Awesome / Now Blooms the Tudor Rose

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• King Henry IX of England and Mary, Queen of Scots attempt to bring an end to decades of emnity between their two neighbouring countries, and come to terms with their mutual relationship with the French, in a long-overdue meeting at York. It ends with their elopement, which creates a personal union between the two countries, establishing a de facto Protestant settlement, and allows them to oppose France without fear of direct retribution.
  • Their marriage also seems to be a love match - a very rare thing in the 16th century - and immediately bears fruit with the birth of a son, Arthur, who has already been confirmed to unite England and Scotland under one ruler as the beginning of a long line of Tudor Kings of Britain.
• Thomas Cromwell, sensing a plot to discredit him and possibly put him into the sights of Henry VIII and usual method of disposing of failed subordinates, promptly resigns from the Privy Council and retreats to his estates, only to later rise again during the minority of Henry IX. As the narration so aptly puts it:
  "Living men can recover from setbacks. Dead men generally cannot."
• Anne Boleyn holds off everyone on the Privy Council during the minority of her son in order to remain Regent, including Cromwell, the Duke of Norfolk, and many others.
• Anne Boleyn also manages to ally England with the entire broad spectrum of Protestant powers by marrying her eldest daughter to the most prominent Lutheran, and her second son to one of the most radical Reformists. Sadly, her plans to marry Henry IX to a French princess come to naught - unless one counts Mary, Queen of Scots (scion of the House of Guise) as one - as her late husband, Henry VIII, did.)
• Edward, Duke of York, becomes Regent at age 14, while his brother is away at war - and does such a great job that he impresses the entire Privy Council with his administrative prowess!
• Charles, (the eventual) Prince of Asturias, and future King of Spain, was introduced as a heavily inbred, barely-literate moron - who has since become a satirical, scheming prince, constantly triumphing over his much-more-powerful father - and whom history would later remember as one of its greatest correspondents.
  • And, like Henry IX, his eventual marriage - with the King of England's former betrothed, no less! - is a love match. Indeed, he and Elisabeth of Valois are so beatifically devoted to one another it's almost sickening.
• Pope Pius IV proves his mettle when he essentially forces the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand to submit to him in order to be crowned and receive the assistance that he so desperately needs.

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