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40 Facts About the Tudor Era’s Awful Courtier, Thomas Seymour

Khalid Elhassan March 22, 2019 24 min

29. Charm the King? Marry a Princess? Or Both?

Thomas Seymour actively set out to undermine his older brother in a bid to weaken his hold on power, and thus replace him as Lord Protector. Unsurprisingly, Edward Seymour resented that, and the siblings’ relationship took a nosedive from rivalry to enmity. Thomas adopted a two track strategy to increase his power: gain personal influence over the child king by charming him, or wed one of the king’s sisters, Mary or Elizabeth. He was relentless in his pursuit of both strategies.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.