Henry VIII vs. Catherine of Aragon | History's Worst Breakups

Summary

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society

Episode: Henry VIII vs. Catherine of Aragon | History's Worst Breakups
Host: Dr. Kate Lister
Guest: Historian & Author Gareth Russell
Date: February 3, 2026

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Overview

In the kick-off to the "History's Worst Breakups" miniseries, Dr. Kate Lister and guest historian Gareth Russell dissect the legendary and catastrophic split between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. More than a tale of lust and royal infidelity, this breakup catalyzed seismic shifts—destroying friendships, redefining religion, and reshaping Europe for centuries to come. Lister and Russell dig into the personalities behind the split, the political machinations, and the profound fallout, combining razor-sharp wit with deep historical insight.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Romance Begins: Fancies, Realities & Myths

• The Early Marriage:
  • Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon genuinely fancied each other. Gareth notes, “They definitely fancied each other. I think… as much as he was capable of love, I think.” (08:01)
  • Catherine was five years older, considered beautiful and clever—traits initially appealing but later “counted against her” with Henry (08:07).
• Rose-Tinted Nostalgia:
  • Gareth compares old accounts of their marriage to friends’ breakups with idealized retellings: “There’s always one friend with their wine in the corner who's like, no, they weren’t.” (08:44)
• Royal Pomp or Genuine Affection?:
  • Famous jousts and grand gestures are demystified as more ceremonial than passionate (08:53).

2. The Arthur Factor – Catherine’s First Husband

• A Marriage to Henry’s Brother:
  • Catherine had been married to Henry’s older brother, Arthur. This presented canonical and psychological hurdles even for royalty (09:37).
  • “Within the canon law of the Church, this is… essentially Henry marrying his sister.” (11:47)
• Did They Consummate?:
  • The podcast dwells on whether Catherine’s marriage to Arthur was consummated—a pivotal point for Henry’s annulment case. Gareth: “Is it an element of Arthur thinks, like, what is sex? …Was Catherine lying? Was someone else lying? We don’t know.” (11:01–12:46)

3. Why Did Henry Marry Catherine?

• Personal & Political Calculus:
  • While alliances mattered (“She represents a great alliance in Europe.” 14:50), Gareth leans toward Henry’s comfort with the familiar: “He knew her… and I have to assume he felt very strongly for her.” (14:35–14:48)
  • Catherine’s years of widowhood were marked by “embarrassment” rather than abject poverty, and possibly mental health struggles, including disordered eating from religious fasting (16:45).

4. Marriage Dynamics: Chivalry, Warfare & Catherine’s Ruthlessness

• Chivalric Fantasies Shatter:
  • Henry idolized Camelot, but political realities—especially betrayal by Catherine’s father, Ferdinand of Aragon—soured the union early (23:23–25:23).
  • Gareth: “All they want to do is rob France a bit, where Henry thinks he's going to get the house, and they use the English to distract the French…” (24:16)
• Catherine as Regent & Victory Over Scotland:
  • Left as regent during Henry’s war in France, Catherine oversaw the spectacular English victory at Flodden and revealed “a streak in Catherine that is mad as a bag of cats.” (30:21)
  • Notably, she requested to send the bloodstained jacket (or even the corpse) of James IV to Henry—“It reveals a side of Catherine’s personality… ruthless and actually unnecessarily unpleasant.” (28:52)
• Insight:
  • Both hosts muse that such ruthlessness is often overlooked in Catherine’s popular image.

5. Affairs & Anne Boleyn’s Entrance

• Henry’s Womanizing – Myth vs. Reality:
  • His reputation as a prolific adulterer is exaggerated; “There’s very few names that survive… I don’t think he’s quite the wencher we think, but there is recreational wenching.” (31:09–31:45)
• Catherine’s Response:
  • Mixed views on whether Catherine shielded young women at court from Henry’s advances (34:36).
• Anne Boleyn:
  • Initially intended to wed her Irish cousin, Anne was not expected to captivate Henry. Gareth: “Both Catherine and Anne think that this is the whim of the moment.” (35:00)
  • Anne’s own religious sense of destiny (“She is completely convinced that this is God’s will.” 38:00), drew on the story of Esther and shaped her determination to supplant Catherine.

6. Annulment, Religious Crisis & Emotional Siege

• Henry’s Annulment Campaign:
  • The annulment legalities rested on arcane biblical arguments about Leviticus and consummation (“Henry says it was never within the remit of the Vatican…” 41:53), placing the Pope in an untenable position.
  • Catherine stubbornly refused to accept the good faith annulment deal (43:03), mainly to preserve her daughter Mary’s rights.
• Catherine’s Psychological Decline:
  • Stripped of status, isolated from family—especially Mary—she endured “gold-tinged humiliation.” (53:12)
  • Gareth: “She’s lonely, humiliated, and heartbroken… usually when people’s strength starts to give way. And Catherine’s doesn’t.” (51:07–51:38)
• The Clash of Two Immovable Wills:
  • Both women (Catherine and Anne) saw the saga as a spiritual battle. “They both believe that their victory is the will of God.” (39:12)
• Personal and Institutional Cost:
  • Henry’s arguments “raked up the multiple miscarriages [Catherine]’s had, and saying they were her fault for lying.” (45:39)

7. Aftermath of the Breakup

• Catherine’s Final Years:
  • Reduced to “Princess Dowager of Wales,” she refused to relinquish her title or accept Anne as queen, and died in isolation (53:12–54:05).
  • “It’s an immensely sad end for a very dignified woman.” (54:06)
• Henry’s State:
  • Gareth: “Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn could have made really great [queens] if they’d been married to different men… The man in the middle was about as remarkable as skimmed milk.” (54:29)
• Global Fallout:
  • The “atom bomb” breakup led directly to England’s break with Rome, centuries of sectarian conflict (notably in Ireland), and an incalculable shift in European religious and political landscapes:
  • “It’s almost incalculable, the impact it has because the impact of Protestantism on English and then later British history is colossal.” (56:35)
  • “Until you can come back to me with that, sit down.” (57:29)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the real impact of the breakup:
  • Kate: “Alright, your breakup might have been a little bit messy, but did it cause the dissolution of the Catholic Church in this country and piss off the Pope? No, it did not.” (04:27)
• On Catherine’s dark humor in war:
  • Gareth: “She wanted to use her dead Scottish brother-in-law’s corpse as a victory piñata?” (28:24)
• On Henry’s doomed romance with Anne:
  • Gareth: “It’s history’s most elegant red flag. But let’s be clear, that’s what it is. He’s obsessed with her.” (36:20)
• On Catherine’s iron resolve:
  • Gareth: “She is lonely and she is humiliated and she’s heartbroken. And… when people’s strength starts to give way… Catherine’s doesn’t.” (51:07–51:38)
• On the global consequences:
  • Gareth: “It’s the most important breakup in British history by a country mile.” (57:08)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 08:01 | Early attraction and Henry’s capacity for love | | 09:37 | Catherine’s marriage to Arthur, papal dispensations, and canon-law issues | | 14:35 | Why did Henry choose Catherine? Personal and political considerations | | 24:16 | Betrayals in war: Catherine’s father sabotages Henry’s continental ambitions | | 28:24 | Catherine’s ruthless suggestion regarding James IV’s corpse | | 31:09 | Henry’s reputation as a womanizer – separating myth from fact | | 35:00 | Anne Boleyn’s arrival: from background player to obsession | | 39:12 | “Both believe victory is the will of God”—the religious sense behind the feud | | 41:53 | The legal case: Henry’s biblical arguments and papal dilemmas | | 43:03 | Catherine rejects the “good faith” annulment deal—ramifications for her daughter Mary | | 51:07 | Catherine’s final years: isolation, humiliation, and unbroken resolve | | 54:29 | Gareth’s verdict: “Catherine and Anne could have been great if married to someone else…” | | 56:35 | The wider impact: from the break with Rome to centuries of conflict in the British Isles |

