KATHERINE OF ARAGON
Thomas Cromwell: ‘If she had been a man, she would have been a greater hero than all the generals of antiquity.’
You are the daughter of two reigning monarchs, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. Your father was known for his political cunning and your mother for her unfeminine fighting spirit. When you are told that you have failed, because you have only given Henry a daughter, and a woman can’t reign, there must be a part of you that asks, ‘Why not?’ Another part of you understands; though you are highly educated, you are conventional and accept what your religion tells you: that women, after God, must obey men. This is a conflict that will run through your life.
You have known since you were a small child that you were destined for an English alliance, and even in your nursery you were addressed as ‘the Princess of Wales’. You are an object of prestige for the Tudors, who are a new and struggling dynasty with a weak claim to England. At fifteen you come to England to marry Prince Arthur. You are beautiful and much admired, tiny, fair-skinned, auburn-haired. You are sent to Ludlow to hold court as Prince and Princess of Wales. Within a few weeks, Arthur is dead. You will always say that your marriage was never consummated. Some of your contemporaries, and some historians, don’t believe you. Perhaps you are not above a strategic lie. Your parents would have told one and not blinked.
Now you enter a bleak period of widowhood. King Henry VII doesn’t want you to go back to Spain. You’re his prize, and he wants to keep your dowry. After he is widowed, he thinks of marrying you himself, a project your family firmly veto. You remain in London, without enough money, uncertain of your status, on the very fringe of the Court. Your salvation comes when Arthur’s seventeen-year-old brother succeeds to the throne. It’s like all the fairytales rolled into one. After a period of seven years, the handsome prince rescues you. He loves you madly. You adore him.
And you always will. Whatever happens, it’s not really Henry’s fault. It’s always someone else, someone misleading him, someone betraying him. It’s Wolsey, it’s Cromwell, it’s Anne Boleyn.
You look like an Englishwoman and, as Queen, an Englishwoman is what you set out to become. When Henry goes to France for a little war, he has such faith in you that he leaves you as Regent. All the same, the King’s advisers suspect your intentions. You act as an unofficial ambassador for your country, and are ruthless in pushing the interests of Spain, a great power which at this time also rules the Netherlands. Your nephew, Charles V of Spain, becomes Holy Roman Emperor, making him overlord to the German princes, in territories where new religious ideas are taking a hold. You are not responsive to these ideas. You come from a land where the Inquisition is flourishing, and though your parents have reformed Spain’s administration, they have done it in a way that consolidates royal power. Probably you never understand why Henry has to listen to Parliament, or why he might want popular support.
At first you are Henry’s great friend as well as his lover. Then politics sours the relationship; Henry and Wolsey have to move adroitly between the two great power blocs of France and Spain, making sure they never ally and crush English interests. And your babies die. There are six pregnancies at least, possibly several more; the Tudors didn’t announce royal pregnancies, still less miscarriages, if they could be hidden. They only announced the happy results: a live, healthy child. You have only one of these, your daughter Mary.
You are older than Henry by seven years. And the pregnancies take their toll on your body. You become a stout little person, but you are always magnificently dressed and bejewelled; a queen must act like a queen. You are watched for signs that your fertile years are over. When Henry decides he must marry again, the intrigues develop behind your back. You are not at first aware, and nor is anyone else, that Henry has a woman in mind and that woman is Anne Boleyn. You believe he wants to replace you with a French princess, for diplomatic advantage, and you blame Wolsey, who you have always seen as your enemy; for years he has been your rival for influence with the King. You think you understand Henry. But for years he’s been drifting away from you, the boy with his sunny nature becoming a more complex and unhappy man.
Once the divorce plan is out in the open, no notion of feminine obedience or meekness constrains you. You fight untiringly and with every weapon you can find, legal and moral. The King says that Scripture forbids marriage with a brother’s wife. You insist that you were never Prince Arthur’s wife, that you lay in bed together as two good children, saying your prayers. You also believe that even if you and Arthur had consummated your marriage, you are still legally married to Henry; the Pope’s dispensation covered both cases.
No settlement is in sight. You are offered the option of retiring to a convent; if you were to become a nun, your marriage would be annulled in canon law, and, given that you are deeply religious, Henry hopes that might suit you. But as far as you are concerned, your vocation is to be Queen of England, and that is the estate to which God has called you, and you and God will make no concessions. You are always dignified, but you will not negotiate and you will concede nothing.
You are sent to a series of country houses: not shabby or unhealthy, as the legend insists, but remote, well away from any seaports. You are separated from your daughter, which agonises you, because she is in frail health and also you fear that she will be pressured into accepting that she is illegitimate. Though you are provided with a household to fit your status, you live in virtual isolation because you will not answer to your new style of ‘Dowager Princess of Wales’ and insist on being addressed as Queen. Soon you have confined yourself to one room, and your trusted maids cook for you over the fire. Henry sends Norfolk and Suffolk to bully you, without result. Finally you are divorced in your absence. You die in January 1536, after an illness of several months’ duration, probably a cancer. The rumours are, of course, that Anne Boleyn has poisoned you.
Cromwell’s admiration for you is on the record: even though his life would have been made simpler if you had just vanished, he admired your sense of battle tactics and your stamina in fighting a war you could not win. His approach is pragmatic and rational; he’s not a hater. You understand this. You may think, as much of Catholic Europe does, that he is the Antichrist. But you write to him in Spanish, addressing him as your friend.
PRINCESS MARY
Born seven years into your parents’ marriage, you are the only surviving child. You are in your mid-teens when you appear in this story. You are small, plain, pious and fragile: very clever, very brave, very stubborn. You hate Anne Boleyn, and revere your father, following your mother’s line in believing that he is misled. When you are separated from Katherine, and kept under house arrest, you are physically ill and suffer emotional desolation. You believe when Anne is executed that all your troubles are over. You are stunned to find that your father still requires you to acknowledge your illegitimacy and to recognise him as Head of the Church. You resist to the point of danger. Thomas Cromwell talks you back from the brink. Your dazed, ambivalent relation with him begins in these plays.
STEPHEN GARDINER
Cambridge academic, Master of Trinity Hall, you are in your late thirties as this story begins, and secretary to Cardinal Wolsey, who admires your first-class mind, finds you extremely useful, and has little idea of the grievances you are accumulating. Tactless and bruisingly confrontational, you are physically and intellectually intimidating, and your subordinates and your peers are equally afraid of you. But you suspect Thomas Cromwell laughs at you, and you are possibly right. You can only stare with uncomprehending hostility as he talks his way into the highest favour with Wolsey first and then the King. Cromwell is at his ease in any situation. You are the opposite, constantly bristling and tense.
Your origins are a mystery. You are brought up by respectable but humble parents, who are possibly your foster-parents. The rumour is that you are of Tudor descent through an illegitimate line, and so you are the King’s cousin. This may be why you get on in life; or it may be you are valued for your intellect; your personality is always in your way, and you seem helpless to do anything about it.
As you are politically astute and unhampered by gratitude, you begin to distance yourself from the Cardinal some months before his fall, and become secretary to the King. You are promoted to the bishopric