{"id":6457,"date":"2021-10-26T04:30:02","date_gmt":"2021-10-26T02:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=189871"},"modified":"2021-10-26T04:56:11","modified_gmt":"2021-10-26T02:56:11","slug":"tudors-in-love-what-were-the-dynastys-romantic-secrets","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/tudors-in-love-what-were-the-dynastys-romantic-secrets\/","title":{"rendered":"Tudors in love: what were the dynasty\u2019s romantic secrets?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Sarah Gristwood\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Tuesday, 26 October 2021 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Lancelot is desperate to reach Guinevere\u2019s chamber \u2013 so desperate that he\u2019s crawled over a bridge made from a sword blade to rescue her. The French poet Chr\u00e9tien de Troyes describes Lancelot\u2019s fingers shredded to the bone as he wrenches the bars from her window, but in her service he feels no pain\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When, in the latter part of the 12th century, Chr\u00e9tien de Troyes wrote this powerful account in his poem Lancelot<\/em>, he was giving voice to an ideal taken up by almost every other writer of the Arthurian stories, from Thomas Malory in the 1460s to Lerner and Loewe in the mid-20th century, when they wrote the musical Camelot<\/em>.<\/p>\n

What is courtly love?<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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But the idea of what a later age dubbed \u201ccourtly love\u201d goes far beyond the Arthurian tales<\/a>. This creed of love was heard in the songs of the troubadours and given formal shape in the courts of what we now call France. It began as a literary fantasy, centred around the image of service \u2013 a knight, or young noble lover, kneeling in devotion before a lady he may never even attain \u2013 which fascinated the aristocracy. Triggering a huge outpouring of poems, songs and novels, courtly love was described by medievalist and writer CS Lewis as a movement compared to which \u201c the <\/a>Renaissance [was] a mere ripple on the surface of literature\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Yet in reality, its tropes did not stay confined to the page. Indeed, the image of a man in service to his lover is a picture we still all recognise today. Take, for instance, the popular TV adverts \u201cThe lady loves Milk Tray\u201d, where a heroic man went to ludicrous lengths to bring his lover her desire: a box of chocolates. Enshrined in many of our traditional ceremonies and courtesies, its basic tenets have come to inform our whole idea of romance.<\/p>\n
Scandalous Tudor marriages: 7 women who braved royal wrath by marrying for love<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul><\/div>\n\n
But we aren\u2019t the only society to be influenced by courtly love. Time and again, medieval monarchs made political capital from the fantasy. And certainly the ideas of chivalry, and of courtly love, were co-opted into the service of the Tudor dynasty. Henry VII<\/a> used the Arthurian legends to bolster his fragile new dynasty; Henry VIII called on courtly tropes to woo Anne Boleyn<\/a>. Their daughter Elizabeth<\/a> found there a language to sanction her controversial female monarchy.<\/p>\n

VIRTUAL EVENT:\u00a0Sarah Gristwood | The Tudors in Love<\/h4>\n
When:<\/strong> Thursday 28 October, 7-8pm BST<\/p>\n
Tickets:<\/strong> \u00a312<\/p>\n
Find out more here<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n
Click to book your ticket now<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div>

$\""BBC_HS_SARAH_GRISTWOOD_034\"$ <\/div><\/div> <\/div> <\/section><\/div>\n
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Adulterous passions<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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One of thorniest issues in the creed was whether courtly lovers should surrender to their passions. It had been at the court of Marie de Champagne, Eleanor of Aquitaine\u2019s daughter by Louis VII of France, that de Troyes had written of Lancelot and Guinevere, on the instruction, he said, of his patroness Marie. He did so in terms that saw their adulterous passion honoured for its ardour: this, at a time when church and state alike demanded the harshest penalties for real adultery. Yet de Troyes\u2019 Lancelot genuflects on leaving Guinevere\u2019s chamber, as if at a holy shrine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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It was probably also at Marie\u2019s court that one Andreas Capellanus (Andrew the Chaplain) wrote his De Amore<\/em> (On Love<\/em>), in which he laid down the rules for a spiritual, courtly passion: \u201cYou must maintain chastity for your lover,\u201d and \u201cremember to avoid lying completely.