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Tone & Style

• Witty, irreverent, and deeply knowledgeable:
  Kate’s playful intros (“where we rip the knickers off history for your entertainment” 01:39) set the tone for an episode that is as sharp as it is serious.
• Challenging received wisdom:
  Both hosts push back against sanitized historical images (especially of Catherine) and conventional wisdom around Henry’s “great love affairs.”
• Modern Analogies:
  The hosts frequently compare Tudor drama to contemporary breakups—heightening relatability and humor.

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Conclusion

“It’s the most important breakup in British history by a country mile.” (57:08)

Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon’s breakup was not merely the collapse of a royal marriage, but a transformative moment in Western history, whose social, religious, and political aftershocks reverberate to this day. By probing well beyond the textbook narrative—examining personalities, overlooked ruthlessness, and psychological nuance—Dr. Kate Lister and Gareth Russell offer a rendition of this famous split that is as entertaining as it is enlightening.

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For more Gareth Russell:

• Instagram: @garethrussell
• Website: garethrussell.co.uk (58:14)

Next Episode in the Worst Breakup Series:
Lord Byron & Lady Caroline Lamb

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Contact: [e-mail]

Transcript

[Kate Lister]

Hello, my lovely betwixters. I'm just jumping in here real quick to remind you that if you wanted to come and see Betwixt the sheets live and in the flesh, you can do so in May. We have got two live events, one in Edinburgh on the 23rd of May and one in London town on the 25th of May. There will be guests, there will be games, there will be smutty history aplenty. Tickets are available [e-mail] that's F-A-N-E.co.uk and just search for betwixt and we will see you there.

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[Kate Lister]

Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. Welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, where we rip the knickers off history for your entertainment. But before we do, I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast, spoken by adults, other adults, about adult things in adultery way, covering range of subjects. Newspaper. I think you've got the message by now, right? Otherwise why else would you be here? Right, let's get on with it. Foreign 29 and we have snuck into the back of a trial going on in London where the Crown and the Church are battling it out to see if none other than Henry VII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon is valid in the eyes of the Catholic Church. It's all very dramatic, I'm telling you. Although it has also been pretty lengthy and tedious, if I'm completely honest. But it has just reached an extreme, explosive moment where Catherine has knelt in front of that twat of a king and swore down that she came to England a virgin and she remained a virgin until she was married to him, and that she's been faithful for the whole of their 20 year marriage. Go on, Catherine. And then she stormed out of the court. Total mic drop moment. You can't help but feel a bit sorry for Catherine. All right. You feel a lot sorry for Catherine. I mean, God almighty, imagine being shocked, shunned like that just for Henry's side piece, Anne Boleyn. Oh, God. But this is a breakup for the ages. And not just for Henry and Catherine, but for everybody else as well. Everyone. We're still living in the wreckage of this particular breakup. It did things to England, it did things to the Church, it did things to Rome. It was just an absolute atom bomb of a breakup. So, of course, we are going to talk about it in our little mini series for history's work, Worst Breakups. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. A bad breakup is a rite of passage, isn't it? Oh, it is, isn't it? I mean, is anyone actually out there listening to this? Who ended up with the very first person that they fell in love with ever, and has never, ever, ever had their heart broken? Maybe there's one, maybe there's a couple of them. Drop us an email, let us know. But for 99.9999% of us, you're gonna have your heart broken. You're gonna go through a shitty breakup at some point. And while the rest of the Western world spends February pushing cuddly toy cupids and ideas of Explore history's worst breakups. And why not start with the one that many consider to be the mother of all bad breakups? Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. I mean, yeah, all right, your breakup might have been a little bit messy, but did it cause the dissolution of the Catholic Church in this country and piss off the Pope? No, it did not. Well, I mean, if it did, fair enough, but I haven't heard about it. And joining me today is the always magnificent author and historian, Gareth Russell. And he is gonna get into the weeds of this horrendously bad breakup. Are you ready to stamp all over Henry's codpiece? I know I am. Let's do it. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Gareth Russell. How are you doing?

[Gareth Russell]

I'm very good. I am preparing, hopefully, to eat. I would say we're just before Christmas and we're filming this, so I'm hoping to eat 18 to 20,000 calories a day in the next two to three weeks. So I was worth preparing mentally for that. So I'm great.

[Kate Lister]

The last time I saw you, I think it was your book on King James the first subtitled. How Gay Was King James? That's not true.

[Gareth Russell]

It wasn't subtitled. Yeah, very Kinsey level. Kinsey level. Super.

[Kate Lister]

That was just being published. How did all that go?

[Gareth Russell]

That went really well. It was really lovely. And actually kind of the. The joy about James is that because he was king in three kingdoms, and I was doing stuff in Northern Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales as well, he sort of has very different reputations as you move through them. So it meant that every talk was different and you tweaked it depending where you were, and you sort of focus a little bit more on certain lovers, et cetera. But, yeah, I've loved doing it. And actually, I think it probably was so far my favorite book to write, which, I mean, Queen Mum Second place, and James first. And it was. I loved it. So getting to talk about it all the time was really nice.

[Kate Lister]

Well, we're back again to talk about another royal. This is the first episode in a little miniseries we're doing called History's Worst Breakups.

[Gareth Russell]

It's true.

[Kate Lister]

And we did think for a while, do we have to do Henry again? Because, like, it's. But you can't not.

[Gareth Russell]

Yeah. If someone's like, let's do, like, the worst, I don't know, holidays in history, and you're like, let's leave out the Titanic. Like, I get it. It's been done.

[Kate Lister]

It would be weird not to mention it. So we're gonna get you on because. Well, because I love talking to you and also because you always have fantastically interesting takes on these things. So we've got to talk about Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon because not only was it spectacularly ugly, just on a personal level, but we're still living with the ramifications of this breakup today, right?

[Gareth Russell]

Totally. And I think. I mean, obviously he has two terrible breakups with wives two and five. But what's interesting with the breakup with wife number one with Catherine of Aragon is that takes down a lot of their mutual friends as well. It kind of just. There's not. It's not an easy breakup on the. On the wider circle. So yeah. And I think those victims are the first people who live with the consequences. And still today, I mean, you know, anywhere, England, Wales or Ireland that Henry ruled over, the consequences of what happened between him and Catherine are still being felt.

