>>18531057
Did the king suffer from borderline personality disorder?
I do and I tend to metaphorically behead women that wronged me

>>18531057
Anne was by all accounts a weird, cunty, bipolar bitch who laughed at inappropriate moments. Her downfall was however mostly because she saw herself as a co-ruler who tried to meddle in politics and pissed off the king in doing so.

>>18531057
>my hecking poll numbers!!
oh my god who the hell cares

>>18531057
She got mad at Thomas Cromwell over the dissolution of the monasteries, since the monasteries had engaged in a large amount of charity and employment of artisans and rural poor. She felt the money gained from the stripping of the altars and the sale of church lands should be used to set up royal charities. Cromwell, as the King's servant, favored using that money in ways that most pleased his master, mainly by financing a military buildup so he could go to war with France again.

This feud escalated to the point that Boleyn started telling the King to beware evil and scheming ministers, and even told Cromwell to his face that she would see his head on a spike. That was a big mistake, and whatever she had actually done, Cromwell won out since the king believed the utterly absurd charges Cromwell cooked up against her, that she wasn't just an adultress but she was a turbo adultress having orgies with a dozen men at the same time.

>>18531079
>a weird, cunty, bipolar bitch who laughed at inappropriate moments.
Sounds like my sister sometimes

>>18531173
>She got mad at Thomas Cromwell over the dissolution of the monasteries, since the monasteries had engaged in a large amount of charity and employment of artisans and rural poor. She felt the money gained from the stripping of the altars and the sale of church lands should be used to set up royal charities
woman moment

>>18531404
you consider THAT to be the woman moment, and not telling Cromwell she'd see him dead, without having the ability to carry through with that threat?

>>18531057
>dumb bitch
Is that what the B stands for?

>>18531404
Nah. Dissolution of the Monasteries is a huge black stain on Tudor history. Destroyed countless historical monuments, tombs of kings, priceless art, all so his college bros can have more land. All the kings before the 13th century basically got their tombs destroyed.

It’s up there with the retardation the French did to their own churches in the revolution.

>>18531057
A peculiar and tragic footnote to Anne's story is that we don't actually know what she looked like. The Holbein portrait was a posthumous one as other portraits made when she was living were destroyed after her death.

there's a tendency in the media to pump up AB and Elizabeth as some kind of proto-feminist icons

>>18531079
>Her downfall was however mostly because she saw herself as a co-ruler who tried to meddle in politics and pissed off the king in doing so
This is an unfair assertion as Henry very much treated Catherine of Aragon as a co-ruler and leaned on her advice. She handled the Scottish war in 1513 while Henry was off in France commendably and he debated religion and politics with her, she assisted him in his refutation of Luther's 95 Theses.

Anne was no worse than any queen consort in scheming her way to the top, she just lost in the end. Jane Seymour was not any less of a schemer, but she gave the king a son and Anne didn't so that saved her. It was true that Anne didn't have the best manners and was rude and haughty, nobody really believed she did the crimes she was accused of.

>>18531057
A lot of the accounts of Anne's time at the royal court come from Eustace Chapuys, a guy who not only couldn't stand her, but only met her in person once. Mary also bore false witness to him. Anne is a lot like the Roman emperors whose story is mostly known from their political enemies who were liable to not say anything good about her if they could help it.

>>18531079
Based on my experience this means she must have fucked like a jet engine.

most of the Tudor court comes across as pretty shitty human beings most of the time. it's a fact that Henry basically stalked her and she had not asked for this.

>>18532418
Anne was hot tho

Most of H8's wives were known to be charismatic and really good with people, i think that was something that attracted him and scared him because it also meant uncertainty of his control over them+the court. He wanted a woman who made him look good but he didn’t know how to actually have a successful royal marriage because he was too insecure.

>>18531111
>"I le don't le care about le popularity"
>ten trillion angry peasants stop working to show up at your gates, light shit on fire and fling cow feces, and a thousand assassins try to kill you

>>18532504
He was bipolar with his wife selection he went from boring to BPD to boring / ugly then BPD and finally boring

Anne's precise DOB is not known but generally believed to be 1507, in fact of all H8's wives only Catherine of Aragon's DOB is definitely known. Record keeping was inadequate back then especially for commoners and even more so for females. Thomas Cromwell pushed for laws making it mandatory for English parishes to document births, deaths, and weddings, which was passed in 1548.