\u201d Andreas\u2019s ideal relationship takes place between a young man and a woman already married to someone else, and of higher rank than he. As to whether the relationship was necessarily platonic\u2026 that one occupied theorists for centuries. At the end of the 13th century, in a different moral climate from that of Marie\u2019s court, the church condemned Capellanus\u2019s writings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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On the podcast: Sarah Gristwood considers how the Tudor monarchs used medieval ideas about courtly love for their own ends<\/h3>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div> <hr\/><p>Andreas satirised the extremes to which this ideal of love could lead \u2013 and maybe even criticised it, too. Courtly suitors must obey their ladies\u2019 lightest command, but with women of the lower orders, Capellanus said, they should \u201cnot hesitate to embrace them by force\u2026 use a little compulsion as a convenient cure for their shyness\u201d.<\/p>\n<div class=\""row"\"> <div class=\""col-10\" offset-1=\"\"> <div class=\""embed"\"> <div class=\""template-articlepullquote\" mt-md=\"\" mb-md=\"\"> <blockquote class=\""pullquote\" heading-4=\"\"> <span class=\""pullquoteicon\" pullquoteicon--left=\"\" icon-pullquote=\"\" data-grunticon-embed=\"\"\/>Courtly love was a movement compared to which the Renaissance was ‘a mere ripple on the surface of literature’<span class=\""pullquoteicon\" pullquoteicon--right=\"\" icon-pullquote=\"\" data-grunticon-embed=\"\"\/> <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div> <\/div>\n<div id=\""divEDF443AD9E70B245048A4358B33C027A"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<p>He also described Marie and her mother Eleanor presiding over actual courts of love, adjudicating on such knotty points as whether true love within marriage was even possible. (Marie decided not, since true love was a matter of free choice, and marriage of Courtly love was a movement compared to which the Renaissance was \u201ca mere ripple on the surface of literature\u201d family arrangement.) Though generations of historians presented this fantastical picture as fact, few today would claim that actual courts of love existed in the 12th century.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\""divCA1DF54285AA713B1AD294A1FFADBEF0"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<p>Throughout the medieval period, the ideal of courtly love changed hue with the changing times. Different eras found either more, or less, value in the ideals of chivalry as a whole \u2013 and in the specific, potentially adulterous, fantasy of courtly love. But it never vanished entirely, thanks in part to courtly bestsellers like the <em>Roman de La Rose<\/em> (and to highly publicised debates like the one provoked by writer Christine de Pizan when she dared criticise that book, from what it\u2019s hard not to call a feminist standpoint). Dante, Petrarch and Chaucer all utilised the ideals of courtly love in different ways. And of course the endlessly reinvented Arthurian stories were brought centre stage when Thomas Malory\u2019s mighty <em>Morte d\u2019Arthur<\/em> was printed by William Caxton in 1485 \u2013 the year that launched the Tudor dynasty.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\""text-left\" heading-type=\"\" margin=\"\" xhead=\"\">\n<h3>Slaying the boar<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\""div05290384007BD43F7BD039E39A6EB710"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<p>Before the <a href=\""https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/period\/tudor\/battle-bosworth-facts-when-where-who-won-richard-iii-henry-vii-tudors-wars-roses-york-lancaster\/"\">battle of Bosworth<\/a>, Henry Tudor adopted as his standard the Red Dragon Dreadful, the dragon of Wales. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Malory\u2019s <em>Morte<\/em> also described how King Arthur dreamt of a fight where a dragon beat down a tyrant boar \u2013 the boar being the symbol of <a href=\""https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/period\/medieval\/myths-facts-richard-iii-murder-princes-tower-shakespeare-york-leicester-car-park\/"\">Richard III<\/a>, Henry\u2019s great adversary. Enthroned but still vulnerable to Yorkist threat, Henry named his eldest son Arthur and ensured that he was born at Winchester, which Malory had identified as Camelot. Entertaining Philip of Burgundy, a star of the tournament (a sporting event newly fashionable again since the 15th century), he showed him the Round Table. But it was Henry VII\u2019s son who was besotted with the courtly side of the chivalric fantasy.<\/p>\n<ul><li><a href=\""https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/period\/medieval\/did-richard-iii-really-kill-princes-in-tower-debate-historians\/"\"><strong>Did Richard III kill the prince in the Tower?<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul><\/div>\n<div id=\""div08A208FF5674C303EF324360C6486693"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<p>Henry VIII\u2019s court relished acting out the fantasy of love. Watched by his wife <a href=\""https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/period\/tudor\/catherine-aragon-facts-henry-viii-first-wife-mother-death-mary-buried\/"\">Catherine of Aragon<\/a>, Henry rode in the lists under the name Sir Loyalheart, her <em>Coeur Loyal<\/em>. Perhaps courtly love had been co-opted into the service of wedded affection \u2013 \u201cI love true where I did marry,\u201d Henry wrote. But the creed was still ill-equipped to cope with the realities of an ageing wife and years of failing to produce a surviving male heir.