[Kate Lister]

So something that is often forgotten in this particular story is that in the beginning when Henry met Catherine and Catherine met Henry, they seem to have really quite fancied each other and loved each other.

[Gareth Russell]

Yeah, they definitely fancied each other. I mean, I think. And I think, yeah, as much as he was capable of love, I think.

[Kate Lister]

We'Ll get to that.

[Gareth Russell]

You know, I think to quote the current king misquote, like, whatever love means, I think Henry could sort of could grapple with it. But, you know, he was really good looking. She was five years older, considered very beautiful, sort of this petite blonde, very elegant and charismatic, I think, as well, and very clever, which I think later in his eyes counts against her. There's some, I think, rose tinting that we do with early in their marriage. It's like when your friends break up and like, they were so happy that everything was perfect and you're like, actually, were they, though? Do you remember that party? Yeah, because I remember.

[Kate Lister]

That's a good point.

[Gareth Russell]

Yeah. There's always one friend with their wine in the corner who's like, no, they weren't.

[Kate Lister]

What are you talking about? I was getting DMs from him at 2am Come on.

[Gareth Russell]

This is why no one comes to you for advice, Judith. So, yeah, I mean, he definitely, I think, felt very strongly for her and vice versa. But some of the evidence that's ruled out, like him jousting a Sir Loyal heart, there's a big joust where he dresses a Sir Loyal heart and he wears Catherine's colors. It's usually trotted out as what a grand gesture this was for her. But what's never mentioned is that he was one of six and they all were given names like that and they all had to wear a lady of the court's colors. So he picked his wife. So it's not quite as romantic. And he does. I mean, it seems like he cheats on her within a year. But it is early modern arranged marriages. Let's set the bar low. And definitely for the first, like, let's say five, six, seven years, it's a pretty happy marriage.

[Kate Lister]

What is particularly weird about this one, and it gets very weird later on, is that she was married to his brother. First of all, that is a very odd situation, even amongst royalty that's got to be addressed. Can you give Us the sort of the lowdown on what was happening there. And I'm really interested to know your opinion on what was happening or not happening.

[Gareth Russell]

Yeah, that's a great question. I think that, yeah, it is very weird. Even by the standards of the early 16th century and within arranged marriages in royalty, it's unusual enough that there's serious pushback. They have to apply to the Pope for dispensation. And there are. What's often forgotten is that some of the people who later will become massive fans of Catherine as Queen are the people preaching against it. So you have the Archbishop of Canterbury actually preach his sermon saying this is incest, not biological incest, but within the canon law of the Church, this is. And there's a lot made later of did Arthur, Henry's brother and Catherine do the deed in their six month marriage or didn't they? And sometimes they get asked like, I've been at Q and A's, we're like, what happened? I was like, I wasn't there.

[Kate Lister]

So we just don't know. It's just this great big. And this is really crucial because they weren't married for that long. What did he die of? What did he just.

[Gareth Russell]

So there's different again, he dies, that he dies. He's still in his mid teens when he dies. And there's different theories. So one of them is tuberculosis, another is cancer. There is a third theory that kind of, I think has legs, which is that where they were when he died. Arthur and Catherine, excuse me, the plague is rampant and she catches it and nearly dies. And he does die. So I wonder, you know, is there something else that the plague ushers on or is it the sweat that takes him out? So I have this, I mean this is really speculative, but I. Catherine really clings later to nothing. We did not consummate it. But there does seem to be fairly widespread conclusions in the English court when her father in law's alive, that it was consummated. And I kind of wonder, is it an element of Arthur thinks? Like, what is sex? If this is your first time doing it, you're not very sexually experienced, you know nothing about it. Does something happen that Arthur thinks counts as consummation? And then later when Catherine is fully married and she knows what sex actually is. So it could be that. But ultimately we just. Was Catherine lying? Was someone else lying? We don't know. But certainly initially that's not really the big issue. It becomes the issue later. But the issue for a lot of very pious people is, you know, if you look at the way they even refer to in laws at the time. It's quite rare to say in law. It's very rare. They don't say stepsister, they don't say in law. They just say your sister, your father, your mother. They use the terms of biological intimacy once you marry into your family. And so for some people, like the Archbishop of Canterbury, this is essentially Henry marrying his sister.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah.

[Gareth Russell]

And that's why the Pope gets involved and does issue the dispensation. And it will all come back to this. It will all come back to two very contested verses in the Bible and whether or not the marriage with Arthur and Catherine was consummated and therefore did or did it not count as a full marriage.

[Kate Lister]

So Arthur dead and gone, God rest his wee bum. Only a little teenager. Rip, rip. Very sorry about that and all that. Why do you think, then, Henry wanted to marry Catherine? Because he was super eligible at this point. He was hot, he was tall, he's sporty, he's a fucking king. Women must have just been flinging their bloomers at him. Why Catherine?

[Gareth Russell]

So, I mean, there is another one in the running, actually. His father's. Well, there's a version that's put out, which is that on his deathbed, his father, Henry vii, feels bad not arranging the marriage as promised for Arthur's widow and asks Henry VIII to do the right thing and marry her. I'm dubious about that. It seems a bit like James I saying, oh, Elizabeth, you know, sent me on her deathbed to succeed. Her deathbed testimonials are always pretty dicey. It's like when someone sort of starts telling you what was wrong with their ex right after a breakup. You're like this. I'm chronologically suspect his father at one point had considered marrying him to Archduchess Eleanor of Austria. And I sometimes want. I think there are two things. Possibly, I think Henry really wanted a wife. He might have been horny, he might have really wanted to. Although I think actually he really just wanted Camelot and needed a queen. And also, I think it's sometimes the most obvious thing, which is the obvious. He knew her and I have to assume he felt very strongly for her. He does have, for all of his life, this abhorrence of marrying someone he hasn't seen.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Gareth Russell]

Yeah.

[Kate Lister]

But of the devil, you know?

[Gareth Russell]

Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's one of the things that goes so spectacularly wrong with his fourth marriage. But he hadn't seen Eleanora, he knew Catherine, He'd Known her for, I think at this stage, about seven years.

[Kate Lister]

She's right there.

[Gareth Russell]

Yeah, exactly, she's right there. So it kind of ticks all the boxes. And also she has comported herself with a great deal of dignity during the seven years of her widowhood. Her father and her father in law had both kind of abandoned her. And she represents a great alliance in Europe. Now the implosion of that alliance will be one of the things that weakens her position at her husband's side. But in 1509, she is golden personally and politically for him.

[Kate Lister]

I think I can understand that. And she's been in sort of like a weird political limbo because she marries Arthur, Arthur dies, and then all of a sudden Henry VII dies, and then very quickly, Henry, oh my God, now it's Henry viii. And she's kind of left in this like, political limbo of like, well, I was the King's wife and now I' what's going on here?

