I just finished Alison Weir's The Children of Henry VIII. The book discusses the Tudor kids, Mary, Elizabeth, and Edward, and their relationships with each other.
Once again, I was struck by just what a complete blank Edward VI, the youngest legitimate child of Henry VIII, is compared to his sisters. Granted, he was a child king who died, apparently quite hideously, from tuberculosis before his 16th birthday (none of that quiet fading away from consumption; the court physicians kept records, and it's clear poor Edward suffered from extrapulmonary TB and experienced a whole host of secondary opportunistic infections -- he literally rotted to death), but it's still odd that so little personality emerges from the archives. Various of his writings survive -- correspondence with his sisters and others, for example -- but there's no personality there.
On the other hand, the little bit that does emerge suggests it might have been a good thing he didn't make it to adulthood. When it came to religion, Weir hints that Edward was as much of a fanatic as his oldest sister but in the other direction (vehemently anti-Catholic where Mary was passionately pro-Rome). He also comes across as having had all of his father's ego but none of his sense of humor or love of life. Religious fervor and humorless -- not a good combination.
