He was a Welshman with no money, no power, and no prospect of either. And yet, from the windswept island of Anglesey to the bedchamber of an English queen, Owen Tudor lived one of the most astonishing lives the medieval world ever produced.

This is the story of how a Welsh servant of fallen fortune came into England, fell secretly in love with Catherine of Valois (widow of Henry V), and entered a forbidden marriage that gave rise to the most famous royal dynasty in English history. The house of Tudor, the line of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, traces its roots to a quiet union made in shadow between a man with nothing and a queen with everything to lose.

Wander through the timber halls of medieval Anglesey, the candlelit courts of 15th century England, and the long and dangerous life of a man who died on a scaffold in Hereford, never knowing that his blood would one day sit on the throne of England.