<\/p>\n<div class=\""row"\"> <div class=\""col-10\" offset-1=\"\"> <div class=\""embed"\"> <div class=\""template-articlepullquote\" mt-md=\"\" mb-md=\"\"> <blockquote class=\""pullquote\" heading-4=\"\"> <span class=\""pullquoteicon\" pullquoteicon--left=\"\" icon-pullquote=\"\" data-grunticon-embed=\"\"\/>When Henry finally made Anne Boleyn his wife, the patterns of courtly love had another dangerous game to play<span class=\""pullquoteicon\" pullquoteicon--right=\"\" icon-pullquote=\"\" data-grunticon-embed=\"\"\/> <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div> <\/div>\n<div id=\""div8F3C68C6483948933818A8F379662ABC"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<p>There had always been a darker side to courtly fantasy. When in 1513 Henry went to fight in France, he took with him Charles Brandon, and there the Netherlands regent Margaret of Austria became embroiled with Charles in a scandalous story. It started with after-dinner courtly play: Brandon swearing to be Margaret\u2019s servant, and she to be his good mistress. But soon Brandon was showing off the ring he had snatched from Margaret, ignoring the discretion that was supposed to be a hallmark of the courtly lover. As a result, she reported horrified, the tale was being spread even by \u201cmerchant strangers\u201d in the streets.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\""divACF4A9A3481FB54A7694A90FACE80437"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<p>Less than three years later, Brandon made an unsanctioned marriage with Mary Tudor, Henry VIII\u2019s younger sister. She \u2013 educated like Henry in the old romantic stories \u2013 had extracted from her brother an extraordinary promise that if she furthered his policies by marrying the aged Louis XII of France, she might make a second marriage \u201cas mine own heart and mind should be best pleased\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\""div19E6556009B60DE232EEBAFC42E8763C"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<p>There was one important spectator of all these adventures: a young Anne Boleyn, sent in 1513 to serve Margaret of Austria, and then to France, to Mary Tudor\u2019s court. It was some seven years before Anne returned to England, but then her first recorded appearance was in another piece of love pageantry.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\""divC05CC99363031BC5C96F7332C784185C"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<p>The \u201cSiege of the Chateau Vert\u201d in 1522 \u2013 the same year Henry had the Winchester Round Table revamped to reflect the Tudor story \u2013 saw knights representing the chivalric virtues attack a castle of ladies. The king\u2019s sister represented Beauty, and Anne Boleyn was Perseverance. At the tournament beforehand Henry had jousted under the device of \u201cthe heart of a man wounded\u201d \u2013 prophetically, as it would turn out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\""divC5E9A500146A6A0914EC06B8302BE6D7"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<p>The letters Henry VIII wrote to Anne show him delightedly flexing his muscles as a courtly suitor. Though king, he writes to his \u201cmistress\u2026 to acquit myself of the duty of a true servant\u201d, or declares that \u201cmy heart and I surrender ourselves into your hands\u201d. He asks whether he can truly call Anne his mistress since that \u201cdenotes a singular love, far removed from the common\u201d. As the years wore on, Henry\u2019s goal would change from making Anne his mistress (in either the courtly or the sexual sense) to making her his wife. But then, the patterns of courtly love would have another dangerous game to play.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\""div3E7B4A9AAE24B870F6D22D97EF272CD8"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<p>It is still debatable what \u2013 after barely three years of marriage \u2013 really lay behind <a href=\""https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/period\/tudor\/anne-boleyn-death-execution-where-buried-how-die\/"\">the downfall of Anne Boleyn<\/a>. Was it the \u201cpastime\u201d \u2013 the music, dancing, poetry and flirtatious talk \u2013 in Anne\u2019s chamber, the ritual tribute of other men\u2019s admiration that might be paid to any courtly lady? Had she failed to understand the difference between fantasy and reality, the role of a mistress and of a wife? Or instead was it all a matter of court faction, and Henry\u2019s desperation for a son? (This would not be the first time the tropes of courtly love, or the charge of a woman\u2019s sexual incontinence, had been used to cloak hard political reality.) But the courtly ethic that actively suggested extramarital affairs was surely a weapon in <a href=\""https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/period\/tudor\/thomas-cromwell-who-facts-biography-life-henry-viii\/"\">Thomas Cromwell<\/a>\u2019s hands, and it lent colour to the charges levelled against Anne.<\/p>\n<ul><li><a href=\""https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/period\/tudor\/kings-and-queens-in-profile-jane-seymour\/"\"><strong>Jane Seymour: the queen Henry VIII loved most?