There was one among the mourners who wept with the others, but he could not suppress the fierce joy in his heart.

This was what he had always longed for. To be the firstborn. But that was of no consequence now. Miraculously he was there in the place he had longed for.

No longer Duke of York, but Prince of Wales.

“Henry the King,” he murmured to himself. “Henry the Eighth.”

He could not help studying his father, whose face was pale, whose hair was gray and whose eyes were without luster. Arthur’s death had aged him a great deal. Well, the Prince of Wales was only eleven and even he recognized that was rather young to be a king.

“I can wait awhile,” he told himself, “knowing that one day it will come.”

The Princes in

the Tower

At the heart of his insecurity was the fear that someone would arise and snatch the throne from him—someone mature, strong, able to charm the people and who was in possession of that which for all his cleverness Henry would never attain: the claim to rule by the law of hereditary accession.