Hello, I'm Lucy Worsley, chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces.

You're listening to our podcast that explores the history and stories of our six palaces.

These talks are a collection of some of our best live events.

I really hope you enjoy listening.

The Tudor Court was all about competitive displays of power and wealth.

This series examines the influence of music and entertainment on the balance of power.

In this talk, historian Susanna Lipscomb explores a role of the fool at the Tudor Court,

calling in to question the myths surrounding these entertainers.

This is the family of Henry the Eighth. You've probably all seen it hanging up in the palace.

And it's this beautiful but fictionalised picture from 1545. So of course we've got Henry Henry very proudly at the centre of his family, with Edward,

with Mary and Elizabeth, and of course his long-dead wife, Jane Seymour.

No one quite knows what Catherine Parr made of being excluded from this particular picture.

And the fact that Jane Seymour is in it, as opposed to Catherine Parr, tells us that the characters have been carefully chosen.

And yet, of course, as you'll notice, flanking the family and strikingly framed in these doorways are two other characters.

And they are Will Summer, the Kings Falls, so we can see him in a green doublet, a red hose

with closely cropped hair and he's got that monkey sitting on his shoulder looking for lice

and on the other side an apparently bald woman dressed in a tight-fitting red and white cap, a red patterned gown and an unusually

pleated curtail. And her attention seems to have been caught by something in the distance.

And she is probably Jane the Four, who you've just heard about. So she was full to Amber Lynn, Jane Seymour, Princess Mary, Catherine Parr over time.

So Henry's actual wife in 1545 doesn't feature in the picture, but her fool does.

And this raises immediate questions, doesn't it, about why the falls are there? Why are they included in this

important dynastic portrait? Why do we see the falls appearing in all sorts of

...