[Gareth Russell]

And actually when, when, you know, she's still being referred to as the Dodger Princess of Wales, which she is, but no one's paying her any money. I mean, there's always this thing as well, when people will say, like, Catherine was in poverty and you're like, she was in genteel, like, let's, let's behave.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah. She wasn't using a food bank, so.

[Gareth Russell]

Like she had to sell some of her golden plate to pay her servants wages on that, not poverty. That's embarrassing for her. And I'm sure, you know, emotionally quite distressing. But there was a choice to cut down the staff numbers or keep the gold plate. Those are not choices anyone, you know, but she is certainly very unhappy. She also, I think Giles Tremlett, who's written a good biography of her about 10 years ago, there's indicators that she mentally does not cope very well and that she might have had something that we would now recognize as an eating disorder. So she's not eating, she's fasting quite obsessively from a religious perspective to the point that one. That the Pope does have to write to her and tell her, ease off. Wow.

[Kate Lister]

Okay.

[Gareth Russell]

Yeah, okay. When the Pope says you're being a bit too much, you probably have.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah, that's a warning sign, that one, isn't it? If even he's saying, you're a bit extreme now, to be honest.

[Gareth Russell]

Yeah, it's like I remember this was years ago. I remember being sort of for Christmas drinks with friends and a mate who was like sort of quite the rugby boy turned One of her other friends. That's quite a lot you've had to drink. I was like, if he said that, I was like, find a sponsor and get out. Catherine feels things very, very strongly. There's never kind of a five on her emotional scale. And so there's very good evidence that actually she finds those seven years immensely difficult to deal with. And she in particular finds being ambiguous status is something that she does not handle very well. She likes to know her place in the world, which is understandable.

[Kate Lister]

That is understandable. So I guess when Henry became king and went, actually, I'll marry her, that must have just been music to her ears.

[Gareth Russell]

100%. In terms of passionate love letters between them, they don't exist. Although you could argue maybe they didn't need to be because they didn't spend that much time apart. I think she feels very strongly for him. They knew each other, she wouldn't have seen that much of him in the countdown to the wedding. So I think there are. When his father was still alive, I think she definitely felt for him, certainly. And I don't think she was lying when she. She said that. She looked back on those. Those days were 1509, up until about 1514, as sort of the happiest of her life.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, bless her. Oh, that's kind of sweet. So they get married, and when they do get married, is the public with them or is there this sense of like, oh, God, did your brother behave? Or is that kind of.

[Gareth Russell]

They seemed. They seem to be with them.

[Kate Lister]

Okay.

[Gareth Russell]

It's concern among some of the church hierarchy. They're like, yeah, exactly. They were like, we. What's interesting, this is so speculative on my part, but it's the slightly older generation that are like, eh. And I wonder, is that them being like, you're too young to remember this, but Richard iii, Elizabeth Woodville, Edward iv, If there's any room for ambiguity in a wedding, like, however fragmentary it is, someone will find it. So maybe that's a thorn prick from the wars of the Roses that's causing part of it, that they want this to be watertight. But the public do like her, particularly in London with Catherine's story. You'll hear things like, she was beloved by the people of England, like, they didn't know who she was, they knew her name.

[Kate Lister]

It doesn't sound like us to love a Spanish queen. Well, also, I mean, that doesn't sound like something we'd do.

[Gareth Russell]

No, but I think the other thing is, it's so hard for us today with how the Monarchy functions to imagine not knowing what they look like.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah, yeah.

[Gareth Russell]

We'll spot, like, there's, you know, clips of Elizabeth II and her mum, like, getting really excited at the races and joking with each other. Like, that creates a certain sense of knowledge. There aren't even standardized portraits of the Queen being sent out in 1509. So, you know, if you're in Wales or if you're in the north, if you are not in an area where she and Henry are regularly visiting, they are a name in a prayer book. Yeah.

[Kate Lister]

They're gonna mean nothing to you, are they really?

[Gareth Russell]

No, to be completely honest. Exactly. They might mean as much as an angel does, which is that you respect them but you don't see them. And they don't have any impact that you can see day to day. And Henry and Catherine don't go north. They stay very much in the south. I would always say trim it. She's very popular in London.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. So I often think about that, like, if you were just a regular, just a farmer, just, you know, in the Yorkshire area, just how much of this stuff did you even know was going on? Were you even aware of? Quite frankly, no.

[Gareth Russell]

When, you know, one day in 1533, you'll go to church and it'll be Queen Anne, not Queen Catherine, and you'll think, well, there must be a good reason for it.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah. And it's nothing to do with me. That's probably what you think. I'll be back with Gareth after this short break. There are times in all of our lives when we could benefit from having a therapist to talk to. Whether that's because you're having relationship troubles or work is getting you down, or the person who serves you coffee is really annoying you for some reason. You get the idea. Ruler partners with more than 100 insurance plans, bringing the average cost down to only $15 per session. It makes therapy feel realistic and sustainable. Not a burst of New Year energy, but something that you can stay with all year long. You get licensed in network care at a price that finally makes sense. And getting the right therapist matters. Ruler takes your goals, your background and your preferences to create a curated list of therapists who actually fit the work that you want to do this year. Visit rula.comsheets to get started. That's R U L A.com sheets mental health care that's actually built to last.

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[Gareth Russell]

In a world where swords were sharp.

[Kate Lister]

And hygiene actually probably better than you think it is, two fearless historians, me.

[Gareth Russell]

Matt Lewis, and me, Dr. Eleanor Yanaga.

[Kate Lister]

Dive headfirst into the mud, blood and very strange customs of the Middle Ages.

[Gareth Russell]

So for plagues, crusades and Viking raids, and plenty of other things that don't rhyme, subscribe to Gone Medieval from history. Hit wherever you get your podcast.

[Kate Lister]

So they get married. She must have been relieved. The public in London seem to be broadly like, yay. Henry seems to be delighted. But as you say, I think a real key to understanding Henry's character, as much as I can figure it out, is that he was raised on tales of chivalry and. And romance and King Arthur's table. And you alluded to earlier that he wanted a queen for his Camelot.

[Gareth Russell]

Yes, I mean, he very much. I mean, there's even theories later on with Anne Boleyn being accused with Henry Norris, that this is him trying to create Guinevere and Lancelot. I mean, it's. Yeah. And then the sword is used anyway. There is a kind of Arthurian obsession there and it's widespread. It's not just him, but he very much has this idea of himself as a neo Arthurian king, and it initially helps Catherine and then, I think, undermines her. So Henry is incredibly enthusiastic but not overly experienced, which is, you know, keen but dim. And her Catherine's father, if his lips are moving, he's probably lying. And so he says to Henry, you know, they're gonna do the alliance that she represents. They're gonna invade France. And the Habsburg Emperor Maximilian, also quite keen on the duplicity. They're all going to invade France together. They will back one another and they will meet in Paris and Henry VIII will be able to finish what Henry V started and take back the Plantagenet empire for himself. Ferdinand and Maximilian have no intention of doing this. The idea of marching the Spanish armies the length of France is a nonsense. All they want to do is rob France a bit, where Henry thinks he's going to get the house, and they use the English to distract the French for long enough for them to get what they want, and then they abandon Henry. And that this is about 15, 13, 15, 14. So four to five years into the marriage, and that's the first time that you see Catherine's position start to wobble because the alliance that she represents has actually humiliated her husband on the international stage.

