I have added a new post to the Copy Book, An Accident of Births. It is the whole of the first chapter of The Prince and the Pauper, written by American writer Mark Twain and first published in 1881.
The story was Twain’s first attempt at historical fiction, and was set in Tudor England. In 1537, King Henry VIII and his consort Queen Jane (Seymour) became the proud parents of a baby boy, whom they named Edward, a prize for which the King had been working for ten years. So important had a male heir become to him, that had put away his first wife Catherine, and beheaded his second wife Anne, and all the country felt both joy and relief. As Twain tells the tale, another little boy was born on the same day, October 12th, a child whom nobody wanted, but who was destined to become entangled in the counsels of the great.