Henry VIIIKing of England

Catherine of Aragon, daughter of the renowned Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, married Henry VIII just weeks after his coronation. At twenty-three, she was five years his senior, but the match was considered brilliant—uniting Tudor England with the most powerful dynasty in Europe.

For many years, Henry and Catherine appeared devoted to one another. She served as regent during his French campaigns and even led an army that defeated the Scots at Flodden. She was intelligent, pious, and beloved by the English people.

Yet tragedy haunted the marriage. Of their many pregnancies, only one child survived infancy: Princess Mary, born in 1516. As the years passed without a male heir, Henry grew increasingly troubled. By 1527, he had convinced himself that God was punishing him for marrying his brother's widow—and he had fallen passionately in love with Anne Boleyn.

Catherine was finally stripped of her title as queen in 1533, becoming the "Dowager Princess of Wales." She spent her final years in deteriorating conditions at various manor houses, forbidden to see her daughter Mary. She died at Kimbolton Castle on 7 January 1536, possibly from cancer. Her last letter to Henry concluded: "Lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things."

Anne Boleyn was not a conventional beauty, but she possessed an irresistible charisma that captivated Henry VIII. Educated at the French court, she was witty, fashionable, and dangerously ambitious. Unlike her sister Mary, who had been Henry's mistress, Anne refused to surrender her virtue without a crown.

For seven years, Henry pursued Anne obsessively. His love letters—unique survivals, as Henry normally dictated correspondence—reveal a passion verging on mania: "I beg to know expressly your intention touching the love between us... having been more than a year wounded by the dart of love, and not yet sure whether I shall fail or find a place in your affection."

Their secret marriage in January 1533 preceded Anne's coronation in June. She was already pregnant with the child Henry was certain would be his long-awaited son. When she gave birth on 7 September 1533, it was to a daughter: the future Elizabeth I.

Her final words reportedly included: "I pray God save the King and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never: and to me he was ever a good, a gentle and sovereign lord."

Jane Seymour was everything Anne Boleyn was not: quiet, submissive, and outwardly unremarkable. A former lady-in-waiting to both Catherine and Anne, she had watched two queens fall and learned from their fates. Her motto, "Bound to Obey and Serve," proclaimed her intention to be the compliant wife Henry desired.

The marriage took place at Whitehall Palace just eleven days after Anne Boleyn's execution—a haste that shocked even Henry's own court. Yet Jane quickly proved her worth. She worked to reconcile Henry with his daughter Mary, and more importantly, she became pregnant.

On 12 October 1537, at Hampton Court Palace, Jane gave Henry what he had longed for through three marriages and nearly three decades: a legitimate male heir. The boy was christened Edward with magnificent ceremony.

But the triumph turned to tragedy. Jane developed puerperal fever following the birth. She died on 24 October, just twelve days after giving Henry his son. The king was reportedly devastated, withdrawing from court to mourn privately. When Henry died ten years later, he was buried beside Jane at Windsor Castle—the wife he remembered as his "true love."

After Jane Seymour's death, Henry remained a widower for over two years. Thomas Cromwell, seeking Protestant alliances against the Catholic powers of Europe, proposed a marriage to Anne, sister of the Duke of Cleves. Hans Holbein was sent to paint her portrait, and Henry was sufficiently pleased to proceed.

The reality proved disastrously different. When Henry rode in disguise to meet his bride at Rochester, he was appalled. "I like her not!" he reportedly declared. He would later complain crudely that he found her physically repugnant, famously calling her his "Flanders Mare" (though this specific phrase may be apocryphal).

Nevertheless, the marriage proceeded on 6 January 1540. It was never consummated. Within six months, Henry had the union annulled on grounds of non-consummation and Anne's earlier betrothal to the Duke of Lorraine's son.

Unlike Henry's other discarded wives, Anne prospered after the annulment. She accepted her situation gracefully, becoming the "King's Beloved Sister" with a generous income and properties including Hever Castle (former home of the Boleyns). She outlived Henry by ten years, dying in 1557 as the last of his queens.

Catherine Howard was perhaps seventeen when she married the forty-nine-year-old king—young, vivacious, and desperately naive about the dangers of her position. A first cousin of Anne Boleyn, she had been raised in the chaotic household of her step-grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, where discipline was lax and morals looser.

Henry was besotted with his "rose without a thorn." He showered her with jewels and showed her off at court. The aging, corpulent king seemed rejuvenated by his young bride. But Catherine's past contained secrets that would prove fatal.

Before her marriage, Catherine had conducted affairs with her music teacher, Henry Mannox, and a young secretary, Francis Dereham. More dangerously, after becoming queen, she began a liaison with Thomas Culpeper, a gentleman of the king's privy chamber.

Catherine was executed on 13 February 1542 at the Tower of London, preceded to the block by Lady Rochford, who had facilitated her meetings with Culpeper. Legend says she practiced laying her head on the block the night before, wanting to die with dignity. She was likely around nineteen years old.

Catherine Parr had already buried two husbands when Henry VIII set his sights on her in 1543. At thirty-one, she was mature, intelligent, and genuinely devout. She had been on the verge of accepting Thomas Seymour (brother of the late Jane) when the king intervened. As she later wrote, "God withstood my will therein most vehemently."

Catherine proved to be exactly what the aging, ill-tempered king needed. She was a skilled nurse who tended his ulcerated leg with patience. More importantly, she reunited Henry with his three children—Mary, Elizabeth, and Edward—creating something resembling a genuine family at court.

She was also a woman of remarkable intellectual accomplishment. In 1545, she published Prayers or Meditations, becoming the first woman to publish a book under her own name in England. Her Lamentation of a Sinner (1547) revealed her reformist Protestant sympathies.

Catherine was with Henry when he died in January 1547. She quickly married Thomas Seymour, the man she had loved before becoming queen, but died in childbirth on 5 September 1548. She was the only one of Henry's six wives to bear him no children, yet her influence on the royal stepchildren—especially Elizabeth—was profound.