"Young Henry began his rule as a magnificent and chivalrous Renaissance prince who embodied every virtue. He had all the qualities to make a triumph of his kingship, yet we remember only the violence. Henry famously broke with the pope, founding the Church of England and launching a religious revolution that divided his kingdom. He beheaded two of his wives and cast aside two others. He died a suspicious, obese, disease-riddled tyrant, old before...

Biographies of the six queens who were the wives of Henry the VIII of England drawn from early biographies, memoirs, and diplomatic reports.

Eleanor of Aquitaine, after having spent the past dozen years as consort to King Louis VII of France, meets Henry, the future king of England. After her first marriage is annulled, Eleanor and Henry marry, but that union charged with physical heat, begins a fiery downward sp iral marred by power struggles, betrayals, bitter rivalries.