Drawing on lost royal letters from a closed archive White King introduces us to Charles I as the monarch at the heart of a story for our times a tale of populist politicians & the fall of the mighty of religious hatreds & civil war of the power of a new media & a maligned queen The reign of Charles I is one of the most dramatic in history Yet Charles the man remains elusive Too often he is recalled as weak & stupid his wife Henrietta Maria as spoilt & silly the cause of his ruin This has bred not only contempt but also indifference Today's readers have preferred the well-trodden reigns of the Tudors But Charles is revealed here as a complex & fascinating man who pays the price for bringing radical change; Henrietta Maria is a warrior queen & political player as extraordinary as any Tudor Here too is the story of the cousins who befriended & betrayed them Henry Holland the king's closest body servant whose brother engineered the king's fall & Lucy Carlisle immortalized in Alexandre Dumas's Three Musketeers as the scheming Lady de Winter Epic in scale White King is also a very human story about the choices people make & of the family man behind the image of the white' king who on his execution was reviled as a traitor & murderer by some but lauded by others as the people's martyr