[Kate Lister]

Ah, okay. Cause Henry went rushing in, as all young men, young and inexperienced men, have done all throughout history when it comes to warfare, which is that this is jolly japes. We're all gonna go and be heroes. Will save the day. Everyone keeps their promises and everybody's honourable.

[Gareth Russell]

No, yeah, exactly. Nonsense. And I think that there's some suggestion that should Catherine not have warned him. You can't trust my father. But I think it is worth remembering that she hadn't seen her father in a dozen years or so. And hope springs eternal in some children that maybe this time they'll not be a colossal dick, but, you know, it's. That's what Ferdinand was.

[Kate Lister]

And you learn. You learn these things, I think.

[Gareth Russell]

Yes, sorry, go ahead. You're absolutely right.

[Kate Lister]

So the Spanish, they've kind of shafted Henry by not keeping their promises, which, to a young, naive. Hooray. Henry must have been like. But. But they promised. And then. Oh, Henry.

[Gareth Russell]

She said you'd be there. I was there.

[Kate Lister]

She said, I was there. We're all supposed to be honorable. Oh, Henry, Henry, Henry, Henry. So it's gone a bit. A bit wobbly.

[Gareth Russell]

Yep.

[Kate Lister]

Have we got any records at the time of how that impacted Henry?

[Gareth Russell]

Well, initially, she is in a doubly tricky situation because when he invades France during this war, she is left in control of the government in England as regent. And France has a very long standing alliance with Scotland. So King James IV invades England from the north to sort of help the French. And to date, James IV's army is still the largest foreign army to invade English soil. It's massive. And Catherine sends one of the Howards, the aged Earl of Surrey, north with an army to defeat James iv. And he does. He obliterates the Scottish army, and it's an enormous victory. James IV is killed. There's pretty much not a family in the Scottish aristocracy that's not bereaved. It's, from an English perspective, a bloody but thorough victory. And there are two things, one, I think, relevant at the time, the other later, that this shows about Catherine. The first is she seems to be, in her letters, a little bit aware that her victory over Scotland has actually been more militarily impressive than her husband's campaign in France. And she Seems a bit worried that this might rub salt in the wound, so she's trying to talk it down.

[Kate Lister]

Okay.

[Gareth Russell]

The second thing is that it reveals a side of Catherine's personality that never gets any attention, which is ruthless and not that. And actually unnecessarily unpleasant. So sometimes, I know you're not supposed to compare the six wives and we should stop, but it does sometimes seem as if there's a standard to Catherine of Aragon that just isn't applied to the rest of them. So you'll hear people saying, you know, Anne Boleyn was really mean to her stepdaughter. And you're like, granted she's not winning stepmommy of the year, but do we think that was as bad as Catherine wanting to use her dead Scottish brother in law's corpse as a victory pinata? Because I think there are questions here. So when James IV is killed, despite the fact he's married to Henry's sister, Catherine wants to have him essentially taxidermied and sent as a present to Henry in France as a ta da. Here's one I made earlier.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, dear.

[Gareth Russell]

And people, when I have said this actually was an extremely unpleasant thing for her to do, people will say that was just the standard at the time. No, it wasn't. Because according to Catherine's own letters to Henry, she had to be talked out of it by some of the men who'd gone north, killed him. So when you have the hard saying, do you know what this actually seems like? Batcrap crazy. And maybe we just bury the corpse, ma'. Am.

[Kate Lister]

Some people just aren't good at sending gifts though, are they? Like, so it's just, it's, it's a skill.

[Gareth Russell]

Gift is thoughtful, it's unique.

[Kate Lister]

So handmade.

[Gareth Russell]

It's handmade and it has a really long shelf life. You will get. It's, it's for life, not just for Christmas, you know, God, could you imagine?

[Kate Lister]

Henry, there's some post for you.

[Gareth Russell]

Oh, God, you've got a message thing. Actually, Customs have a couple of questions about this one. So she, what a mad bitch.

[Kate Lister]

Fuck it up.

[Gareth Russell]

Yeah, well, and she jokes in her letter, she admits that her contemporaries, like hardened warriors in England, had to talk her out of it. And she says, our English men's hearts would not suffer this. So she, as a compromise, she lets them give James IV's body a Christian burial, but she keeps his slashed, blood stained jacket that he died in, and she sends that as a gift to Henry. And she. You can see what a good housewife I am. And saving us money because you can use this instead of new military banners.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah, that's mental. That's out there, isn't it? That's ruthless.

[Gareth Russell]

Yeah, Let him be buried again. It's also not super Christian, like, let him be buried. And again, when you have people who survived the wars of the Roses going, God, that seems a bit harsh.

[Kate Lister]

It's like when Duff McKeegan was thrown out of Guns N Roses for being too much. It's like, that is. That's something else that is.

[Gareth Russell]

Exactly. So I think it does reveal the issue of her brother in law's taxidermy corpse does reveal two things. The first is that she is aware that her husband is prickly about what has happened. The second is that there is a streak in Catherine that is mad as a bag of cats, I would say. Like there's just. There is definitely. There's a ruthlessness in Catherine I don't think gets along. Lot of attention.

[Kate Lister]

When do we start to see wobbles in the marriage? I mean, if the taxidermied body of your brother in law arriving by FedEx wouldn't do it. Is Henry having lots of affairs? Because one of the things I found quite surprising about him is that he's not quite the wenching whoring womanizer that you often think he is.

[Gareth Russell]

There's very few names that survive. There's definitely indicators that it starts quite early. And allegedly he tries to or does boink the Duke of Buckingham's sister. And this is the affair that Catherine objects to quite early on and tries to have the lady banished from court. She's actually backed by the Duke of Buckingham who thinks this is an insult to the family's honour of what Henry has tried to do. But Henry retaliates by dismissing one of Catherine's ladies in waiting as a sort of warning shot over the boy. And Catherine does not do it again. Yeah, there's a long standing tradition that he has an affair with Mary Boleyn. I. I'm slightly on the fence about if that actually happens.

[Kate Lister]

Interesting. We had Estelle Peronk on a couple of episodes ago and that was her take.

