Virginia Henley Quotes

England was never more happy before, nor much more since, than after the head of the first Stuart [King Charles I] was severed from his body, and while it was under the protectorship of Oliver Cromwell.

I am Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors.

The irony about Charles II is not that he came to the throne because England needed a successor to Charles I, but because England needed a successor to Oliver Cromwell.

Marie Antoinette was funny, I'm sure she was just misinterpreted. You know the 'Let them eat cake' line. She seems like she was kind of funny, like a Chelsea Handler or Kathy Griffin type.

The Stuart sovereigns of England steadily attempted to strengthen their power, and the resistance to that effort caused an immense growth of Parliamentary influence.

Obviously I've had this fascination with aristocracy my whole life. Like, the kings and queens of 500 years ago... they're like rock stars. If there was a 'TMZ' 500 years ago, it would be about, like, Henry VIII and Marie Antoinette and all those people.

I am a huge admirer of Elizabeth I, and this intriguing biography gives a wonderful picture of the era.

So many of the fantasy stories I encountered growing up were set in worlds that were largely modelled on medieval Europe in one way or another. Lots of white folks in feudal societies, castles and kings, that kind of thing.

There was a woman in Elizabeth I's court that happened to have the same family name as me.

I was actually very hesitant to write about Marie Antoinette. She seemed at first glance - well, I cannot think of any other term - an airhead of the first degree.

The first democratic revolution was England in the 1640s.

I think, first and foremost, Marie Antoinette was intellectually impoverished. She really had never been introduced to the notion of abstract thinking - of thinking at all in any profound way.

I think in English history a very interesting character is John Lilburne. Very interesting character because of the way he managed to develop the whole debate about the English civil war into something very different.

After Mary Queen of Scots, I turned to the farthest subject possible: Cromwell.

From William of Orange to William Pitt the younger there was but one man without whom English history must have taken a different turn, and that was William Pitt the elder.

Anyone can play Henry VIII. I mean, even Robert Shaw... has played it.

I'm obsessed with historical English royalty.

I got four volumes of the letters and speeches of Oliver Cromwell. He is prominent among the great unread, and treated so oddly by history that I wanted to hear his side of things.

Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.

There is no reason why a king should be rich or a rich man should be a king, no reason at all.

England was a cold, backward, rebellious little kingdom. It's king: Henry the Eighth, remembered principally for his six wives and the chicken legs clutched in his fat fists.

News flash, lady. There are no queens anymore,” Shane said. He loaded shells in a shotgun and snapped it shut, then searched for a place to strap it on that didn’t interfere with the flamethrower. “No queens, no kings, no emperors. Not in America. Only CEOs. Same thing, but not so many crowns.

If you see yourself as a kingly type, then you need your serfs and your army and so on around you.

English history is aristocracy with the doors open. Who has courage and faculty, let him come in.

All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. It's the way they're raised.