Elizabeth Blount

Elizabeth Blount, usually called Bessie, is a young woman at Henry VIII’s court whose favor with the king becomes inseparable from the question of who can provide him with a surviving son. Her relationship with Henry produces Henry Fitzroy, whom the king acknowledges and later raises to two dukedoms. Through Bessie and her son, the novel makes private royal favor a visible political fact: a child born outside the queen’s marriage can be displayed as evidence of the king’s ability to father an heir, while intensifying the threat to Princess Mary Tudor’s position.

Court Position and the King’s Favor

Bessie arrives at court as a young woman whose fair, childish prettiness attracts admiration, including Henry’s. The narrative places her among the queen’s ladies and shows the king courting her attention through poems, dancing, teasing, and gifts. At one point, Margaret encounters her dressed for hunting; Bessie is hurrying to see a new horse Henry has bought for her. The episode captures the imbalance in their positions: Bessie can accept the king’s invitation and gifts, but Margaret recognizes that no one at court can exercise authority over his chosen favorite.

Katherine of Aragon is pregnant while Henry’s attention to Bessie is becoming conspicuous. Margaret tries to reassure the queen, saying Bessie loves her and would not deliberately hurt her. When Bessie herself is asked to remember Katherine’s distress and avoid speaking against her, she responds emphatically that she would never harm the queen and that the ladies-in-waiting love her. Yet she also says her father has told her not to say anything that might worry the king. Her professions of attachment to Katherine exist alongside her obedience to a family instruction shaped by Henry’s wishes, exposing how little room a court woman has to separate personal loyalty from royal pressure.

The court’s response to Bessie is not simply private gossip. When Princess Mary Tudor is sent to France, Katherine suggests that Bessie might accompany her, which would spare the queen the sight of Bessie dancing with Henry as she approaches confinement. Bessie’s father refuses the proposed honor, and the narrative presents his decision as obedience to the king. Bessie remains at court, where Henry’s favor has practical force beyond the queen’s household.

Henry Fitzroy and the Succession

During one of Katherine’s confinements, Bessie is with Henry. After a girl is stillborn, Margaret goes to deliver the news to the king and finds him playing cards with Bessie as his partner. Gold coins lie before her, and the lively private gathering falls quiet when Margaret enters. The scene places the contrast between the queen’s loss and the king’s favored circle in the same moment. Later, Margaret tells Katherine that Bessie was with Henry during the confinement; Katherine treats the information as old news, remarking that Bessie is always with him when she is pregnant.

Bessie gives birth to a boy who survives his first months. The child is named Henry and given the surname Fitzroy, a name that marks his royal paternity; the king acknowledges him as his son, and Bessie receives an allowance to raise him. At court, people widely speak of the boy as Henry’s own. Margaret believes Cardinal Thomas Wolsey encourages that talk so that the kingdom will hear that Henry can father a strong surviving son. The contrast is politically charged: the queen’s pregnancies have repeatedly ended in loss, while Bessie’s child lives. In the narrative, the boy’s survival turns Bessie’s favor into a challenge to the assumptions sustaining Mary’s place in the succession, though it does not itself establish that he is the lawful heir.

Margaret tests Thomas More about Bessie’s son, asserting that Bessie has had a boy. More hesitates rather than confirming it directly; Margaret takes his silence as enough and returns to the queen. The exchange shows that the child’s paternity is an open secret within the court, even where speech remains cautious. The narrative repeatedly presents knowledge as something circulated through looks, silences, and carefully managed statements.

Marriage and the King’s Changing Attention

After Bessie comes out of confinement, she is married to Gilbert Tailboys, a young man under Wolsey’s wardship. The narrative describes the marriage as arranged after the birth and reports that Henry does not return to Bessie as a lover. It connects this withdrawal to a change in his attention: as he matures, he appears to favor either notorious beauties or girls new to court. Bessie’s story at court therefore shifts from conspicuous royal attention to marriage and an allowance for raising her child. The evidence does not follow her later life in detail, but makes clear that her son remains a public reminder of her connection to the king.

In July 1525, when Henry Fitzroy is six, Henry stages a grand procession at Bridewell and gives the boy the titles Duke of Richmond and Duke of Somerset. Thomas More reads the letters patent. The double elevation makes the king’s acknowledgment of Bessie’s son visible in rank and ceremony. Margaret, who reports the event from Bisham Manor, recognizes the pain it brings Katherine to see the king honor the boy. Bessie herself is not described as taking part in the procession; the political significance of her position is carried forward through her son.

Loss and Narrative Significance

Henry Fitzroy’s later death gives Bessie’s connection to the king a further, sorrowful meaning. In grief, Henry asks Margaret what Bessie did to offend God and why Richmond was taken from him if there is no curse. His words remember Bessie through the son they shared, while framing the boy’s death as part of the king’s personal and dynastic misfortune. The episode also recalls the novel’s recurring juxtaposition of the king’s bodily and familial vulnerability with his claims to political supremacy.

Bessie’s principal narrative importance lies in the way her court favor becomes evidence in arguments about succession. Henry Fitzroy’s survival and public advancement help Margaret’s son Montague conclude that the king intends to set Princess Mary aside; he proposes sending Geoffrey to carry reports and messages to Reginald Pole and to seek papal intervention. Margaret’s account thus links Bessie’s relationship with Henry, the child’s elevation, and a wider political response. Bessie is not shown directing that conflict. Rather, her story reveals how a woman’s proximity to the king could produce consequences far beyond her own household, as courtly favor became a question about legitimacy, royal authority, and the future of the dynasty.