Tudors and others

When I was reading the Wolf Hall trilogy, I felt sure that I’d rather be burned than beheaded. That’s not a non-sequitur; there was a lot of heretic-burning and traitor-beheading during the time of Henry VIII. Either, of course, would be better than quartering, but women were not subject to quartering, so at least there was that. But I burned my hand today while I was making popcorn and it hurt like a mother and I think it would probably be better to suffer the axe. God willing, I’ll never find out for sure.

Well, that was fun, wasn’t it?

Right now, I’m reading Anna Whitelock’s Mary Tudor: England’s First Queen. Mary is just one of the many Wolf Hall characters whom I need to know better, and I foresee months of reading about Tudors and Cromwells and sundry other royals and courtiers. I’m pretty excited about this.

Queen Mary, sometimes called Bloody Mary, was Henry VIII’s daughter. Like almost every other woman in his orbit, and not a few men, she suffered terribly at his hands. Henry demanded absolute devotion and loyalty from everyone around him, and he offered none in return.

Henry reminds me of someone. I’ll have to rack my brains for a few minutes to figure out who. It’s right on the tip of my tongue.

Anyway, this is so far a very sympathetic portrayal of Mary. I’m still on her early life, when she was stripped of her title of Princess and declared a bastard. I’ll still think of her as Princess Mary, though, because Henry can’t throw me in the Tower. As a defrocked Princess, she was powerless; but I understand that she did quite a bit of heretic-burning in her own right during her short reign as Queen. I’ll find out all about it soon enough. For now, I feel sorry for the poor girl.

****
I’m still reading. Henry is finally dead and good riddance; but his son Edward VI, Mary’s half-brother, is making her life almost as difficult as it was when her father was alive. To save herself from charges of treason and heresy, Mary submitted to Henry’s assertion of authority over the Church, but she’s not about to knuckle under to her teenage brother and his Protestant gangster friends. It’s about to get interesting in Tudor England.

*****
Poor Mary died alone at age 42, and I don’t excuse her for one moment for the terrible things she did as Queen. Lady Jane Gray was used by her power-hungry relatives and Mary could have just banished the poor girl to a convent. She probably would have gone quietly. And I am no admirer of Thomas Cranmer, but that was nothing more than revenge. Even though Cranmer recanted his recantation at the last minute, Mary couldn’t have known that he was going to do that. And of course, she burned 300 other heretics, too, despite all evidence that the threat of burning was not likely to deter anyone from heresy. Mary herself faced death threats for years and she didn’t back down an inch. She should have known.

But still, it’s hard not to feel sadness and pity for a woman so alone, who suffered ill health and phantom pregnancies, who was humiliated and threatened and all but imprisoned by her own father, and whose love for the man she married was not returned. Crown or no crown, it was just about impossible to be a woman in the 16th century. Wealthy widowhood was your best hope.

*****

I took a short break from the Tudors to read something else (I’ll write about it later, maybe), but now I’m back for more with Alison Weir’s biography of Mary’s much more famous sister, Elizabeth I. I know very little about Elizabeth other than what I have seen in the movies. I read a biography of Mary Queen of Scots when I was a teenager; and between my sympathy for the Scottish Mary and my Catholic upbringing, I’ve always been inclined to think of Elizabeth as a villain. But she suffered, too. It must have been alternately terrifying and dreadfully sad to know that your father ordered the execution of your mother on very likely trumped-up grounds (who does Henry remind me of? Who?) Anne Boleyn was no angel, of course. Given the chance, she might very well have killed Katherine of Aragon and Princess Mary; and I’m sure that she made life miserable for everyone who offended or irritated her. But just because she was a  mean bitch who probably thought about killing her husband's ex-wife doesn’t mean that she should have lost her head.

Henry VIII was the worst. He reminds me of someone. I just can’t put my finger on it. Meanwhile, I have some reading to do.