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Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim & Mild from Aaron Menke. Listener discretion advised.

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This is Dana Schwartz, host of nobleblood. I am off taking a brief maternity leave and so this week I am so excited to share one of my absolute favorite early episodes of the show from the Archives, an episode about Henry VIII's first wife, Catherine. Though most people only associate her with the end of her life and Henry's attempts to divorce her, this episode focuses mainly on Catherine's early life, back before she married Henry viii, when she was trapped in limbo as a bargaining chip in England after the death of her first husband. I hope you enjoyed.

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After a long and treacherous journey from her cloistered life in Spain, Princess Catherine finally made it safely to English shores. Catherine, the daughter of the illustrious Ferdinand and Isabella, was devoutly religious, and so as soon as her ship had landed on the English coast, she insisted on going immediately to church. Though she was only 15, Catherine already felt like a woman. Technically, she was already married to Arthur, the Prince of Wales, heir to the English throne. They had been married by proxy the year before, and they had been betrothed since she was three. And so the teenager knew how to carry herself like a woman, to carry herself as a representative of her parents and of her nation. Because she was, she had never met her husband. Although they had exchanged flowery letters in their mutual language, Latin, they wrote like teenagers pretending to be adults. Their tutors had handily supplied them with phrases, promises of love and devotion, and the long awaited pleasure of gazing upon one another's faces. Even after making it to England, it would still be days before Catherine met the man with whom she had promised to spend the rest of her life. From the coast, Catherine and her party, Spanish servants and ladies and ambassadors and chaperones, rode to Berkshire and then to a bishop's house in Dogsmer Field. Even through a full day of sweaty travel along roads pockmarked with dust and holes, Catherine embodied propriety above all else she wore a long velvet gown in the demure Spanish style and a veil over her face. And she rode in a carriage with the curtains drawn, even when the summer heat forced its way through them and made the skin underneath the fabric of Catherine's dress prickle with sweat. When they made it to the bishop's house, it was already dark, and Catherine's ladies politely demurred the bishop's offer of dinner and they swept their princess to bed. But word had already made it to the King of England, Henry vii, that his future daughter in law had arrived. He rode out immediately to inspect the goods, as it were, and so he was furious when he arrived, only to be told by Catherine's chaperone that the princess had had an exhausting travel day and that she had retired to her bedroom for the night. King Henry VII was outraged. Was the princess deformed? Was the portrait they had sent just a cunning lie on the part of the Spanish monarchy to trick them and make them appear the fool? Were they sending his son damaged goods? He was the king and he demanded to see Princess Catherine. After a few moments, Catherine and her ladies emerged from her bedchamber. Catherine wore a heavy black veil over her face. Henry VII was sure they were hiding something and so he strode over and without even a word of introduction, flung the veil back. He was surprised, in spite of himself. She was exactly as her portrait had presented her. A beautiful 15 year old girl with clear, creamy skin and thick red hair. Her blue eyes were bleary, but light and intelligent. Very well, the king said and he bid her goodnight. That interaction would represent Catherine's tenuous position in England for the next 35 years. The rest of her life, she was more a symbol than a woman, both a bargaining chip and an obstacle. For the rest of Catherine's life, she would be fighting an increasingly challenging battle to maintain her dignity. She was a player in an unwinnable game. A hostage first of Henry VII and then ultimately of Henry viii, her brother in law, who first became her husband and then became her enemy. I'm Dana Schwartz and this is noble blood. Catherine didn't know it, but blood had already been shed to pave the way for her journey to England. In the course of her marriage negotiations, back when she was still a toddler, crawling on her mother's lap, her father had demanded that if their princess was to be wed to Arthur, the heir to the throne of England, then King Henry VII would need to kill a prisoner. Not just any prisoner. He would need to kill the young Earl of Warwick, a Boy who had