Loyaute me lie – Loyalty Binds Me

Katherine of Aragon was speaking out for the women of the country, for the good wives who should not be put aside just because their husbands had taken a fancy to another, for the women...

Do you really think that God in his heaven with all the angels, there from the beginning of time and looking towards the day of judgement day, really looks down on all the world and...

My mother? My own mother told my lady governess that if the baby and I were in danger then they should save the baby.

I prayed in silence that perhaps even now, the queen might have a son and might know joy like this, such a strange, unexpected joy- the happiness of caring for a child whose whole life...

My experience is that He rarely attends to the obvious.

Men command the world that they know . Everything that men know they make their own. Everything that they learn, they claim for themselves. They are like the alchemists who took for the laws that...

… all that that I learn just teaches me that I know nothing.

We stand hand-clasped, our faces quite blank, as if this were not a nightmare that tells me, as clearly as if it were written in letters of fire, what ending a girl may expect if...

Ah, Hannah, you have never longed to live as I long to live if you do not know that another day is the most precious thing.

Everything that highly educated men can do to obscure a simple truth, to make a woman doubt her feelings, to make her own thoughts a muddle, they do to her. They use their learning as...

But the magic moment when he walks alone has not yet happened, and I was praying he would do it before I have to leave. Now he will take his first step without me. And...

I would know you anywhere for my true love. Whoever I was and whoever you were, I would know you at once for my true love.

I feel no peace, I feel nothing. I think I will feel nothing forever.

Once more, I am watching the most powerful men in the kingdom bring their power to bear on a woman who has done nothing worse than live to the beat of her own heart, see...

I have heard ballads of great battles, and poems about the beauty of a charge and the grace of a leader. But I did not know that war was nothing more than butchery, as savage...

I have seen sights and travelled in countries you cannot imagine. I have been afraid and I have been in danger, and I have never for one moment thought that I would throw myself at...

Mother, before God,” I say, my voice shaking with tears, “I swear that I have to believe that there is more for me in life than being wife to one man after another, and hoping...

I wil not heat treason from my own daughterWhat will you do behead me for treason? We are not an amry at warWe are an army at war! This is your brother’s rightful throne that...

When they see us dance. When they see how you look at me. When they see how I smile at you.

Say yes,’ he whispers. ‘Marry me.’I hesitate. I open my eyes. ‘You will get my fortune,’ I remark. ‘When I marry you, everything I have becomes yours. Just as George has everything that belongs to...

When he told me that he would fight forever, I knew that he would have to be defeated.

He is a young man with a future of power and opportunity and we are young women destined to be either wives and mothers at the very best, or spinster parasites at the worst.

Be a wife of whom he can make no complaint, Margaret. That is the best advice I can give to you. You will be his wife; that is to be his servant, his possession. He...

And then the sword came down like a flash of lightning, and then her head was off her body and the long rivalry between me and the other Boleyn girl was over.

I have given my word that only death will take me from you.

I felt his hardness and I suddenly understood-an older girl would have understood long before-that this was the currency of desire. He was my betrothed. he desired me. I desired him. All I had to...

Any woman who dares to make her own destiny will always put herself in danger.

The king is a saint and cannot rule, and his son is a devil and should not.

I sit on the bed and kick off my shoes, and he kneels before me and takes the riding boots, holding one open for my bare foot. I hesitate; it is such an intimate gesture...

Like almost all girls I don’t know the date of my birth: my parents did not trouble to record the day and the time. I only know the year and the season, and I only...

Daniel, I did not knowwhat I wanted when I was agirl. And then I was a fool in every sense of the word. And now that I am a woman grown, I know that I...

Poor little girl. Poor little girl,” Nan says, and at first I think she is speaking of the baby, perhaps it is a girl after all. But then I realize she is speaking of me,...

They are a couple in love, and anyone but a fool would see it is simply that, nothing more- and certainly nothing less.

I wanted to get away from him before he led me into talking, before he made me feel angry, or grieved, or jealous all over again. I did not want to feel anything for him,...

War does not answer war, war does not finish war. The only ending is peace.

Plainly, she is quite besotted by him,… a girl, a young girl, and she is falling in love for the first time in her life. …little Kitty Howard at a loss, stumbling in her speech,...

Your son is heir to an enormous fortune and name. Someone would be bound to bid for you him and take him as his ward.

I am fit to capture a unicorn, and I should not be so questioned…

This is what I feared would come; this is what I have dreaded. It is not very bright and honorable as you have always thought it; it is not like a ballad. It is a...

If a woman is interested in her own struggle into identity and power, then she will be interested in other women. The lives of these, and other women, show me what a woman can do...

She has a smile that grows slowly and then shines, like an angel’s smile.

The world hasn’t changed that much; men still rule.

If this is the will of God, it takes a strange and terrible shape. I did not know that the God of Battles was vile like this. I never knew that a saint could summon...

When a woman thinks her husband is a fool, her marriage is over. They may part in one year or ten; they may live together until death. But if she thinks he is a fool,...

~My father says there are more than twenty thousand turned out for the king. It seems that most men think that we will win, that York will be captured and killed, though the king in...

Stars in the night,’ he said. ‘Something something something something, some delight

I shall make sure that it feels richly sinful,”- Edward IV to Elizabeth Woodville –

The most powerful men of the kingdom have dragged a duchess down and sent her out to be a marvel to the common people of London. They are so deeply afraid of her that they...

I can speak of our baby like this to no one else. Who but his father would linger over the exact width of his gummy little smile or the blueness of his eyes, or the...