[Gareth Russell]

Yeah, I'm not convinced either because I made a slightly. Oh, Jo, I have to talk to Estelle actually, because I am not convinced either. Yeah, absolutely. Let's go debunk. Debunk the debrief. Yeah. So it's just that the evidence is so. So slender when you actually look at it. You're talking like three lines. And I did make the snippy comment in my book on James I and said, like on the basis of three lines, Mary Boleyn is accepted as Henry's mistress. But on the pages of dozens of erotic paragraphs, we still have to say they might just have been friends with James and his beefy lovers. So Mary Boleyn's a question mark, I think. But there is pretty decent evidence that Elizabeth Blunt, who bears his bastard son, is not the only one that there are. I don't think he's quite the wencher that we think, but I think there is recreational wenching with names that haven't survived. One of the slightly trickier parts of this is that there are two very conflicting pieces of evidence about Catherine's response to this. One is not so much to her credit, and one is. So the one that's not so much to her credit is that Catherine's often praised for looking the other way when Henry sort of came sniffing around her ladies in Waiting for Lovers. But the flip side of that is that she essentially left these young women completely defenseless and prioritized, making her own life easier than maybe sending them away from court, getting them married like she. The less pleasant side of that is actually she's kind of leaving these young women defenseless. The second part, however, there's a long tradition that contradicts this. It could preserve a pretty accurate oral tradition. We don't know. But I'll throw it out there in Catherine's defense, which is that for a long time there has been a suggestion that she actually backed Anne Boleyn leaving court when Henry started sniffing around her and Anne was quite uncomfortable and wanted to go and go back to Hever and Catherine let her. So is it possible that that is a preserving an accurate oral tradition and because it sort of turns up not that long after and does it then indicate that actually she might have been that subtle with other young women beforehand? And us saying that she didn't help them is just that she was very good at covering her tracks and theirs. So there definitely are affairs. I tend to think Catherine probably. I don't think she was sort of abandoning them, but we don't know one way or the other. Certainly after the Duke of Buckingham's sister, she's not publicly rocking the boat anymore, but whether she's subtle, staring at another way, who knows?

[Kate Lister]

So Anne enter stage rights Anne Boleyn. And I guess. Well, I'm just guessing here, but I. I suppose maybe Catherine looks at her and thought she'll come and go like all the others, that she's an infatuation that, you know, it's just. It's slightly embarrassing, but what are you gonna do? I've got a crown, you know, Crack on. I wonder.

[Gareth Russell]

Absolutely.

[Kate Lister]

She started to realize that this is more than that.

[Gareth Russell]

I think initially we sort of forget Anne is brought back from France to marry her Irish cousin, James Butler, sort of resolve an earldom dispute between the two sides of the family. So as far as Catherine is concerned, Anne will be blinking. You miss her. Because the plan is for her to become the next Countess of Ormond and she'll start dividing her time between Ireland and England. That obviously doesn't happen. And if it's true that Anne asked Catherine's permission to leave court, which she actually would have had to do, and Catherine gave her permission, maybe Catherine's also under the impression Anne is not that keen. And I believe Anne wasn't at the start. I think if you go to Hever today, it's not even an easy. It's like you go through those roads. It's a long drive. She wasn't retreating somewhere to make him more coy. She wasn't a clairvoyant. She actually was leaving. And she knew that Henry wouldn't be able to follow her and that letters would take a day or two to get through. So I think initially both Catherine and Anne think that this is the whim of the moment. And then it's, you know, Anne Boleyn is one of those people in history. Eleanor of Aquitaine's another one that just has. You can't. You don't know what it was. But it's the unquantifiable power of charm or charisma. It's something that they had, as Henry.

[Kate Lister]

As kids call it.

[Gareth Russell]

Yeah, she has. There is. And I think for Henry, it becomes an obsession. And I've never really. I mean, I. You have to respect all different historical opinions. I do throw up a little bit in my own mouth when people call Henry and Anne a love affair. I'm like, it's history's most elegant red flag. But let's be clear, that's what it is. He's obsessed with her.

[Kate Lister]

It's restraining order territory, really, isn't it?

[Gareth Russell]

A hundred percent. And it's. You know, she is. She is ambitious. And it's not true that the great families of the aristocracy welcome discarded royal mistresses into their weddings. They don't. They do not want to marry them. So if her previous suitors have been the future Earl of Ormond in Ireland and the future Earl of Northumberland in England, she can kiss Goodbye to being a countess or more if this happens. So Henry's really playing Russian roulette with her future and we don't know at what point he goes over completely and proposes marriage to her. She does seem to hesitate. I mean, I think.

[Kate Lister]

Wouldn't you?

[Gareth Russell]

Yeah, it's a big risk.

[Kate Lister]

This was like, you know, now we talk about divorce and it's an everyday thing and even royal divorces, they're like, all right then crack on with it. But like the idea at this point that the king is going to divorce his wife and marry somebody else, like that is, it's, you know, it's like Brexit but, you know, turned up to a million. It's deranged.

[Gareth Russell]

It's just something that no one ever expects coming to see coming. And I think also there are memories of Elizabeth Woodville, Edward Henry's grandmother, and how tricky her position had been because she was English and it offended the other great families. I think Anne is very aware that there will be odds stacked against her. But we sometimes make Anne a very modern woman and I think we have to put her back into how religious the time was. God has picked her. This is so improbable that actually you must see the hand of God in these things. And it's interesting that she becomes fascinated by the biblical story of Esther. And in the Bible, Esther is a noble hearted woman born within the empire. She's Jewish, but she's born within the remit of the empire. And the king in the Bible divorces his first wife Vashti in order to marry Esther. And, and that's God's will. So I think Anne is very much kind of starting to see herself in this providentialist mindset. And there is a Venetian diplomat who knows her who says she is completely convinced that this is God's will. So you have two women going in, being actually essentially flung into battle against each other by Henry viii, but they both believe that their victory is the will of God.

[Kate Lister]

I mean, I just try and think like, what on earth must Catherine have been thinking at this point? She does not go quietly though. We'd have to give her that. She is not like, I mean, we're talking like fingernails being left in the door frames here. She is not. I would have packed this in a long time ago. Personally, I think I would, I'd have.

[Gareth Russell]

Arn have cleaved myself.

[Kate Lister]

Give me a castle, give me a load of jewelry and you just privileged, irrelevant, relevance.

[Gareth Russell]

Bring it up, darling. You do the paperwork and I'll see you at Ascot, like, I will be doing nothing for the rest of my life. I will be maybe one week I'll be learning how to cook. Next week working on my posture. I will be doing nothing.

[Kate Lister]

I'll be fine.

[Gareth Russell]

I'll just commit myself to getting gold in British Airways or something like nothing.

[Kate Lister]

But the thing we have to factor into this, though, that we're not. That you and I really wouldn't care much about, but she did, is this is humiliation on a global stage.

[Gareth Russell]

Yes.

[Kate Lister]

This is like the mo. The king is gonna try and divorce you. I don't know how many kings have even divorced before this point. Around the world like this. So he's going to experiment on you now and he's going to divorce you for some ass lady in waiting who.

[Gareth Russell]

Yeah.

[Kate Lister]

You know, has got some French tricks up her sleeve. And also there's the religion thing. So she genuinely thinks that she's upsetting God?