Jane Dormer, a lady-in-waiting to Mary, was born two years after Anne's execution but to the end of her days, Mary never shut up about Anne and would rant about her to anyone in listening range, and as she got older she became steadily more obsessed with her. Dormer wrote that Anne was close to turning 29 when she was executed, proving that she was born in the summer of 1507.

>>18532519
other claims have it that she was born in 1501, though it would seem odd for Henry to marry a 30 year old. the usual evidence cited for this was her serving as a lady-in-waiting to Margaret of Austria and Mary Tudor in France in 1513-14 and that she would have had to be at least a teenager. unless you believe Anne fudged her age and was older than Henry thought.

>>18532524
The only two contemporary sources for Anne's birth indicate she was 28 when she was executed and other evidence suggests that she was actually sent abroad to the Austrian and French courts as a little girl, not a teenager.

>>18532519
in those days not all churches kept records of births etc and some didn't preserve theirs and as you said, women were generally considered of lesser importance so documenting their lives was not done as thoroughly

>>18531189
so you be sayin...

>>18532519
>Mary never shut up about Anne and would rant about her to anyone in listening range, and
why are women like this?

>Anne not only failed to produce a son, but a second pregnancy ended in a miscarriage and it was getting increasingly embarrassing to the king, and the fact that this happened with two successive wives suggested he was the problem rather than them
>but he had no way out of this marriage short of Anne committing a capital crime
>by accusing her of adultery and incest, Henry can maintain the Biblical argument for Catherine and that Anne was a "loose" woman and therefore her fault that God would not reward her with the right children

After Anne's execution, Chapuys told Grenville that one never saw a happier, more joyous cuckold than the king. The tl;dr being that he knew the adultery charges were fabricated from whole cloth, and even though he couldn't stand Anne, he still knew that her committing incest with her brother was bunk.

>>18533849
The tl;dr is:

>Henry was 45, he was not getting any younger and was increasingly desperate to have a son
>Anne wanted to be a co-ruler (although in her defense, Catherine had been as well)
>she also objected to him taking mistresses (as that was how he got her)
>supposedly doctors told the king that after her second pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, she was unlikely to get pregnant again
>he wasn't going to try and divorce her because it would drag out forever and she would resist it
>with Anne dead all his problems were solved and he could immediately marry Jane Seymour, who had a passive personality and was not interested in politics

>In 1538, the king attempted a bold experiment by decreeing that any English citizen may possess a copy of the Bible. This quickly turned into a disaster as Englishmen fell into ferocious argument over Biblical passages, which could be used to argue for or against literally anything. Taverns became the scene of fistfights and brawls over the exact interpretation of a Bible verse, Seeing that this well-meaning effort went all sorts of wrong, Henry reversed course in 1542 and once again limited possession of Bibles to ordained clergy.[32]

>>18533849
Henry tried to put a good face on Elizabeth's birth, at least Anne had demonstrated her capacity to deliver a healthy baby, but he was privately chagrined and knew he'd become the butt of jokes around Europe. Even if Anne produced a healthy son afterward, that would not soothe the blow to his ego. The moment she failed to produce a son on the first go, she was toast.

>>18533867
I think he was genuinely fond of Anne in the beginning but their relationship steadily went downhill after Elizabeth's birth. The English people really did not like her either.

Anne seems to have had anger management issues while Henry's other wives would have been better at suppressing any anger they had.

>>18531057
That’s not what saving face means you stupid retarded autist zoomer esl

>>18533885
>>18533856
Catherine was different, she was a royal princess and had been inculcated from childhood in manners and court etiquette. Also as a royal, she received a top tier education and Henry could see her as his intellectual equal, worthy of debating heavy subjects with. Even when Catherine disagreed with him, she could do so in a disarming way. Anne could not do that, she was of a lower background, not as educated, and had a confrontational personality with little to no filter.

there's no evidence that Anne broke things or shouted down her maids, but she did openly and boldly argue with the king. probably Henry found this behavior charming in a mistress but intolerable in a wife, who was supposed to be demure and submissive. it is notable that Jane Seymour acted like an absolute doormat, if she had any feelings of her own, she kept them well hidden.