been in isolation in the Tower of London for nearly 15 years. The Earl of Warwick, still only in his early 20s, was the nephew and heir of the former king Richard iii. England's new king, Henry vii, had beat Richard III in battle and made an advantageous marriage to Elizabeth of York afterward. But no one really believed that he had any worthwhile blood claim to the English throne. Someone like the Earl of Warwick did have that blood claim. Sure, the Earl was no real threat while he was imprisoned, half mad from loneliness, but he was still a threat. And Ferdinand of Aragon did not want any threats if his daughter was to come to England. She was an incredibly eligible princess, the youngest daughter of a united Spain, a Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. Catherine's bloodline was impeccable. Technically on her mother's side, she even had a better blood claim to the English throne than Henry vii. That was most of the reason that Henry VII wanted her for his son. Catherine represented old European royalty, everything that he aspired for the brand new house of Tudor to be. And so King Henry VII trumped up charges of an escape attempt and had Warwick executed, Princess Catherine would be marrying the future King of England. Henry VII guaranteed it. And so Spain agreed on a dowry of 200,000 crowns. And when young Prince Arthur turned 14, old enough to consummate a marriage, Catherine was shipped to England for a wedding that would make all of Europe pay attention. Catherine came to London two days before her wedding in a gown with bell shaped sleeves and a hooped petticoat that made her as wide as she was high. The look was unlike anything anyone was wearing in England. It was unmistakably Spanish. Catherine also wore a jaunty little cap on her head with gold lace to tie it beneath her chin in the Venetian style. Escorted by the Lord Mayor of London, Catherine came through the city to watch the elaborate pageants that people had set up for her. Tableaux with sets and costumes on the street. In one tableau, a paper Welsh dragon in green represented her husband to be Arthur, the Prince of Wales. In another tableau, the Archangel Gabriel came down to a figure meant to represent Catherine, reminding her that her chief duty was for the procreation of children. A God character then came down and declared, blessed be the fruit of your belly, your substance and fruits I shall increase and multiply. England was coming out of civil war between the Yorks and the Lancasters. The dynasty wasn't entirely secure yet, but Henry VII and his heir Arthur represented a stable future. And now they had this young, beautiful Spanish princess who was ready to continue the Tudor line. When Arthur and Catherine finally met in person, they smiled and blushed, still teenagers, even as they were play acting adults. They tried to converse in Latin, but they found that they couldn't quite understand each other. They had been taught different pronunciations. A Spanish ambassador assured Arthur that Catherine would learn English soon enough. Arthur's little brother Henry, then just 10 years old, peeked out at the princess who had arrived from a distant land. He whispered into his brother's coat that she was beautiful. Arthur smiled and he kissed Catherine on the cheek. The wedding was a spectacle, with Arthur and Catherine both in heavy crowns and in velvet robes trimmed with ermine. When they completed their vows, doves and rabbits were released outside St. Paul's Cathedral in a moment of delicious chaos. A children's choir sang them out and into their marriage bed. Though Arthur was at this point only 15 years old and of a particularly sickly constitution, the morning after his wedding, he strolled out of his bedchamber and bodily told his friends to pour him an ale. Marriage is thirsty work, he said, poking a friend in the ribs. Gentlemen, he announced when he had his mead to hold high, I have spent the night in Spain. Catherine privately told her ladies that they hadn't done anything but sleep side by side and offer each other a chaste kiss goodnight. The day after the wedding, King Henry VII sent most of Catherine's Spanish entourage home, leaving Catherine more isolated than she had ever been in her entire life. In a strange country and in bed with a stranger, King Henry tried to distract her. That day he showed her his library and he let her choose a new ring for herself. But Catherine couldn't stop looking out the window, looking back towards the land she had left and to which he would now never return. Though Arthur's health seemed to decline in the weeks following his wedding, the pale, weedy boy becoming even paler and weedier, he was still the Prince of Wales. And so the newlywed couple set off to Ludlow Castle in the Welsh marshes, so Arthur could gain some experience in governance. As Arthur's color continued to