In politics, being neighbors doesn’t mean being friends. The struggles between the Tudors of England and the Stuarts of Scotland shaped the power dynamic of the two countries and affected the politics of Europe as well.

The inevitable mixture of power and personality with the key players in this group make their battles a struggle for personal as well as political survival. So choose your side—Team Tudor or Team Stuart—and let’s get ready to rumble.

When Henry Tudor took the English throne, he knew he had his job cut out for him: create a dynasty and get other countries around the world to accept him as the King of England. One way to create alliances and demonstrate the growing status of the Tudors was to arrange marriages with prominent royal families. Toward that end, Henry VII arranged two marriages: the marriage of his son and heir (at the time) Prince Arthur to Princess Katherine of Aragon in 1501 and the marriage of his daughter Princess Margaret to King James IV of Scotland in 1503.

We usually focus on Arthur and Katherine, as it gets the Henry VIII marital merry-go-round started. But the marriage of Princess Margaret and King James IV is the one that would ignite the Tudor/Stuart rivalry and lead to power struggles and politics that would reshape England and Scotland for years to come.

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