Anne comported herself properly as queen, knowing the entire court was watching and waiting for any slip-up she could make--her final days leading up to her execution were calm and dignified. a lot of the claims about her bad behavior came from Chapuys, who met her only once and made an absurd series of claims about her.

>>18533902
Jane at least once made a remark about how she thought Mary was poorly treated and the king told her in essence that that was none of her business.

>>18533907
Anne did not like Jane Seymour, certainly knew Henry was interested in her, and would likely have her if he wanted to since whatever the king wants, the king gets. That said, Jane is given too kindly of a reputation by history as the "good" wife who heroically laid down her life giving the king his long-awaited son. I don't think she was as saintly a person as is commonly supposed and that she was very much scheming her way to the top. Her remarks about Mary and Elizabeth's treatment and then being told to butt out don't reflect well on her either, clearly she had some self-serving motive there. The woman was literally choosing wedding dresses on Anne's execution day.

>>18533923
all accounts suggest JS was not stupid and knew exactly what she was doing. obviously she couldn't refuse the king's demands, he was unpredictable and herself and her family would likely pay the consequences if she refused. also Jane was an extremely religious woman and believed her marrying the king was God's will. Also, Anne was paid in her own coin when Jane Seymour was at court. Anne was extremely cruel to Mary and Catherine, while she was still married to Henry she would often ridicule her.

What we do know is that Anne idolized the French court, which she had spent time at as a child, and encouraged the English court to emulate it. Ladies at court were encouraged to wear stylish, cleavage-baring outfits and Anne liked music, dancing, and games of chance. She also did not like dull or undereducated people and would have encouraged her ladies to participate in intellectual debates and to read the Bible in English. There is no evidence that she treated her LiW poorly. Anne also took religion seriously and encouraged the ladies to piety, but compared to Catherine, she did not mind having a party. It is only certain that she was cruel to Mary and banished her to the English countryside, though she did take pity and send her a silver cup and some money when Mary wrote to complain about her circumstances.

The only court lady Anne definitely had it out for was Jane Seymour, since of course she was a rival, and Jane was a staunch Catholic and admirer of Catherine of Aragon. Once she was queen, Jane tamped down the court festivities and ordered her ladies to dress more modestly. Some say Jane simply wanted to act the opposite of Anne to please the king, but it's more likely that she always had it out for her from the beginning and just wanted to erase any evidence of her being at the court.

>>18533933
The court had a lot of Catherine/Mary supporters who resented Anne's treatment of them on top of her hot temper. It's often assumed that because the ladies gave into Cromwell's demands so quickly that they clearly had no loyalty to her, but Cromwell was no joke. He had as many powers as the king himself, and if the ladies didn't do what he wanted he could ruin their lives, their families, marriage prospects, etc. There was no reason to continue defending a queen whose time had run out.

>>18533964
there was a story that Jane showed off a necklace the king gave her as a gift and Anne angrily ripped it off her neck, cutting her finger in the process. once Jane was queen she imposed strict rules on dress down to the number of pearls her ladies could wear on their girdles. Elizabeth was also known to get angered with her ladies easily. it seems some people are conflating mother and daughter and assuming Elizabeth inherited her short fuse from Anne rather than her father, which seems far more likely.

>>18533946
for sure a lot of the court liked the good-time-fun atmosphere Anne encouraged, even looking the other way when the ladies had extramarital affairs (although an affair between Margaret Douglas and Thomas Howard ended badly) and resented Jane Seymour as a stuck-up prude. it's significant that there is no record of any of Jane's LiW ever having a good thing to say about her. yes she was not around very long, but Anne of Cleves was around for even less time and her ladies still spoke highly of her.

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>>18533946
>Anne also took religion seriously and encouraged the ladies to piety

Lol, she literary piped out thots to Henry just to amend their relation. Da bitch even demanded Catherine's jewellery which was Catherine's personal property brought from Spain.

>>18534130
That was false, it was covered earlier. She was very much against the king taking mistresses knowing how she herself got where she was.

H8 was concussed probably a couple of times in jousting accidents and whatnot and it was responsible for his increasingly unstable, psychotic behavior such as executing Cromwell out of anger over the Anne of Cleves fiasco, only to afterwards bemoan how stupid he was to execute one of his best servants.

it seems that a lot of people reconstruct AB's personality based on her daughter, figuring she obviously took after her when she more likely than not took after her father instead

>>18533852
Anyone who thinks H8 didn't plan this thing out for a long long time is retarded. One example would be hiring a French swordsman for the execution. He was hired from Calais, which was just across the Channel but that was still a fairly decent trek in those days, requiring a horseback ride from London down to the shoreline, a boat ride over to Calais, and then back again, a nearly 200 mile round trip.

