Gloriana 03

Huzzah, more sword-fighting—and trash-talking!

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Embroidery was a pastime of aristocratic ladies in sixteenth-century England. They weren’t supposed to be sword-fighting, probably.

Hic, haec, hoc: ‘This, this, this’ in Latin; the nominative case; masculine, feminine & neuter. Lady Elizabeth Tudor was a clever language student. She amused herself by translating classical works from Latin to English. Beside Latin, Elizabeth was fluent in six languages, including Greek, French, and Italian.

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Gloriana 02

Swordplay! En garde! Thrust! Parry, thrust! Shift-ball-change, shift-ball-change, back-step!

Three boys against one girl hardly seems fair. Let’s see if she’s able to hold her own…

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Gloriana 01

The prologue’s finished, thank goodness. What awful people—I thought they’d never leave! So, to cleanse your palate of all that satanic stuff, here’s a teenaged girl in a stable-yard, wielding a brace of rapiers. (Thanks, Licia, for the fancy title treatment!)

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Prologue viii

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Put them all together they spell ‘murther‘!

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Sorry!—here are some Tudors

Apologies! I’m having some trouble working the buttons. I posted here yesterday evening with the intention of making the images easier to enlarge. It didn’t work and I deleted the post. Sorry if you were led here on a bootless enterprize.

To make amends, I post here today a few of the real-life personalities who’ve been dragooned into my story—even though some make mere cameo appearances. At least two of these (Jane & Henry) are by the great artist Hans Holbein, who was Henry’s court painter.

Catherine of Aragon

Anne Boleyn

Jane Seymour

Henry VIII

Prologue vii

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glor.viiA Glor.viiBa glor.viiBb If you hold down the ‘control’ button and click on an image, you can click on ‘view image’ to see it larger.

Prologue vi

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Prologue v

Hey, it’s Holy Week, everybody! So if you’d like to learn more about Mephistophilis’ reference to the busting-up of Israel and the Babylonian Exile, just pick up a handy Bible and read Kings 1 & 2 or Chronicles 1 & 2. Okay, okay, I know you don’t have time for all that. Here’s some quick info about Israel becoming a divided kingdom. Here’s all about the Babylonian Exile.

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Prologue iv

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Enter Mephistophilis

I’m still working on page iv. Here’s a sixteenth-century woodcut of the scene on page iii. I don’t know who the artist was. I guess they didn’t give artists credit much back then.