” I begin. “I was never going to amount to much. Hal was always an earl, and always going to be a duke. Mother even hoped the dukedom of Buckingham would be revived for him and he’d be two dukes in one, like Fitz. But me? At best, I aspired to marry an earl. Possibly only a knight with delusions of grandeur. That’s what the Howards do with their girls.”

Margaret sniffs. “True. Look at your aunt.”

“Which one?”

Margaret chuckles. “You have a Howard aunt who married a grasping knight, and she is now mother to the queen. You never know where luck and good placement will take you.” Her smile disappears in an instant. “Some of us are not so lucky. You should embrace it.”

“Can you help me?” I ask suddenly. “I feel like a fraud. Especially when people call me ‘Your Grace.’ I have never had grace, and the very word sounds like a lie. Hal calls me ‘Your Gracelessness.’”

Margaret laughs.

“No wonder Madge Shelton appears to like him so much,” Margaret says, and I’m surprised by her perception. Or perhaps by the fact that Hal and Madge have been so indiscreet.

She levels a hard look at me.

“You have no choice,” she says. “Your life has changed. You are now a duchess, whether you like it or not. Perhaps just the wife of a bastard prince. An almost-prince. But everyone will be watching him—and you.”

“But what if I make a mistake?”

“You will make mistakes,” she says. “But you will also set precedents.”

“I don’t know how to fit into this life, this family. I barely know where I fit into my own.”

“How and where are different questions. The how is entirely up to you. The where depends entirely on the king.”

“I just don’t understand the rules,” I say lamely.

“Your Grace,” Margaret says, and places her hand over mine. “Mary.”

I look up. She’s staring at me intently. Not with irritation. Not with condescension. With the look of someone who needs her words to be heard and understood.

“Yes?”

“The first thing you have to learn is this: in Queen Anne Boleyn’s court, there is only one rule.”

“Only one?”

The wickedness returns with her smile, backed by determination.

“Yes. The only rule in your cousin’s court is that there are no rules. She doesn’t follow them. So why should we?”

Eeep! How excited are you guys to read this?! I am freaking out! Ok, so in case that wasn't enough, look just below for a change to win not one BUT ALL THREE of Katherine's novels in the Tudor Court series...I know I'll be entering...on a different blog of course :)

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