The Boy King Whose Lungs Rotted Inside Him

He was the miracle son Henry VIII killed for, but his body was a ticking time bomb. Edward VI became King at just nine years old, but by fifteen, his lungs were rotting inside his chest. The court records describe a death that was almost too gruesome to believe. His skin turned a sickly green, his legs swelled to double their size, and he began coughing up pieces of his own blackened lungs. To hide the fact that the King was dying, his advisors forced him to stand at the palace windows to wave at the public, even as his pulse was fading. When he finally died, the rumors were so dark that people whispered he had been poisoned by a slow-acting venom wiped on his favorite books. In reality, he was the victim of a genetic fragility passed down through the Tudor line—the very legacy his father had destroyed six women to protect.

Interesting Fact Edward VI was so obsessed with his own legacy that on his deathbed, he bypassed his own sisters to name Lady Jane Grey as his heir, a decision that led to her being beheaded just months later.

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