The Constant Princess

In my controversial new account of Katherine's marriage to Henry VIII I suggest that, on one extraordinary occasion, she chose to tell a lie and she stuck with that lie for the rest of her life.

She was married as a young girl to Henry's older brother Arthur, who died within six months of their wedding. Years later, when Henry sought to divorce her, she claimed that there were no grounds for divorce as the marriage had never been consummated. That statement has entered the historical record with such power that few historians have ever questioned it. But as I came to write about this determined young woman, I came to wonder why historians believed her, and why Henry himself, even when longing to be rid of her, did not challenge her account.

It was a most unlikely lie. Prince Arthur and Katherine were put to bed by the entire court and had their marriage bed blessed by the Archbishop of Canterbury himself. Clearly, everyone expected the young, healthy, fifteen year old Prince to perform his marital duties. Katherine, his senior by only ten months, knew well enough where her duties lay. In the morning, neither reported that anything had gone wrong. Indeed, the young Prince cheerfully announced that he had been 'all night in Spain', and later joked with his attendants that being married was 'good sport'.

Reports went to Spain to Katherine's parents: Isabella and Ferdinand. The Spanish attendants departed, leaving the young Princess in her new husband's country, and the two young people were sent off to Ludlow Palace to start their married life together; without one word of a suggestion that anything was amiss.

Because nothing was amiss. Arthur was escorted to Katherine's bedroom at Ludlow Castle as at Richmond Palace, with no-one suggesting there was a problem. His death, which followed a rapid illness, came in April 1502, and Katherine was kept in seclusion for a month, so that everyone could be sure that she was not carrying her dead husband's child. Nobody then suggested that there was no possibility of conception.

It was only when negotiations were opened for her next wedding, to the younger brother Henry, that the suggestion was made that the young Spanish widow was still a virgin, and that the marriage had never been consummated. The claim came from Katherine's own household, from her duenna Dona Elvira who was her constant companion.

Why did the Princesses' household suggest this lie? Partly because it retained Katherine's value as a virgin Princess, and not 'spoiled goods' during the keen negotiations between the two great misers of Europe: Henry VII and Ferdinand of Spain. Partly it avoided the need for a papal dispensation which would be required if Henry was to marry his brother's widow. But Katherine's mother, Isabella of Spain, was particularly careful. She sought, and got papal permission carefully phrased to cover all the possibilities. The dispensation reads that the wedding of Henry and Katherine could go ahead whether or not the first marriage was consummated.

That should have been the end of the problem. Indeed, that would have been the end of the problem if Katherine had been lucky enough to give her young husband the son he needed to secure the Tudor succession. She was unlucky, miscarriages followed: a boy who died within weeks of his birth, the only child to survive was a girl: Mary Tudor. When Katherine reached her menopause and could have no more children the King, nearly six years her junior, was bound to look for a younger wife who might give him a son. Instead of the considerate separation which might have taken place, and Katherine's dignified withdrawal to a nunnery, Henry fell in love with Anne Boleyn and embarked on a long and bitter struggle with Katherine, the wife he had once adored. She dug in her heels and fought him on every possible ground. He was determined to show that their marriage was invalid since, according to Henry the Pope could not dispense against the will of God which - also according to Henry - ruled that a man could not marry his brother's widow.

It was theological obscure nonsense, of course. In any case there were rival opinions about rival passages in the Bible. But Katherine did not only have her experts argue on the interpretation of the Bible. She also staked her claim on the long-ago claim that the marriage had not been consummated and therefore Henry's ruling simply did not apply. A cardinal legate begged her to withdraw the claim, he said it was the will of the Pope himself. Katherine did not withdraw, her deathbed letter to King Henry addressed him as her husband and urged him to look to his soul and his conscience.

How she got away with such a blatant lie at the time is amazing. To get away with it over centuries is almost a miracle in itself. She got away with it at the time, I believe, because even when Henry was besotted with Anne Boleyn, he had a deep and powerful respect for his first love, his first wife, Katherine. There was a powerful moment during the inquiry into their marriage when, ignoring everyone else in the room: cardinals, churchmen, audience, Katherine walked up to Henry, who was seated high on his throne, and asked him: did he have, and had he ever had, any complaint against her as a wife? We can imagine him gulping for air, but he could not muster a complaint against her. He could not bring himself to say that he did not believe that she was not a virgin on their wedding day. The question remained unanswered.

The inquiry was adjourned, Henry never really won. He married Anne Boleyn with all of Europe and half the country convinced that he was going through an empty ceremony with a woman who was little more than his whore, while his true wife was put aside.

One might expect subsequent historians to examine the record with more detachment. The evidence is so clearly against Katherine's claims that surely her force of character could not influence the historical record for nearly five hundred years? It seems she can. Victorian historians generally sided with the spiritual and chaste Katherine against the adventurer Anne, and took Katherine's word on her virginity. Subsequent historians followed the well-trodden path until Katherine's lie became an accepted fact. It has taken modern more sceptical historians to look at this question again. Alison Weir and David Starkey have most recently treated Katherine's claim with the scepticism it deserves.

For me, as a writer of fiction whose task is to make the historical facts come to life the question is not so much did she lie? But why? I could see that once the marriage with Henry was challenged that she would deny him the primary grounds by claiming that the first marriage was not consummated - but the lie began long before that crisis. The lie began as soon as she made her claim to stay as Princess of Wales, despite the death of Prince Arthur, by marrying Henry. How could a sixteen year old girl, newly widowed and almost alone among strangers, find the conviction to tell such a flagrant lie and carry it off? How could she find the courage? How could she find the nerve?

That was the question posed by the story of Katherine of Aragon to me, and that was the question I set out to answer. The task sent me on a long journey into the mind of a young determined woman who knew from the age of four that she was destined to be Queen of England, and decided to let nothing stand in her way. A young woman who held her duty to her two countries of England and Spain in such high regard that she was prepared to tell a lie. A young woman of great ambition and determination. That is why I thought of her as, above everything else, a girl of constancy. That is why I called my book about her The Constant Princess.