Books: There oughta be a story ...
Mar. 21st, 2010 09:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nebroadweSomebody needs to write a sixteenth-century alt-hist set in England under Henry VIII wherein his son Henry (by his first wife, Katherine of Aragon), born in 1511, survives to young adulthood in the late 1520s. Henry VIII should be peeved off that none of his plans to marry his son to one of the Habsburg Emperor Charles V's sisters came to fruition (but of course he'll blame Katherine for it, since it was probably her pet project, too) and is now maneuvering for his heir's betrothal to Princess Renée of France. Young Henry, on the other hand, should fall in love with Princess Reneé's childhood companion, Anne Boleyn. She's ten years his senior, having been at court since 1522 or thereabouts after her attempt to marry Henry Percy fell through -- maybe in 1526 Prince Henry can step in to get Thomas Wyatt to stop pestering her by suggesting him for that embassy to Italy. In any event, Elizabeth I can be their daughter, born of a secret and illegal marriage in the early 1530s (so that she can be delegitimized and relegitimized -- everyone should suffer!). And young Henry should be a fan of church reform, like Anne, so that there can be an English Reformation and some fascinating civil-religious conflict between father and son and England and the Continent. Then, when Katherine dies of cancer in 1533 and Henry VIII marries Jane Seymour, he can try to disinherit Henry in favor of sickly baby Edward, which won't go over well with anyone who thinks the Seymours are behaving a lot like the Woodvilles of Edward IV's time ...
Oh, and Mary Tudor should be married to her cousin James V of Scotland somewhere in there, so that we can have a sequel set a generation later in which Mary Queen of Scots claims to be the legitimate English monarch and battles Elizabeth for control of the island! Who's with me on this?
Why, yes, I have been rereading Antonia Fraser's Wives of Henry VIII. How could you tell?
Also, there need to be more decent historical novels about Alfred the Great. He's such a geek; you'd think there'd be some SFnal ones about him besides Warriors of Ethandun.
Oh, and Mary Tudor should be married to her cousin James V of Scotland somewhere in there, so that we can have a sequel set a generation later in which Mary Queen of Scots claims to be the legitimate English monarch and battles Elizabeth for control of the island! Who's with me on this?
Why, yes, I have been rereading Antonia Fraser's Wives of Henry VIII. How could you tell?
Also, there need to be more decent historical novels about Alfred the Great. He's such a geek; you'd think there'd be some SFnal ones about him besides Warriors of Ethandun.
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Date: 2010-03-22 04:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-22 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-22 06:31 am (UTC)Also, as an aside, I just discovered that you write A:tLA fic. And it's very very good. I like your Ursa. And your Iroh. And your Toph. :)
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Date: 2010-03-22 04:37 pm (UTC)Everyone I grumble about this to in RL says, "Well, go ahead and write it, then." Nuh-uh; the research issues would kill me. (As would figuring out how to give Margaret More Roper a substantial cameo.)
Also, as an aside, I just discovered that you write A:tLA fic. And it's very very good. I like your Ursa. And your Iroh. And your Toph. :)
Thanks! I've got to get back to the halfway-finished 'fic I have in which Iroh freaks out a not-entrepreneurial-enogh cobbler, but of course this morning I started jotting notes for a Yue-centric piece about her betrothal ...
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Date: 2010-03-24 03:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-24 12:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-25 03:11 am (UTC)