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Let no one believe Jane Seymour was a harmless paperweight, the woman was 100% totally a scheming ladder-climber who along with her brothers sought to attain high place by knifing Anne Boleyn. Everyone who became a lady-in-waiting had social ambitions, it was also why Anne was pushed by her parents from childhood into it.

>>18534955
her brothers were certainly pretty terrible people. we don't know how she would have fared had she survived Edward's birth, perhaps the king would have given her a pass on things for giving him a son. certainly he did tell her to fuck off when she complained about Mary's treatment and asked for royal pardons for the Pilgrimage of Grace people.

>>18534955
While she was pregnant with Edward, Henry had a relationship with Anne Basset but it never evolved past a casual fling.

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>Marriage doesn't last a year
>Never bothered consummating it
>Doesn't throw a hissyfit
>Gets a very generous settlement
>Is actually liked by Henry as a friend
How did she do it?

>>18534955
Jane was something of a dull provincial who unlike Anne Boleyn had never been outside of England and was not as educated as her. Henry would have likely not found her very intellectually stimulating compared to his first two wives, but it seems his main reason for going with her was that the Seymours were a large clan and he must have assumed they were good at reproducing.

>>18535114
she was just a provincial German who couldn't adapt to the elaborate French-inspired English court

>>18533895
Anne was pretty well-educated and traveled as I said, she had been a lady-in-waiting at the French and Austrian courts. She did not have Catherine's training in royal manners or etiquette though, her biggest weakness.

I do think Anne was pretty stressed out and had not wanted to be the queen, she had squandered most of her prime late teens-early 20s years on being a mistress to H8 when she could have been seeking a husband instead and is then asked to marry him, and whatever the king wants he gets.

>>18533970
This incident involved Jane wearing a necklace that had a locket with Henry's portrait inside that he gave her as a gift and she showed it off to Anne to flex on her, causing the latter to rip the necklace off her in a fit of rage and cut herself in the process.

>Henry begins an affair with Jane after Anne's second pregnancy miscarries
>some of his inner circle notice and begin coaching her on how to properly approach the king
>they also ensured the two were together when Anne was not in town (Cromwell gave up his rooms for this purpose which the king protested since he figured this would blow his cover) and knew all of Henry's schedule
>Jane was told that nobody in all of England liked Anne and her marriage was considered illegimate
>Cromwell told Chapuys all this
>from Jane's POV she must have considered the king a widower since Catherine of Aragon died and she hoped to oust Anne Boleyn and restore Mary to the line of succession, and hopefully also restore the king and England to Catholicism
>it was generally believed that Mary's diminution to the title of Lady was entirely Anne's doing and Mary had been told that it was and Henry was seeing a woman who would ensure that she had all her titles restored
>hence to everyone's surprise, once Anne was executed, Henry made it clear that he would not return to the Catholic fold and Mary was compelled to renounce her right to the royal succession
>Henry had no qualms about being engaged to Jane while Anne still had a head on her shoulders since he considered his marriage illegitimate
>three months into the marriage Henry remarked that he wondered if he didn't rush into this thing too quickly since the court had many young ladies who were prettier than Jane and why he told her to shut up or else when she complained about Mary and the Pilgrimage of Grace
>Jane also probably didn't know what she was getting into until it was too late

>>18535166
So I don't think it was the same situation with Anne vis a vis Jane. Anne made the best out of the king essentially ordering her to marry him against her will, while Jane willingly agreed to the whole thing since she believed she had more influence on him than she actually did. Jane should not be assumed to be a passive person, she was totally ruthless and in on the take, or at least she thought she was, anyway, thought she hit the jackpot after years of languishing as a LiW at the court, watching her two younger sisters marry ahead of her, while she was in her late 20s and still single.

>>18535175
Some stories like the one about a pregnant Anne walking in on Jane Seymour cuddling up with the king are probably unbelievable, because IDK she could have walked on him him unless he wanted it, and he would not want to stress or anger her while she was pregnant. The story about Jane taunting her with a locket and Anne ripping it off her neck sounds more believable, although Jane Dormer's claims that they got into brawls may be an exaggeration (more likely Anne just slapped her). That said, if she'd survived Edward's birth that might have given her more leverage with Henry.

