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Historical person
1473–1513
James IV ruled Scotland from 1488 to 1513 and became one of the most energetic Renaissance monarchs in northern Europe. He strengthened royal justice, supported shipbuilding, artillery, education and printing, and maintained a court interested in medicine and science.
His marriage to Margaret Tudor created the dynastic link that eventually united the crowns. Bound by alliance with France, James invaded England and was killed with many nobles at Flodden. James IV was born in Holyrood Abbey and died in Northumberland.
Nigel Tranter’s Chain of Destiny follows the teenage James IV from the rebellion that overthrows his father into the difficult work of becoming an independent king. Flame for the Fire brings James into the Kennedy family’s fortunes through his relationship with Janet Kennedy and the patronage politics of his court. Alison Weir’s The Pretender’s Wife shows him sheltering and recognising Perkin Warbeck, turning the claimant into an instrument of Scottish pressure on Henry VII. Linda Porter’s Crown of Thistles places James within the larger Tudor–Stewart dynastic contest, while The Thistle and the Rose follows his marriage to Margaret Tudor and the consequences of his death at Flodden for the young queen and their infant heir.
Series
Tudor Warrior follows James of Ecclestone through early Tudor politics, espionage and war. The series begins under Henry VII, uses the lingering threat of Yorkist claimants such as Perkin Warbeck, and moves toward Henry VIII and Flodden. It is a short sequence about service to a new dynasty…
All books in this series
The Plantagenet and Tudor novels form a chronological sequence of connected but independently readable stories about women near the English throne. They move from the Lancastrian court and the Wars of the Roses through the rise of the Tudors, Henry VIII’s marriages, the mid-Tudor religious crisis and the…
All books in this series
Opening with the catastrophe of Flodden in 1513, the James V Trilogy follows Scotland through the long minority, personal rule and final crisis of James V. A seventeen-month-old king becomes the prize of competing noble factions, while England, France, the Holy Roman Empire and the papacy all attempt…
All books in this series
Standalone books
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
