Berkeley Castle

Our thanks to Deb for the great shot.

The Return of Berkeley Castle – 1553

The spring of 1553 brought a rare peace to England, though it was a fragile one, a candle flame shielded by cupped hands. In Kenninghall, Norfolk, the Tudor Court gathered for a celebration that was more than just a wedding—it was the restoration of an ancient name.

King Edward Tudor, the Silver Fang Garou King, bestowed as wedding gift the storied Berkeley Castle upon Henry Berkeley, the 7th Baron Berkeley, as he wed Katherine Howard, third daughter of the late Earl of Surrey. With this gift, the King restored the ancestral seat of the Berkeleys after sixty years of crown possession, returning it to the family whose blood had guarded those walls since the 12th century.

The young couple received the castle with joy, knowing they were taking command not only of a strong fortress, but of a symbol—of survival, legitimacy, and the endurance of noble names through Tudor storms. Yet, as their carriage first passed the ancient gatehouse, a chill fell over Katherine’s heart. She would later whisper to her husband:

“The stones here remember too much blood.”

The Shadow in the Castle

Unknown to the bride and groom, Berkeley Castle did indeed remember—because one of its oldest residents still walked within.

Roger de Berkeley, dispossessed in 1152 for defying the Plantagenets, had not perished in disgrace. Embraced into the Ventrue Clan during the Anarchy, he lingered, tied to the castle as surely as ivy binds to stone. For centuries, he slumbered beneath its foundations, rising only when fate itself turned the key of history.

The records told of 1326, when Hugh Despenser’s men ransacked the fortress, and of 1327, when Edward II was imprisoned in the castle’s damp, echoing chambers. The chroniclers wrote that Edward died there in September of that year—but what they never knew was that it was Roger de Berkeley himself who came to him in the night, offering eternity.

Edward accepted, rising as one of the Ventrue, and later vanishing into the shadows of the Knights of Mithras, a secretive order of England’s elder Kindred. To the mortal world, Edward II perished—murdered, perhaps mutilated. To the hidden world, he was reborn, his power reforged in blood.

The Wedding Gift with Teeth

When Henry Berkeley and Katherine Howard entered their castle, they found it prepared with tapestries, polished armor, and servants enough to keep its halls lively again. Yet at night, strange sounds carried from the lower chambers: the groan of ancient hinges long unused, voices speaking Latin, and footsteps echoing where no guards patrolled.

On the third night, as Katherine walked the gallery with a single candle, she saw him—an austere figure in a faded tunic of Norman cut, his hair white as bone, his eyes sharp and cold.

“You return as Berkeleys,” he said, his voice deep with centuries. “But remember, I was the first. I am Roger, dispossessed yet never gone. This house is mine as much as yours.”

Henry, when confronted, could not mistake the truth. The man bore the air of nobility but also something other—unnatural, commanding, terrifying. And when he spoke of Edward II with the familiarity of kin, the new Lord and Lady Berkeley realized the castle was not theirs alone.

A Pact of Shadows

Roger de Berkeley did not demand their expulsion. He had no need to rule openly. Instead, he set terms:

• The Berkeleys might hold the castle by day, but by night, he would walk its stones.

• The family must never betray the Ventrue presence, lest ruin fall upon them as it once did in the days of the Despensers.

• In return, he would guard them, as he had guarded Edward II and as he had guarded the secret of Mithras’ court.

Henry and Katherine, though shaken, agreed—for what choice had they? A barony could not be refused, even if it came with a shadow for a master.

So it was that Berkeley Castle was restored to the Berkeleys in 1553, but it was never wholly free of the past. The Tudors knew only that they had bound noble families more tightly to their cause. The Berkeleys knew they had regained their ancient seat.

But beneath it all, Roger de Berkeley walked again, smiling at how history itself circled back, always returning him to the fortress of his birthright.

The castle had been gifted in joy—but it was also haunted, not by ghosts, but by a Ventrue elder whose bloodline predated even the Plantagenets.

And so, the House of Berkeley lived once more, its name restored—but forever in the company of its first lord, who would never die.