<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul><\/div>\n<div id=\""divBD97FC0A6C447597F35C38B4B6FD5CAF"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<p>As Anne speculated that she might be allowed to retire to a convent and recalled predictions that a queen of England would be burned, it is hard to believe that she did not remember stories of Guinevere, sentenced to the flames or to a nunnery. Henry\u2019s unusual decision that she should die by the sword may itself have been influenced by the fact the sword was a symbol of chivalry. Perhaps that\u2019s why courtly tropes don\u2019t feature so strongly in his subsequent marital history \u2013 although he did attempt to surprise Anne of Cleves in disguise at Rochester as part of a courtly game, but unfortunately it was one she had no training to play.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\""text-left\" heading-type=\"\" margin=\"\" xhead=\"\">\n<h3>The courtly queen<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\""div2C5E511118FF50C6BD9CA5A95F6223EC"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<p>Even Henry\u2019s daughter <a href=\""https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/period\/tudor\/mary-i-bloody-facts-life-death-legacy-illiegitimate-henry-viii\/"\">Mary I<\/a> would show a flash of more generalised romanticism, telling her parliament she should not be asked to marry a man she did not care for, saying: \u201cWhere private persons\u2026 follow their own private tastes, sovereigns may reasonably challenge an equal liberty.\u201d Her marriage to Philip of Spain, though political, saw her \u201cextraordinarily in love\u201d. But it was under Mary\u2019s half-sister, Elizabeth, that the fantasy of courtly love reached its apogee.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\""divE61AEC9C879D07B3A7A63D024773713D"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<p>The universal assumption during Elizabeth\u2019s early reign was that she too had to marry. But when it became apparent that she was treading a more controversial single path, the challenge was to find an acceptable language, a coding, for her unmarried female monarchy. At almost every point the rules of courtly love matched the relationship between Elizabeth and her courtiers \u2013 explaining as nothing else has done how such extravagance could be accepted so readily.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\""divC635C21BC6FE33FCB3F03E1B17512E07"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<p>The courtly lady was meant to be capricious and demanding, testing her lover\u2019s unquestioning devotion. Caprice and demand were Elizabeth\u2019s specialities. The theory made the homage paid by favourites like Leicester and Hatton, Ralegh and Essex seem admirable, rather than absurd, and gave an acceptable gloss to Elizabeth\u2019s own flirtatious behaviour. The role reversal implicit in a creed that seemed to give power to the woman is echoed in the complex position of a reigning queen.<\/p>\n<ul><li><strong><a href=\""https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/period\/tudor\/tudor-tunes-music-at-the-courts-of-henry-viii-elizabeth-i-and-james-vi-and-i\/"\">Tudor tunes: music at the courts of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and James VI and I<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul><\/div>\n<div id=\""divEF5F84BEAD5CDF2A8F49B347E6F53479"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<p>True, the original heroines of the courtly love story married \u2013 but then, Elizabeth would figure herself as married to her country, displaying the ring that symbolised the union. And if the courtly lady was supposed to be of higher rank, and thus able to dispense patronage, no one had more patronage at her disposal than the queen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\""div3011EACB068A76F7DFCAE533BB489DFA"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<p>Even more significantly, the courtly lady was supposed to provide a superior moral example which, if her adorer learnt from it, would improve his knightly status. Castiglione\u2019s <em>The Book of the Courtier<\/em> was translated by Sir Thomas Hoby three years into Elizabeth\u2019s reign, urging that the courtly lady should be loved by the perfect courtier \u201cand that she should love him in turn, so that both may attain absolute perfection\u201d. You could not get much higher, morally, than a woman who the ritual of the coronation had allied to God. In the courtly poetry of 14th-century Italy, Beatrice and Laura had acted as spiritual lodestars for Dante and Petrarch, and the role was ideal for a queen giving spiritual example to her country.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\""div00737CD5AD005FA19DF094770C8F8A17"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<p>Though courtly ideals had little currency under Elizabeth\u2019s successor, James, the idea of the queen reigning over hearts never entirely died away. In 1865 Ruskin urged women to be \u201cqueens to your lovers; queens to your husbands and your sons; queens of higher mystery to the world beyond\u201d. If the Tudors both exploited and embodied this enduring ideal, that may be one reason we are still so fascinated by their story.