Unfortunately, Edmund died of the plague early in his marriage to the 13-year-old Margaret Beaufort, but not before he got her pregnant. When the Wars of the Roses began, Jasper and Edmund gave their royal half-brother unwavering loyalty, and Edmund was given the most sought-after heiress in the land to marry as a reward. Owen was later killed fighting for Henry VI, his step-son, in one of the beginning battles of the Wars of the Roses. King Henry VI also released Owen Tudor from prison when he was old enough to rule the kingdom on his own, and gave him a royal allowance as the father of his half-brothers. Both brothers became Knights of the Garter. He even publicly recognized Edmund and Jasper as his “uterine brothers,” and gave them titles of nobility. In 1442, King Henry VI took a personal interest in the upbringing of his half-brothers and brought them to court, where he could oversee their religious and moral education, as he was known as an exceptionally pious king. Henry VI, their half-brother, was old enough at this time to make some of his own decisions as king, and he decided to accept and embrace his illicit half-siblings, even giving them their own servants as befitted relatives of royalty. However, when Katherine died after giving birth to a stillborn child in 1437, Owen was arrested for fraternizing with a queen, and imprisoned, while Edmund and Jasper were sent to live with the sister of the 1st Duke of Suffolk, who raised them. The court was scandalized but accepted the union and the children for the sake of the king. Edmund and Jasper's existence became known. The monks of the abbey took the child from her and raised him as a monk. She tried to hide her pregnancy, but her water broke prematurely, and she gave birth to Owen at Westminster Abbey. The relationship and the children were all secret until the dowager queen went to visit her eldest child, King Henry VI, who was still a minor at the time. The personal historian of the later King Henry VII mentions a daughter who became a nun, but nothing more is known of her, or if she was even really a daughter of Owen Tudor and the dowager queen. There are only three children between Owen and Katherine that are definitively historically documented… Edmund, Jasper, and Owen. Some historians believe they had as many as six, while others go with three. It is unclear to historians whether Owen Tudor and Queen Katherine of Valois married, but whether they did or didn't, they did have children together. He was far below her station, and the union was kept secret for many years because of its wild unsuitability for the times. At some point early in her widowhood, she began a love affair with her Welsh squire, Owen Tudor. While the infant king had his late father's many brothers to govern the country for him, and advise him as he got older, his young mother was left largely on her own. Henry V wasn't immune to the other hazards of the times, though, and died of dysentery on the battlefield at only 35 years old, leaving his 21-year-old queen a widow, and their nine-month-old son the new King Henry VI. Henry V was considered England's last great warrior king, and plenty of future kings tried to emulate him (most notably his distant cousin and later king, Henry VIII), but none came close to his success at making war and fighting on the battlefield. They had one son together, also named Henry. King Henry V was on the throne, with his young French queen, Katherine of Valois, by his side. Jasper's story really begins before his birth, during the Hundred Years' War between England and France. But before he became a political mastermind, manipulator, and spy on behalf of his nephew, Henry Tudor, he was a secret child of an illicit and scandalous love affair that would eventually change the entire monarchy of England and bring about the beginning of the Tudor dynasty of English monarchs. Born in November of 1431, Jasper Tudor was the son of a queen and played one of the most intriguing behind-the-scenes roles in the Wars of the Roses… one that eventually led to the 30-plus year war's conclusion at the infamous Battle of Bosworth Field.
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