Jane was Henry VIII s third queen, and she was described by him as his first true wife , both his first two marriages having been annulled. She was twenty-seven when he married her, and came of a solid gentry family with good court connections. She had served both Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn as a Lady of the Privy Chamber, and her failure to find a suitable marriage is something of a mystery. He was forty-four and desperate for the male heir who had so far eluded him, but which Jane s placid disposition and sexual availability seemed to promise. She was no great beauty, but came of a good breeding stock, and therein lay his hope. They married at the end of May 1536, and she became pregnant at about the end of the year, a condition which advanced normally, but which caused the king acute anxiety as the summer of 1537 advanced. Then in October 1537 Jane performed the great miracle, and bore Henry a son, who lived and flourished. Tragically she died of puerperal fever a few days later, leaving the court in mourning and the king devastated. Her obsequies were elaborate and prolonged, and Henry stayed in mourning for many weeks. The king s son, Prince Edward, was carefully nurtured, and probably did not miss the mother he had never known. When the time came, his education was overseen by Henry s sixth queen, Catherine Parr, and he seems not to have had much of the Seymours in his make-up. He was very much his father s boy.