>>18534955
The Seymours were kind of trashy proto-chavs, prior to Jane's marriage to the king they were pretty much nobodies and her brothers readily used it to status-climb in the most rude, obvious way. The Boleyns, while ambitious, seemed to be a bit classier people.

It is speculated that Henry VIII's poor track record in siring healthy children was because he could have had Kell positive blood.

>>18535411
although he could have had bad genes, royal women were in a poor situation either way.

>given sub-optimal diets during pregnancy due to retarded 16th century medicine
>kept in isolation during pregnancy and not allowed to exercise or do many activities
>also under great pressure for the baby to be healthy and be a boy

>>18535429
>shitty health care (Catherine had an infection of some kind, possibly placenta, after her first miscarriage, Jane Seymour died of a post-partum infection)
>extremely short time between pregnancies so their bodies didn't have much chance to recover (Catherine's pregnancies provide the clearest evidence for this, but Anne seems to have fallen pregnant again shortly after giving birth to Elizabeth as four months later she's noted as showing signs)
>enormous pressure to produce a healthy son (Jane Seymour must have thought about her two predecessors and their fate daily, and Catherine's stillbirths must have caused her great distress since the Church at that time held that stillborn babies were in Limbo and could not be reunited with their parents in Heaven).

we don't know exactly what caused CoA's miscarriages but either she had a physical defect, fasted too frequently, or stress/excessively quick pregnancies. it's likely that Henry VIII didn't wait enough time between pregnancies to give his wives time to recover on top of them being under stress and the guidelines Margaret Beaufort laid down were not healthy

>>18535470
And Catherine was a pretty small woman which might have been an issue as well, plus Henry was a big guy with a football linebacker build and that could have caused problems and it was an incompatible genetic match as she might have produced a fairly large baby that was difficult for her to deliver.

>>18535451
They had the belief that the best diet for pregnant women was meat and wine, which left them starved of vital nutrients.

>>18535470
Catherine fasted during her pregnancies which was a criminally stupid mistake.

>>18535481
there's a good chance she had anemia. this is common in people with pale features, which Catherine did have.

>>18535470
I'd always figured stress was a huge factor. This makes a lot of sense to me. I never considered that Henry wasn't waiting, though. More things to loathe him for.

>>18535488
It's pretty bad when you look at the timing of Catherine's early pregnancies and Anne's first (apparent) miscarriage. Not unique to Henry (that's why noble and royal women didn't breast feed), but it is notable that everything his first wives were subjected to was detrimental to a successful pregnancy.

>>18535489
fasting was an issue and Catherine did a lot of it. women weren’t really given any time to let their bodies get back to normal. I believe they were cleared to try for the next baby as soon as it was christened.

There were contemporary rulers like Francis I who had numerous children without an issue so it seems to have been an issue specific to Henry VIII.

miscarriages are common today still, often the embryo or fetus dies early in the pregnancy before the mother is aware of it. most women you know have probably had it happen at least once.

>>18535479
Prior to going to England, Catherine was told to familiarize herself with wine because drinking water there was not safe.

>>18535520
>Prior to going to England, Catherine was told to familiarize herself with wine because drinking water there was not safe.
what was the diff. between the water there and in Spain?

>>18535525
Most likely they had mountain springs in Spain while England is a flat humid plain and they would have been drinking out of the absolutely filthy Thames.

Sanitation was horrible. People rarely bathed and midwives/doctors never washed their hands. Being ‘confined’ without fresh air, sunlight and daily exercise (walking) There were bizarre ‘medical’ practices (bleeding, worrying about ‘humours’, weird concoctions to drink or rub into your skin or put in your vagina. Amazing anyone survived at. Peasants did because they didn’t have ‘doctors’ (also they weren't under extreme pressure to produce a male heir)

>>18535533
peasants probably had it better off than royalty as they didn't have retarded stuff like wet nurses and maybe a better diet since they didn't have access to all the unhealthy fat and sugar that a king did.

It’s been posited that Henry had Kell Syndrome which results in sequential deterioration in viability of pregnancies. So one healthy baby per woman before the deterioration. Elizabeth, born normally. Anne Boleyn miscarries on the next one. Edward, born normally. Jane Seymour didn't survive the birth but if she had future children perhaps they would have miscarried too.

