16th December 2015
It’s 530 years since the birth of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile’s fifth and youngest surviving child, Catalina of Aragon. They named their new Infanta after her great-grandmother Catherine of Lancaster – perhaps they were already thinking of an alliance with England, which had been conquered by Henry Tudor four months earlier. When Tudor, now Henry VII, and his wife Elizabeth of York produced a son, the opportunity was apparent. A treaty (and betrothal) was agreed when the children were three and two, before the future Henry VIII was even born. But the next decade was rocky for relations between Spain and England and for Henry’s security on his new throne, and it was by no means certain that the marriage would go ahead.
By the time Katherine left Spain for England aged fifteen, her parents had suffered successive blows to their personal and dynastic hopes. Their eldest daughter Isabella had had to marry a second time to become Queen of Portugal after her first husband died just months into the marriage. She then died in childbirth, and her only son died as a toddler. Ferdinand and Isabella sent another daughter, Maria, to replace Isabella as queen, further proving the interchangeability of royal spouses. But their only son Juan could not be replaced, and he had died aged nineteen shortly after his wedding to Margaret of Austria. Unlike Isabella and, later, Katherine, Margaret was left a pregnant widow, but the baby was stillborn. Isabella of Castile was heartbroken at the loss of children and grandchildren, and kept Katherine behind in Spain for longer than had been intended. She took solace in religion, as Katherine would after the deaths of her own children. Katherine had lived a tapestry of family tragedy before her new life in England had even begun.
I’ve been posting a lot about Katherine this year – it’s interesting timing that a decade on from The Constant Princess I’m rethinking my perspective on her a great deal for my new manuscript. It seems to me that her sister-in-law Margaret Tudor’s view of her was probably far less positive than mine has been.
Images: the 2007 statue of Katherine holding a book and a rose in her birthplace, Alcalá de Henares. From M.Peinado and Reinhardhauke via Wikimedia Commons:
M.Peinado [CC BY 3.0 es (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/deed.en) or CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
By Reinhardhauke (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons