By the Grace of the King. A Novel about Henry VIII

The figure of this ruler is extremely controversial. For his contemporaries, Henry VIII of the Tudor dynasty was a great king. An idealistic monarch, he expanded Parliament, founded the Royal Navy, and modernized medical education. He composed music and poetry,... adored knightly tournaments, and patronized the arts. In his youth, the educated and gifted prince was considered the embodiment of many virtues, and he had all the qualities to make his reign a true triumph of the English Renaissance. However, it remains in history primarily as a time of dangerous intrigues and bloodshed. Henry severed relations with the Pope and founded his own church, plundered monasteries, beheaded two of his wives, and exiled two others. He died a suspicious, corpulent, ailing tyrant, aged beyond his years. Nevertheless, almost five centuries have passed, and his memory lives on. Is it not time for the king who forever changed the state structure of England to speak up for himself? For the first time in Russian!