fade, courtiers joked that the boy was just overexerting himself in the marriage bed. When both Catherine and Arthur fell sick with the sweating sickness drenching their clothes, leaving them delirious with fever, people stopped making jokes. On April 3, a confessor woke King Henry VII in the middle of the night in his palace in Surrey. The king, still bleary eyed, just stared at his confessor, who recited stuttering, if we receive good things at the hand of God, why may we not endure evil things. The king didn't respond. And so the confessor lowered his eyes and he was forced to continue. Your dearest son, he said, hath departed. God. Arthur, Prince of Wales and heir to the English throne, was dead. When Catherine recovered from the sweating sickness, she woke to a new life as a widow, alone in a foreign land. She had been married for only six months. As tradition dictated, Catherine did not attend her husband's funeral. Shrouded in black, in heavy veils, she returned to London to see what her future would entail. Catherine's father, King Ferdinand, demanded that England repay her dowry. It was negotiation tactic to frighten Henry VII into agreeing to a new betrothal to his next son, the new heir, Henry. There were a few obstacles that would prevent Catherine from becoming engaged to the very young Henry Tudor. First, that Catherine was over five years older than him. The new widow was 16. The young prince was 11. But that age difference wouldn't matter much. As Henry aged, by the time he was 14, able to consummate a marriage, it wouldn't raise too many eyebrows for him to be going to bed with an older woman. But the much bigger barrier was the Bible, which forbade a man to marry his brother's widow. To be fair, the Bible wasn't entirely clear on the matter. Leviticus explicitly forbade marriage between a man and his brother's wife, declaring outright that such a union would be cursed with childlessness. But then again, in Deuteronomy, it's basically encouraged for a man to marry his brother's widow if the couple was childless. It's painted as an act of charity. But that religious complication could be brushed aside if the marriage between Catherine and Arthur was never consummated. Impatient with the hemming and hawing of advisors and ambassadors, King Henry VII summoned Catherine and explicitly asked her if she and Arthur had slept together. Catherine shook her head. She and Arthur had laid together for six nights, but never as a man and wife. There, Henry VII said, do you see? Simple. We shall keep the dowry and Henry shall marry Spain. So it was agreed. The marriage was set to take place in 1505, when Prince Henry was 14 years old. Spain would send a delegation to the Pope for special dispensation in order to settle any lingering doubts about the marriage's legality. And so Catherine and Henry were formally betrothed in a ceremony in which Catherine wore white, looking as virginal as she possibly could, with her hair unbound in loose waves down past her shoulder to signify her purity. But Until Henry turned 14, Catherine remained in England, not quite a guest, but not quite a member of the royal family either. She was given a minimal household and an allowance, but not much else. But then Catherine's mother died in Spain, the illustrious Isabella of Castile. That would be devastating under any circumstance, but with her mother's death, Catherine lost her dynastic importance. Technically, Castile went to Catherine's older sister, Juana, but everyone knew that Juana was volatile, verging on unhinged. And so the real power was Swana's husband, Philip the Handsome, the son of the Holy Roman Emperor. But all that just meant that with Isabella dead, Catherine was no longer a princess of a united Spain. She was instead just the princess now of the smaller, less important region of Aragon, her father's kingdom. Henry Tudor was going to be the King of England someday. He could probably find a much better marriage. Abruptly, King Henry VII stopped Catherine's allowance. The king began treating her with cool disdain when he didn't outright ignore her. Catherine wasn't sent back to Spain, of course not. That would mean having to give back her dowry. But Catherine was kept more like a hostage, temporarily kept safe and confined until a better marriage match for Henry Tudor could be made. Henry's 14th birthday came and went, and there was no mention of any upcoming wedding. Catherine became aware with a sinking feeling, that there may be no wedding coming at all. She didn't know that King Henry VII had already brought his son to the Bishop of Winchester to have him formally revoke the promise of betrothal. He made the two kept it a secret, in case Henry would need to marry Catherine after all. All the while, Catherine's circumstances became more and more desperate. From the house she had been staying at in London, Catherine was