About Me: Founder of TudorsDynasty.com
Greetings! I have been wanting to write this for a while now but the rigors of everyday life seem to have gotten in the way each time I attempted to do so.
To some of you, the few of you who have been around from the beginning, you already know who I am and why I chose to start this website. For those of you who are new to this page, I hope I can answer some questions for you and motivate you to do what you’re passionate about.
To start, I always like to be upfront and tell you that I am not a historian, nor have I ever claimed to be one. Over a decade ago I became interested in the Tudor dynasty while watching Showtime’s, “The Tudors” and researching my own family tree. At the time my passion was genealogy and assisting others with discovering the mysteries of their own family. One day, while researching my own family, I came across a link to Margaret Tudor – sister to Henry VIII. From that point I was hooked on the Tudors and wanted to learn more. Eventually I found out that the link I had discovered was inaccurate but the love for 16th English royal history stuck.
To learn more about the Tudor dynasty, which at the time I knew very little about, I found every book possible. I became a regular customer at Barnes and Noble’s “Bargain Book” section and couldn’t find enough books to quench my thirst. Since then I’ve collected so many books that I can hardly count them all.
Over the last decade, my taste in books on the subject has changed quite a bit. At the beginning I thoroughly enjoyed fiction and historical fiction. I loved reference books with lots of pictures….and now, I’m always on the lookout for print copies of primary sources. You see, we all start somewhere. As long as we continue to grow and learn we’ll be able to spread our wings even further. I even check into as many free online courses as possible and found lectures online from Yale University that I’ve used to broaden my horizons.
A couple of years ago I discovered a website through Facebook that I found interesting. It was a website that listed all the things that happened on this day in history. I found myself searching out the site every morning to discover what had happened on that day nearly five hundred years ago. That website was TheAnneBoleynFiles.com and is run by my idol, Claire Ridgway. Claire has been nice enough to ask me to help her by creating quizzes for her other website, TudorSociety.com.
It was about this time that my husband, a published author, started to politely nudge me to start my own website to write about this new obsession of mine. I could not tell him no fast enough. I was not ready to write. I was not a writer. People would hate my what I wrote and make fun of me. Not long after we had this discussion he discovered Paper.li – this was a new platform that allowed you to create your own page name and share articles about whatever topic you were interested in. After going through many names (that were already taken) I landed on Tudors Weekly. I now had what you would call an online magazine with no original content. I created a Twitter page to help grow follows and wanted to see how many interested people I could get. There was interest in the site but there seemed to be more interest in my Twitter page. This was about the time when I became tired of posting other people’s work and decided that I was ready for my own website – two years ago this month (June 2015) I started Blog.TudorsWeekly.com.
What started out as my own “This Day in History” website eventually turned into mini-biographies about people of the Tudor court. My biggest interest was learning more about the lesser known women of the court – I wanted to tell their story.
To my surprise, nobody made fun of my writing, or made me feel inadequate. My husband told me when I was insecure about my writing that I would become better if I just kept writing. He was right. The more I write, the better I become. I not a scholar by any means but I am more comfortable in my own skin now – thanks to the Tudors.
About a year and a half ago I decided it was time to buy the domain, TudorsWeekly.com. I wanted the website to look more credible and I believed by removing “blog” from the beginning that my readers, or potential new readers would take me more seriously. At the time I was publishing a new post about once a week – so having “weekly” in the name made sense. Before long, my husband and I decided that we should change the name and also buy the domain for TudorsDynasty.com – all these domains are an investment of my own money to maintain and we even have a “web guy” we pay to run servers for us…or something like that, I don’t really understand. He’s the guy we call if the website goes down and he waves a magic wand or something and it comes back.
So…even though I’m doing what I’m passionate about it’s costing me lots of money – the website costs, new equipment to create podcasts and all the books I buy to research. For those reasons, this is why I ask for donations from the wonderful people like you to help me continue on without breaking my bank account. My podcast website is a great way to donate if you would prefer to do a small monthly amount (a small amount low as $1/month) instead of one lump sum donation (any size) through my personal PayPal account. I do not expect all of you to donate, but I would greatly appreciate it is you do. I have 20 people who make monthly payments through my podcast site Patreon right now and I cannot thank them enough. Anyone who writes a blog wants to feel accepted and know what they’re doing is appreciated – this evening 20 people make the narcissistic side of me feel fantastic and ease my financial burdens.
If I could do this full-time I would, but for now my career in marketing is what pays my mortgage and all the things that go along with adulting. I love marketing and know my experience in it helps me with my blog. What I’m getting at is my website/blog is what I do in my spare time. My husband sometimes has to tell me that I need to get off my computer because I’m neglecting my family. I’m hoping, at some point, I can spend all my time reading and writing. I love what I do so much!
If you can find it in your heart to throw a bit of money my way I would greatly appreciate it – it’s not expected but greatly appreciated. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart for following and sharing my articles/blogs – you are all amazing!
Rebecca Larson
Founder of TudorsDynasty.com
If you are indeed interested in supporting me, here are the links to do so:
One-time Donation:
Do you ?? this website and cannot get enough of it? Or would you just like to show your support for me, Rebecca Larson….here is an option for a one-time donation through a secure PayPal page. Thanks in advance!
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Monthly Donation:
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Email Subscription (when new articles are posted, you are notified via email!)
History Rebecca Larson Royal History Blogger TudorsDynasty.com