>>18535545
Anne's miscarriage in early 1536 was far enough along that they figured the fetus was male. It's possible if her uncle hadn't panicked her by yelling about Henry having a fall while jousting that the baby would have been delivered successfully.

>>18535550
>>18535545
In Anne's case it's more likely than not that three pregnancies in four years was too much for her. Big Hank didn't give her a chance to recover.

>>18535550
>>18535558
question is why he didn't make his illegitimate son with Anne's sister his heir instead?

>>18535562
Because it wasn't clear if the kid was actually his, lol. The timing between his birth and H8's affair with Mary Boleyn just don't add up.

Elizabeth was born in September 1533. It is said that Anne was pregnant again the following year although whatever became of that one is unclear. She was reported pregnant a third time in 1535, again outcome unknown. Then she had the miscarriage January 1536.

>>18535550
well i don't know how they could have determined that. likely everyone just decided it would have been a boy and that was that.

>>18535568
It's theorized that Anne had a rhesus negative blood type and Elizabeth was rhesus positive, which essentially sterilized her and made her body reject any further pregnancies. this is treated today by giving the mother a hormonal shot.

>Elizabeth displayed considerable mental sharpness early on. A few months shy of her third birthday when her mother was executed, she began to be addressed by her nurses as "Lady Elizabeth" instead of "Princess Elizabeth" and reportedly demanded to know why.[3]

>>18535550
She was under stress no doubt. She was a commoner with no important friends or allies and was generally unpopular, unlike Catherine she did not have Charles V as her protector. Once Anne had the 1536 miscarriage she must have known her time was up, although she probably didn't go so far as to think it would actually lead to her execution.

>>18533895
example would be Anne's anger over Henry's adulteries, while Catherine had been brought up with the assumption that taking mistresses was normal practice for kings and to just deal with it

>>18535591
Anne may not have been a royal princess as Catherine was, but both her and Jane Seymour were from Norman families and thus distant relatives of the royal family.

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>>18535620
>>18534955
This is Horatio Seymour, New York governor during the Civil War and 1868 Democrat presidential candidate. He was purportedly a descendant of Jane Seymour and if you thought he resembled her you may be right.

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>>18534436
>That was false, it was covered earlier. She was very much against the king taking mistresses knowing how she herself got where she was.

Yeah, sure, buddy. Dumb bitch even mocked Catherine's death failing to understand Catherine's death made her position extremely vulnerable since unlike Catherine she didn't have public support or allies abroad to deal with psycho Henry.

>>18535533
doctors and people in general were so unbelievably retarded back then that it's incredible anyone survived at all

>>18535811
>>18534436
>samefag arguing with yourself
I sure hope...

Royal inbreeding was really bad, it was reported that Mary and Elizabeth both had deformed pussies which is why neither ever had children.

>>18535811
hmmm i think you’re a mexican making stuff up

>>18532366
false claim. England's rise as a superpower came from taking the wealth hoarded by the Church and redistributing it to middle class businessmen.

>>18535098
>and asked for royal pardons for the Pilgrimage of Grace people
what was the Pilgrimage of Grace?

>>18536685
A Catholic rebellion that was crushed and saw over 200 people executed.

>>18535489
His last two marriages maybe not even consummated given his increasingly poor health.

>>18531062
Dangerously based

>>18536931
Also nobody seriously believes Catherine of Aragon and Arthur didn't knock boots, most people find it too unbelievable that two hormonal teenagers could be put in a room together and nothing happens. Even back then it wasn't really believed no matter what Catherine claimed.

>>18536935
AFAIK Margaret Beaufort had advised in a letter (apologies for not recalling off the top of my head which book it was in) that they either didn't want Catherine or one of Beaufort's own granddaughters 'spoiled' - that is, becoming pregnant before she had fully physically matured. This is understandable as giving birth to Henry VII at 13 nearly killed her.

>>18536940
when Margaret Tudor was married to James V at 13 MB and Elizabeth of York sent him instructions to wait until she was 15 to ensure that if she got pregnant she would be sufficiently developed. James had plenty of mistresses though, so it was not a big deal for him.

>>18536935
they probably didn't fuck the first night together. during the subsequent months when they lived as a couple i would say they did.

