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Historical person
1537–1553
Edward VI became king in 1547 at the age of nine and ruled through councils dominated first by his uncle Edward Seymour and then by John Dudley. During his reign the English Reformation advanced rapidly through new prayer books, the removal of images and changes to doctrine and worship. Edward was intelligent and strongly Protestant but died from illness in 1553 at fifteen. His attempt to exclude his Catholic half-sister Mary placed Lady Jane Grey briefly on the throne.
Edward appears in Philippa Gregory’s The Last Tudor and Alison Weir’s Innocent Traitor, both of which examine the succession crisis from Jane Grey’s world. He also features in novels about the Seymours and the final years of Henry VIII. Fiction sometimes presents him merely as a manipulated child, but his surviving journal and writings show that he developed firm religious and political opinions of his own.
In non-fiction, Edward VI is discussed in Linda Porter’s Mary Tudor, Tracy Borman’s The Private Lives of the Tudors, Linda Porter’s The First Queen of England, Linda Porter’s Katherine the Queen, and Antonia Fraser’s Mary Tudor. In Linda Porter’s Mary Tudor, Mary survived exclusion from the succession, pressure to abandon her mother and faith, and the Protestant government of Edward VI.
Historical context
Series
The Shardlake Series follows Matthew Shardlake, a London barrister with scoliosis whose legal work repeatedly draws him into murder investigations and affairs of state between 1537 and 1549. He begins as an idealistic supporter of religious reform and an agent of Thomas Cromwell, but the violence of the…
All books in this series
The Lymond Chronicles follow Francis Crawford of Lymond through Scotland, France, Malta, the Ottoman world, Russia and the wars of mid-sixteenth-century Europe. The six novels combine espionage, court intrigue, military command and a long investigation into Lymond’s family history, loyalties and identity.
All books in this series
The Tudor Saga recounts the dynasty from Henry VII’s exile and victory in the Wars of the Roses to the final years of Elizabeth I. Historical rulers, ministers and royal relatives occupy the centre of the sequence, while fictional attendants and agents reveal how decisions at court affect…
All books in this series
All books in this series
Standalone books
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