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\""div9449D5EE3A5635409A336E34E20BF942"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<p><strong>Sarah Gristwood\u00a0is the author of\u00a0<em><span class=\""font-Additional10\">The Tudors in Love: The Courtly Code Behind the Last Medieval Dynasty<\/span><\/em>, published by Oneworld on 23 September. She is\u00a0delivering a virtual talk on the Tudors and courtly love on Thursday\u00a028 October, 7-8pm BST. <a href=\""https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/events\/virtual-lecture\/"\">Find out more here<\/a><\/strong><span style=\""color:\" roboto-black=\"\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\""boxout-container\" boxoutcolor-goodfoodboxout=\"\">\n<div id=\""divD77A158C70CDEC008FC0255C07988720"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<section class=\""highlight\"><div class=\""highlight__content\" editor-content=\"\"> <div class=\""text-left\" heading-type=\"\" margin=\"\" h3=\"\">\n<h4><span class=\""color-StrongRed\">The Victorian revival<\/span><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\""text-left\" heading-type=\"\" margin=\"\" minisubhead=\"\">\n<h6>Courtly love enjoyed a later resurgence, impacting everything from Boy Scouts to the\u00a0<i>Titanic<\/i><\/h6>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\""div20A3968275C18CB64F5B89F1D18B85CD"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<p>Two centuries after jousting went out of fashion in Britain, the Eglinton tournament of 1839 once again saw knights in full armour thundering towards each other down the lists, hoping for a trophy that was to be awarded by the Queen of Beauty. The Victorian revival of chivalry had its roots in the Romantic rediscovery of all things medieval and the novels of Sir Walter Scott, and it was ultimately co-opted into the service of Victorian morality.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\""div6B24123BEF1A5293F947EE597CACD4BE"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<p>Victoria and Albert were painted as Queen Philippa and Edward III; Disraeli would later call Victoria \u201cthe Faery\u201d, in reference to Spenser\u2019s\u00a0<em>The Faerie Queene<\/em>. Baden-Powell urged his Boy Scouts to protect ladies, and a picture of Sir Galahad (preferred to Lancelot for his \u201cpurity\u201d) hung in the chapel at Eton. Tennyson\u2019s\u00a0<em>Idylls of the King<\/em>\u00a0pictured a repentant Guinevere prostrate at Arthur\u2019s feet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\""div1B6221AACF004196028FB5F2F922B90A"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<p>By contrast, the pre-Raphaelites seized on the Arthurian love triangle as a reflection of their own tangled love affairs. So too did the clever upper-class coterie known as the Souls. When Wilfred Scawen Blunt went to visit Lady Windsor, both dressed in white, they walked around a medieval castle discussing Lancelot and Guinevere.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\""divD77A158C70CDEC008FC0255C07988720"\" class=\""body-container\" text-left=\"\">\n<p>The ideal of chivalry would be there, too, when men made way for women and children on the decks of the\u00a0<em>Titanic<\/em>. And, poignantly, a soldier-knight kneeling before a lovely angel would be among the propaganda postcards produced for the First World War.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <\/p><\/div> <\/section><\/div>\n<\/div><\/body><\/html>\n<hr class=\"no-tts wp-block-separator\"\/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Sarah Gristwood Published: Tuesday, 26 October 2021 at 12:00 am Lancelot is desperate to reach Guinevere\u2019s chamber \u2013 so desperate that he\u2019s crawled over a bridge made from a sword blade to rescue her. The French poet Chr\u00e9tien de Troyes describes Lancelot\u2019s fingers shredded to the bone as he wrenches the bars from her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":6458,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"13"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2021\/10\/tudors-in-love-what-were-the-dynastys-romantic-secrets.jpg",620,413,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2021\/10\/tudors-in-love-what-were-the-dynastys-romantic-secrets-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2021\/10\/tudors-in-love-what-were-the-dynastys-romantic-secrets-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2021\/10\/tudors-in-love-what-were-the-dynastys-romantic-secrets.jpg",620,413,false],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2021\/10\/tudors-in-love-what-were-the-dynastys-romantic-secrets.jpg",620,413,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2021\/10\/tudors-in-love-what-were-the-dynastys-romantic-secrets.jpg",620,413,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2021\/10\/tudors-in-love-what-were-the-dynastys-romantic-secrets.jpg",620,413,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Sarah Gristwood Published: Tuesday, 26 October 2021 at 12:00 am Lancelot is desperate to reach Guinevere\u2019s chamber \u2013 so desperate that he\u2019s crawled over a bridge made from a sword blade to rescue her. The French poet Chr\u00e9tien de Troyes describes Lancelot\u2019s fingers shredded to the bone as he wrenches the bars from her…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/6457"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}