[Gareth Russell]

Yes, she. Both of them. I think once you start to factor in, and I think the longer it goes on, for both Catherine and Anne, there is obviously the Christian, particularly at the time, that the teaching that suffering and enduring is something that is a test of faith and a test they both. The longer this drags on. It drags on for seven years. Both of them start to really see that they are being tested and that that is what they must hold, the fear. And so for Catherine. So initially, Henry. I'll blame Henry for this in a different way because he approaches the Vatican and the annulment argument he has is one that the Pope is almost guaranteed to find tricky, which is that Henry says it was never within the remit of the Vatican to provide a dispensation for me to marry my brother's widow. And for the Pope, that's sort of. You're asking him to first of all, cancel a previous pope's dispensation. They don't like doing that. And also you're asking him to permanently curtail the power of his own office. And are there other marriages of less famous people that have been granted the same dispensation and will therefore become invalid the length and breadth of Europe because of this argument and papal infallibility? Yeah, the whole.

[Kate Lister]

That means God was wrong.

[Gareth Russell]

Yeah, it means that the interpretation of Scripture and also by this point, Protestantism has started. So the Vatican's interpretation of Scripture as something that is a guideline but not an absolute is something that Protestantism is pushing hard against. So they don't want to yield an inch on their scriptural analysis at all. And then you have the fact that Catherine, Catherine's nephew, is the Habsburg Emperor Charles V who controls much of Italy. And so Catherine, basically he moves his army into Rome and the Pope is even less inclined to offend the Emperor by divorcing his aunt. But initially there is an option that Catherine could have taken and they're going to offer an annulment, but they're going to offer it with something that's by this point established Christian tradition, which is the good faith clause. Clause, which is the marriage will be declared to have been canonically religiously invalid. But you and the, the people involved in it didn't know that at the time. So any children born from it will remain legitimate.

[Kate Lister]

Some good small print there, isn't there? Wow.

[Gareth Russell]

Yeah, exactly. So she has, by the time this starts, she has an 11 year old daughter, Princess Mary. And this deal would have allowed Mary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mary would have stayed in the line of succession and she would have stayed legitimate had Catherine taken the deal. And Catherine says no, they try to encourage her to do what Louis XII's first wife had done and go into a convent. And Catherine won't do it again, I think possibly because she thinks she doesn't have a vocation and it would be spiritually dishonest. There is a lot of criticism from some scholars of Catherine not taking that early deal, partly because of what it condemned her daughter to. And there's some pretty questionable advice that Catherine will later give Mary, which is essentially that she would rather see Mary's head on the block than negotiate on this. So you're seeing a whiff of that James IV corpse ruthlessness again.

[Kate Lister]

I can understand why she didn't know. But like the last two years when I was working at the university, I was chair of the lecturers union and you'd see it all the time. Somebody had been fucked over by the system badly and they were being treated badly. And because they knew that they were right and they knew that they were being treated badly, they wanted to take it to the absolute nth degree they were going to go to court. And no amount of you saying, I think you should take the deal on the table, I know that you're right, but this isn't the way the system works would convince them to do it because they knew that they were right. And just too often you saw that because the power blocks that are in place are always gonna be rigged against them.

[Gareth Russell]

See, that's where I think that to me is what happens with Catherine. And I can understand particularly some people who look at the social and psychological toll it takes on her daughter. I get that. But I can't help but feel that this is just someone who is justified in feeling that she is being screwed over. And this isn't fair. And also, again, this is what Henry will do with his second wife and his fourth wife, which is that he will gynecologically humiliate them. It's always sex life with them. And so it's not enough for Henry to say, listen, the marriage contravened Leviticus in the Old Testament. He goes after this batshit claim that the verse in Leviticus that says, you should not marry your brother's widow and if you do, you will be childless, that it actually means sonless. Which now you have people who criticize the marriage at the start coming round to defend it and saying, that's not what it means.

[Kate Lister]

I never liked her anyway.

[Gareth Russell]

Yeah, and exactly. They're like, do you know what? Actually, we've got you here. It doesn't mean. It doesn't mean sonless. And also, they did have a son. He died after six weeks. He was baptized. So the children church considers him a fully living communicant member of the church. So even if it had meant soundless, it doesn't apply. And also, as pretty much every Christian who knows the Bible will tell you, the Levitical laws don't apply after the ministry of Christ. He says they're done, which is why Christians aren't kosher. Like, that's. There's just. There's. That's. You know. So from a sort of exegetical perspective, Henry's argument is insane. There are so few people willing to bat for him on this. And he then goes further, and he insists that Catherine must have been lying and that because the marriage between her and Arthur had been fully consummated, it's a full marriage, and that's why the marriage has been cursed. And so essentially what Henry is doing is he is raking up the multiple miscarriages she's had and saying they were her fault for lying. He's also playing sort of cut and paste with a book that is, you know, it's not. Is at the center of the faith that she is very devoted to. So as both devout Christian and honorable woman, he is firing at the very core of her belief. He makes it, apart from that brief window with the early deal and the good faith clause, he makes it impossible for her to climb down without essentially, yes, humiliating herself and her entire life to everyone she knows.

[Kate Lister]

I'll be back with Gareth after this short break.

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[Gareth Russell]

In a world where swords were sharp.

[Kate Lister]

And hygiene was actually probably better than you think it is, two fearless historians.

[Gareth Russell]

Me, Matt Lewis, and me, Dr. Eleanor.

[Kate Lister]

Yanaga, dive headfirst into the mud, blood and very strange customs of the Middle Ages.

[Gareth Russell]

So for plagues, Crusades and Viking raids, and plenty of other things that don't rhyme, subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcast.

[Kate Lister]

We get to this he's going to break with the Church, that he's actually going to undo the very faith that she believes in the fabric of society. This has gone way beyond just a personal thing now. There's no way she's going to back down after that. There's just. It's not gonna happen. She'll go to the wall with it.

[Gareth Russell]

Yes, there are some this is really sort of mid 20th century but very hardline Catholic historians who did criticize her and said that the minute it became clear that he was being swayed by Protestant sympathizers, she should have martyred herself for the cause and accepted that the Church is greater than any one story. Which, again, I can understand that. I think if you're looking at the long history of how many Catholics would end up dying because of this in the 1530s, I get it. But from a Christian perspective, you're not really supposed to start lying because the world is rotten around you. You're supposed to die for the truth if it's forced upon you.

[Kate Lister]

And also, she believes in her, and she must have believed in her very soul that she was right. And that will take you to where, like, she's not going to concede that, that she wasn't right until the Pope.

[Gareth Russell]

Rules against her, which he will not do, she's not gonna back down. And there's also an element where you start to see the suffering weaves itself into her in a way. There's. There's. I haven't. I've only seen bits of it online, but there's a German musical about Sisi Franz Jose's wife, Elisabeth. And the narrator is deaf, and she sort of waltzes with death the whole way through. And it becomes a companion. And it's all about how actually quite dangerous, how suffering is quite dangerous because it can become your companion. And suffering, doubt, like humiliation, becomes Catherine's companion. She can't. The longer it goes on, the harder it is to back down from on every level. And she starts to see careers being destroyed because of this. And to her, I think, to be honest, fair enough, it's her husband's fault. The devil has God to him one way or the other. And she. Look, there's still an element of claiming poverty, as she had after her first widowhood, where actually it's just a slightly smaller palace and a reduced entourage. It's not poverty.

