Henry VII took the English throne at Bosworth Field in 1485 by killing Richard III on the battlefield, then spent the rest of his reign making sure no one could do the same to him. Author Thomas Penn walks through the buildings and documents that survive from that reign, from the fortified palaces Henry built to guard against rebellion to the financial records showing how he bled the nobility with fines and bonds to keep them broke and obedient. Penn traces the paranoia that followed Henry after Bosworth, the pretenders who claimed to be Yorkist heirs, and the network of spies and informants he used to root out conspiracies real and imagined. The film follows the story to Henry's secretive final years, when his health failed and his court kept the succession plans hidden until his son could take the crown as Henry VIII. What emerges is less a founding hero than a calculating survivor, a king who understood that winning a crown by force meant everyone else might try the same thing.