There’s a new book for lovers of Tudor history – and especially those who also love fast-paced action adventures! It’s called The Tudor Prince, and it launches on 23rd January 2024.

The Tudor Prince is the second book that features the fiesty Tudor adventuress Mary Fox.

In the first book – The Broken Sword – Mary is ordered to marry a sadistic older man. Not being a typical subservient Tudor girl, Mary decides instead to strike out on her own. As a woman in a man’s world, no-one expects her to survive, but Mary is determined to prove them wrong. She’s challenged to return the Broken Sword talisman and so break a centuries-old curse – and she soon learns how to scheme, fight and outwit those who would drag her back to a life of servitude. And this makes her more than a match for any man!

Although The Tudor Prince picks up her story soon after, the books can be read in either order. This new story sees Mary needing to put all her new-found skills to good use when she has to impersonate Prince Henry Fitzroy, the illegitimate son of Henry VIII. Fitzroy was a real person, as was his mother Elizabeth ‘Bessie’ Blount. She was King Henry’s mistress in 1519, and bore him the boy when she was aged around nineteen. The King acknowledged his son, and was likely to have considered legitimising him as heir to the throne. Equally, Fitzroy’s very existence was used by the King as proof that he could father sons – enabling him to put the blame on Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn for not giving him any legitimate boys.

Henry VIII showered honours and titles on Fitzroy from an early age, bestowing on him the dukedoms of Richmond and Somerset, as well as the earldom of Nottingham and the Order of the Garter. There were several other titles, positions and honours, but it was the King’s acknowledgement of his illegitimate son that has led me to refer to the boy in my book as ‘the Prince’.

There are a number of real events in the Prince’s life that I have weaved in throughout the book, although I have, as you would expect, put a ‘Mary Fox’ spin on them. And as well as the Prince and Bessie Blount, a number of other real characters make appearances in the story – including King Henry VIII himself, Anne Boleyn, The Duke of Norfolk and his son the Earl of Surrey. Eustace Chapuys, the ambassador to the Holy Roman Emperor, also makes a brief appearance!

The book was inspired by a few curious facts about the life of Henry Fitzroy that intrigued me. I won’t say here what they were as that might spoil the book – but sufficient to say they raised a fair few questions. And as someone inspired by royal substitution stories such as The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain and The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope (brilliantly parodied by George Macdonald Fraser in Royal Flash), my thoughts turned to the possibility that maybe there had been a substitute for the Prince himself. Step forward Mary Fox, my intrepid heroine! She’s never been averse to wearing boy’s clothes and is always up for adventure!

But of course, a good adventure needs a bad enemy – and I had a ready villain in the person of Jacob Cruddon. After he and Mary have crossed swords (literally) in The Broken Sword, he’s implacably opposed to her. He has only one aim in his life – to end hers. So, while Mary is trying to help the Prince, Cruddon is always just behind, trying to kill her!

Can Mary defeat Cruddon and get out alive, or will he get his own revenge by killing her first?

The Tudor Prince is available on Amazon as an eBook from today, with the print paperback coming out very soon.