Hello and welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast.

I am your host, Heather Tesco, and I'm a storyteller who makes history accessible

because I believe it's a pathway to understanding

who we are, our place in the universe, and being more deeply in touch with our own humanity.

So this episode is on Ursula Pole, and in the grand tutor history world, there's certain names

like Henry, Elizabeth, Anne, loom large casting shadows that often obscure the lives of other equally intriguing figures.

And in the past year, we've been kind of delving into some of those people like the Poles and the Stafford families.

They were pivotal in the political and dynastic

dramas of the Tudor Court. And straddling the worlds of both of these influential families

was a figure whose story offers a unique insight into the perilous journey of survival, allegiance, and ambition during this turbulent

period, and that is Ursula Pole. Ursula's life embodied the transition from the

Plantagenets to the Tudors. She had Plantagenet blood, yet she was deeply entwined in the dramas of the Tudor court.

And Ursula's life spans the reins of several Tudor of Monarchs, and it's a testament to the

delicate balancing act she had to do of kind of managing loyalties, navigating politics.

So Ursula Pohl was born in a world of transition. of managing loyalties, navigating politics.

So Ursul Pohl was born in a world of transition.

She is the daughter of Margaret Pohl.

So when she was born, the shadows of the Wars of the Roses were still hovering over England, the fledgling Tudor dynasty represented by Henry the 7th was still making efforts to establish its legitimacy and suppress remnants of the old Plantagenet rivalries.

So Ursula was born about 1504.

She was the daughter of Sir Richard Pole and Margaret Plantagenet.

Margaret Plantagenet was the daughter of

George Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward V. 4th and Richard III. It's worth remembering that

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