When I was seven or eight years old, one of my best friends came over. She was a couple years younger and obsessed with Queen Elizabeth I. (Understandably so! The woman was fascinating!)
We were playing dress-up and chatting, and then somehow Henry VIII came up. My friend asked me: "Did you know there was a guy once who had six wives?"
Six wives! A veritable Bluebeard! I had no choice but to learn about him after that. And it turns out that one cannot simply casually learn about Henry VIII... at least I couldn't. This would be the beginning of my obsession. For a couple of years, several days a week, this friend and I would bring out our toys and play "Queen Elizabeth I's court". We were Her Majesty's nieces, and we were being brought up as her heirs. It became our lives.
When I was eleven I wrote a book for my friend all about our adventures in the court, she maintained that it was one of her favorite books for years. Probably more through shared experience than through writing style or quality of the plot. Here is a clip from that book: "Walking over to her cousin Elizabeth spoke. 'Mary, the Council and other such residents of my castle, seem to think the storm that rages above our heads is of your cause. I shall take you to my chambers where you may wash and change, and then we shall hold a questioning.' Elizabeth stopped and looked over her shoulder at the door, behind which the councilors were listening. She lowered her voice. 'I shall do my best to persuade them you did not make the storm from witchery and malice. Now, come.'"
Just to give you a bit of context, that is Queen Elizabeth I of England, informing her cousin Mary Queen of Scots that the court believed Mary to be a witch. Because there was a bad storm and those superstitious nobles immediately assumed it was a witch. Plenty of drama, little historical accuracy, and I'm still not entirely sure why Elizabeth felt she had to hold a witch trial (Yup, that's what "questioning" means...) for her own cousin. Oh well. I was eleven, it's excusable.
At any rate, my love of history just snowballed from there. This friend was also the one that introduced me to Horrible Histories which I'll talk about in another post, but once I started watching that there was no turning back. Funny how that chain of events could lead to me seriously contemplating the career of a historian, but that is exactly what it's achieved.
-HHB
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