Royal Renegades

Royal Renegades follows the six children of Charles I and Henrietta Maria who survived into the English Civil Wars. Charles, Mary, James, Elizabeth, Henry and Henrietta Anne began life inside an affectionate but politically disastrous royal family. War divided the household between besieged courts, parliamentary custody and continental exile, while their father’s execution in 1649 transformed the children into dependants, prisoners and rival claimants.

Porter traces their experiences through the Commonwealth and the restoration of Charles II in 1660. Mary supported her brothers from the Dutch Republic; James and Henry became soldiers abroad; Elizabeth died in captivity; and Henrietta Anne entered the French royal family. The book uses the siblings’ disrupted lives to show the Civil Wars as a dynastic and family catastrophe whose consequences continued after the monarchy returned.