brought to court so that the king could save on the cost of maintaining a separate household for her. But living in court meant that she was in a constant fishbowl of gossip and speculation and pity. With no allowance, Catherine had no way to pay her staff or pay the dowries of her loyal ladies in waiting, who had come with her all the way from Spain in the hopes that they would be making an advantageous marriage while they were in England. Now Catherine was in the humiliating position of having to tell them that there were no dowries available. Her servants were working for nothing but loyalty. The few gowns that Catherine had brought with her from Spain were growing thin and threadbare and inches too short on the growing teenage girl. She was heavily in debt to London merchants for the few necessities that she couldn't borrow or construct from her meager belongings, Catherine continued to send frantic letters to her father, begging him for some financial support. But Ferdinand refused. Catherine was under the supervision of King Henry vii, and her upkeep was his responsibility. It was four torturous years of limbo, confusion, loneliness and humiliation. But then there was one bright spot. In January of 1506, Catherine's sister Juana and her husband Philip were sailing from the Low Countries to Spain when they were shipwrecked off the coast of England and the pair were coming to visit the English court. Catherine had not seen her sister for 10 years, and she was thrilled at the prospect of a reunion. When Juana and Philip arrived at court, Catherine was surprised to see that she was invited to sit at the top table. Catherine was treated with a kindness that was now so unfamiliar to her that it made her uneasy. King Henry VII clearly did not want Juan and Philip to see how poorly their kin was being treated. But Catherine didn't mind. She was seeing her sister again, and when she got her alone, she could beg Juana to put in a good word for her with King Henry. Maybe if Juana asked him, Henry would finally set the marriage between Catherine and the prince. When their meeting finally came, Catherine was only permitted half an hour of alone time with Juana. Before Catherine even had a moment to ask Juana for help, Juana began in a panic, telling her sister how miserable she was with Philip and his philandering, how she knew that he was cheating on her, but how she was too madly in love with him to confront him about it. And before she knew it, the meeting was over. Catherine had never had a chance to ask her for help. But while the two women were speaking, Philip was meeting with King Henry VII and secretly trying to arrange negotiations for his and Juana's daughter Eleanor to be the one to marry Prince Henry. The visit that was supposed to be Catherine's salvation was actually a betrayal. Catherine never saw her sister again, and just six months after the meeting in England, Philip died, only 28 years years old. They say that his death left Juana unhinged, that she refused to let him be buried, and that she kept his corpse in an open coffin, continually kissing and embracing the decaying body of her former husband until it was pulled away. While she sobbed, Catherine had no allies left. She was deeply in debt from supplying her staff with clothing and food. Left without even enough money to buy herself a new nightgown, she was pawning her possessions, her last relics of home, one by one, in order to maintain a semblance of the Proper appearance required for her station. Prince Henry, who had once been a cherubic 10 year old, had grown into a young man. But when Henry showed even a fraction of affection towards Catherine, a woman he had known for almost all of his formative years, the king forced them apart and then banished Catherine to Fulham. Affection would have no place in the negotiations of who an heir would marry. Catherine, now an old maid at 21 years old, returned to court only for the tournaments of Prince Henry's 16th birthday celebrations. The two exchanged shy smiles and flirtatious glances, but they knew enough not to make their affections public. But then, a stroke of luck for Catherine. Her captor Henry VII died of tuberculosis and Prince Henry became Henry viii. It seemed a foregone conclusion who the golden teenage king would be choosing for his new bride. He had seen Catherine of Aragon from back when she was a beautiful girl. He had seen her grow through hardship and suffering into a beautiful young woman. She was his first crush, the face he always pictured when he imagined his queen. And he was the king now. Henry VIII was her savior, her knight, knight in shining armor. King Henry VIII was in charge and he would marry whoever he wanted. That's the story of how Catherine of Aragon married King Henry viii. But keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear about how their story ended.