Jasper who?

The Tudors might be one of the most famous dynasties in British history, yet one of the central architects of their success remains relatively unknown.

Born in 1431, Jasper was the second son of an illicit union between the dowager queen of England, Catherine of Valois, and a Welsh servant, Owen Tudor (or Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur to give him his non-anglicised name). He grew up in secrecy alongside his elder brother Edmund before being formally recognised at King Henry VI’s half-brother and made Earl of Pembroke in 1452. Following Edmund’s sudden death in 1456, Jasper assumed responsibility for his pregnant sister-in-law, the thirteen-year-old Margaret Beaufort and her unborn child, the future Henry VII.

Hailed as Y Mab Darogan, or The Son of Prophecy by the Welsh bards, Jasper’s loyalty to the house of Lancaster remained unwavering throughout the Wars of the Roses. This book imagines those thirty years of conflict through his eyes, trying to shed new light on one of the period’s (and history’s) most overlooked protagonists.