[Kate Lister]

No, it's not.

[Gareth Russell]

But she is lonely and she is humiliated and she's heartbroken. And I say all of those things to sort of build her up a bit, because lonely, humiliated and heartbroken is usually when people strengthen, starts to give way. And Catherine's doesn't. She is. We often talk about Anne Boleyn holding the course for seven years, and she does. She's tough as nails, too, but so is Catherine. So she sees the ship as sinking and thinks sort of as its captain, well, I'm gonna go down with it, then. That's what. That's what will happen.

[Kate Lister]

And that is what happens. I mean, I would have tapped her a long time ago, but it's one of those things of, like. It becomes like this moral arms race. And the. The more extreme it gets, the more there is to lose, the less likely she's gonna let go of this. But obviously it does. We know the way that it goes. Henry rips the church apart, founds his own, marries Anne Boleyn. And what happens to Catherine after all that? Because, like, she never accepts it, does she? She never squares herself with this or attempts to go, look, all right, can I have my castle back? Or anything like that.

[Gareth Russell]

No, she. She still signs herself Catherine the queen. There's some really interesting evidence that I think gets overlooked, that actually Anne Boleyn, who's the new queen, sort of hoped that Catherine would give in and that she really wants Mary to, and that Anne is prepared to offer Mary, like, a very good deal to do it, actually, more than Jane Seymour will offer. But Mary just, at this point, can't. Like, Catherine can't accept it, understandably. And then later, Anne starts to get very angry. And that's the more famous stuff about her actively loathing Catherine and actually at this stage for Anne Catherine, it's a zero sum game between the two of them, which is really sad.

[Kate Lister]

It does go a bit Ms. Havisham, doesn't it?

[Gareth Russell]

Yeah, there is. So there's, I think the emotional peaks and troughs I talked about earlier, they're still there and this is, you know, there's quite a bit of paranoia. They're sort of barricading herself in a room at one point that she refuses to speak to servants who won't address her as queen.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, Catherine.

[Gareth Russell]

And obviously if they won't get paid if they do that, they might actually be arrested if they do that. So they have to. She is legally reclassified. She's still a member of the royal family. Henry has reclassified her as his brother's widow, the Dodge, or Princess of Wales. So technically speaking she is the second highest ranking woman in the kingdom after Queen Anne. But she and there were in fairness, compared to like 99.9% of the population, a very generous alliance set aside. But it's a gold tinged humiliation in order to get this, to have full access to it, she'll have to yield an inch and she won't. So her circle shrinks because these servants can't participate. It's all very, very sad. And she dies of cancer in January 1536, shortly after her 50th birthday. She's not allowed any access to her daughter.

[Kate Lister]

Nasty.

[Gareth Russell]

Because of it. And it's an immensely sad end for a very dignified woman. And, and sometimes I sort of feel like I may be overstating Catherine's faults, but it's partly deliberate because I think, you know, mess maketh the man kind of thing. And I think it's really sad that Catherine has sort of just been stripped of all her color and made quite bland. And actually, yes, some of the stuff she did was put mildly questionable, particularly earlier in her career. But also I think she was immensely courageous and the level of backbone she had to have to wage the war for her right was tremendous. I think she was a truly remarkable woman. I think Anne Boleyn was too. I think it's just the man in the middle was about as remarkable as skimmed milk. To be totally honest. I tend to think Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn could have made really great if they'd been married to different men. And so I think that's the tragedy of it. And also of course in both their cases, and even more so in Catherine's, there is the physical toll that childbearing had taken on them. You know, there's a lot to admire or at least be in awe of with Catherine of Aragon. Absolutely.

[Kate Lister]

So as a final question then, as this is a mini series about history's worst breaking breakups, there's no doubt that this has got to be up there. But what do you think the impact the fallout of this breakup has been? I mean, not just on the emotions of those involved, which was colossal, but like on a global, not global, political scale.

[Gareth Russell]

Yeah. So if, let's say the Pope had given in or Catherine had given in, Anne Boleyn probably would have become Queen of England in about 1528, 1529, she would have had four extra years of childbearing. Even if she had only had Elizabeth, Elizabeth would have been regarded as completely legitimate by the Catholic world. Anne would have raised her a Catholic. There's no question in my mind Anne would have done it and that she was iffy on the Vatican, but she really would have accepted the Pope's ruling. Obviously, England would have stayed Catholic. I think the impact of there not being the Mary Queen of Scots aspect of things, the tension, as with Europe, the Spanish Armada, the whole shape of English foreign policy in the centuries to come would have been completely different.

[Kate Lister]

Wow.

[Gareth Russell]

It's almost incalculable, the impact it has because the impact of Protestantism on English and then later British history is colossal. So I don't think this is this much of a stretch, but barring maybe another royal converting down the line, there probably wouldn't have been years and centuries of sectarian bitterness in Ireland because it wouldn't have been religiously defined. Like, the dominoes that fall from it are huge. Now, obviously things could have happened that we couldn't foresee, but it's the most important breakup in British history by a country mile.

[Kate Lister]

Puts everyone else's breakups in the shade, really. If you listen to this and you think you've had a bad breakup, like, come on, come on.

[Gareth Russell]

Yeah. No one's being. Yeah. No one's like, listen, did it result.

[Kate Lister]

In people being burnt at the stake? No.

[Gareth Russell]

No. Did it somehow. Did an English king and a Spanish queen somehow end up causing Ireland 300 years of difficulty?

[Kate Lister]

No.

[Gareth Russell]

No. Yours didn't do that, guys. So until, until you can come back to me with that. Sit down.

[Kate Lister]

It's just, it's small change, quite frankly.

[Gareth Russell]

Absolutely. Although what I do love about what we've established is that you and I would have sold our like that instantly.

[Kate Lister]

Yep. Completely weak willed and greedy. Just like. Yeah.

[Gareth Russell]

Just us dress head to toe in our matching Hermans turning up to your Hampton Court Christmas and being like, we're fine.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, sorry, we're so sad. We're so sad.

[Gareth Russell]

We are sad. We miss him, we miss him. But also, how am I showing you my new emeralds?

[Kate Lister]

Gareth, you have been so much fun to talk to. You always are. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

[Gareth Russell]

Instagram, Gareth Russell and then my website, Gareth russell.co.uk.

[Kate Lister]

Will you come back and talk to us some more about history's naughty people?

[Gareth Russell]

Anytime.

[Kate Lister]

I love it. Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to Gareth for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like review and follow along whatever it is you get. Your podcasts Coming up. We have got an episode on the Truth about the Bronte Sisters and the second installation installment of this little miniseries on history's worst breakups, where we are looking at bom bom bom, Lord Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb. Of course we are. And if you want us to explore a subject or perhaps you just wanted to say hello, then you can email [e-mail] this podcast was edited by Tim Arstel and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddie Chick. Join me again betwixt the Sheets the History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.

[Gareth Russell]

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