12/17/2023 0 Comments Royal vaultIt is questionable whether this grouping is, in fact, a reconciliation in death, or the continuance of their earthly conflict. It is arguable whether their shared location would have been welcome to them when taking in account their recorded behaviour when they did gather together as a family. The grouping of this royal vault makes a fascinating and curious study for consideration, bearing in mind the relationships these royal individuals had had in life. It contains a hidden world of stories, passion and anger, hatred and betrayal. The reputation of the monarch sometimes atones for the lack of a monument in Henry VIII’s case, in breathtaking proportion. The slab is in the Quire – also the aisle down which every royal bride has walked who married there, from Queen Victoria’s reign onwards. So by historical accident, the awesome Tudor King lies beneath a simple slab with his third wife, Queen Jane Seymour in a vault he shares with Charles I and an infant child of Queen Anne, at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Henry VIII’s spectacular tomb at Windsor, of course, was never completed. The boy king, Edward VI’s tomb, is more hidden than otherwise, lying under a barely-noticed marble slab appropriately at the foot of the grave of his grandparents, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. No monument was erected for King Charles II for example instead, his impressive life-size effigy stood beside his grave for over a century. These are at least, respectably visible in their roped-off marked vaults. The Stuart tombs in the Quire of the south aisle of the Lady Chapel have their own modest slabs for Charles II, Mary II, William III, Prince George of Denmark and Queen Anne. The first Stuart King of England James I, for example, shares mortal eternity in the resplendent Torrigiano tomb designed for his Tudor ancestors, Henry VII and Queen Elizabeth of York in the magnificent Lady Chapel, the first King and Queen of the preceding dynasty. Some tombs are harder to find in the first instance. In addition to the handful of tombs of England’s medieval kings and their queens consort clustered close to or around the great shrine of Edward the Confessor at Westminster Abbey, one royal vault is quite unlike the rest.
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