>>18536935
Catherine would have really believed she was damning her soul to Hell by lying though. Still it's possible they didn't, her and Arthur couldn't really communicate due to not speaking each other's languages.

>>18536977
the first night, ok. maybe even the first month they didn't fuck. but i can't believe they went six months with nothing happening. both were strongly encouraged to make children to continue the Tudor line. i feel that Arthur and Catherine eventually figured things out after some initial missteps.

i find the idea that Catherine wouldn't lie about her virginity a bit of a stretch, probably she thought if it was for the good of England then the Almighty would understand. that said, she challenged Henry to prove she wasn't a virgin and he couldn't do it. No laundress came forward to testify to the state of Catherine's bedsheets after either of her weddings. So it was either the truth or the mother of all bluffs.

imo she was mostly honest. Arthur was a 15 year old boy and maybe the first time he prematurely ejaculated before he could finish. And no one said anything because when you're that age you think you have all the time in the world to get there.

>>18536991
but then again, Henry thought Catherine Howard was a virgin too, so lol

>>18536992
>>18535114
in all fairness with Anne of Cleves he was probably impotent by that point and blamed things on Anne being too ugly to fuck rather the fact that his dick just didn't work anymore. he was in increasingly poor shape by then, very obese and had bad-smelling leg sores. we know he was very attracted to Catherine Howard, but that still didn't mean he was able to get it up for her.

also AoC was a virgin and claimed she didn't know how sex worked and nobody had ever told her. Henry in close proximity may or may not have been pleasant, but at least Anne was spared knowledge of how much closer he was supposed to get.

>>18536991
maybe it was that they didn't know each other, couldn't communicate except via written Latin, and Arthur was sick towards the end. it could be that they experimented a little, maybe kissed and felt each other up but didn't go all the way.

Arthur and Catherine needed a papal dispensation to be wed as they would normally be too young. Neither could speak each other's languages, they both knew Latin but had been taught different pronunciations. Exchanging notes in written Latin was the only way they could communicate. It would be extremely awkward. So it's possible they never fucked.

>>18532519
>Jane Dormer, a lady-in-waiting to Mary, was born two years after Anne's execution but to the end of her days, Mary never shut up about Anne and would rant about her to anyone in listening range, and
also why H8 not try to marry Mary off sooner?

>>18537016
I believe he considered Mary cursed and didn't want her to reproduce, even turning down some prestigious marriage offers.

>>18537019
>>18537016
it had more to do with Henry wanting a husband who would be high ranking enough for a royal princess but not so powerful or foreign that he could usurp the throne, and that basically ruled out any possible candidates.

>>18537024
you wonder why Henry couldn't just wait until they produced a heir and find a reason afterward to execute Mary's husband

>>18537027
No way could he do that. Any mate he could find that was high ranking enough for a royal princess would have an army and allies behind him. A hypothetical Mary husband would be Henry's main ally, especially since he has no other ones, the alliances he had via Catherine and his sisters' marriages are no longer meaningful and allies are weak and nonexistent.

That's conversely why he couldn't execute Catherine, her nephew was Charles V and Henry wasn't suicidal.

>>18537032
in fact Mary had several marriage proposals before her parents' divorce that fell apart for various reasons. one was Charles V's stubbornness, he needed to marry and produce a heir and Mary was still a young girl and not old enough to be married. later suitors were Protestant allies her father desired, but she turned them down and would not marry a heretic since contrary to popular belief Mary did have veto power on her fathers' choice of husbands.

>>18531189
Wow they could really pull off a Girl Boss in a miniskirt, victim of the patriarchy story if they really wanted to.

Henry pretty much applied the thumbscrews to Mary after divorcing her mother. She was downgraded to the rank of lady and forced to renounce her right to the royal succession as well as forced to act as a glorified servant in Elizabeth's household after she was born. All this was punishment for Mary refusing to accept her father's divorce as legitimate and refusing to renounce the Catholic faith. Probably she would have welcomed marriage just to get out of England, but her father would only marry her to a Protestant and she would sooner cut her own hand off than do that.

>>18536991
It could be that they just engaged in some foreplay and didn't really know how to have sex, and just assumed kissing and touching counted. So Arthur might have bragged that he did the deed while Catherine talked it over with the ladies-in-waiting who would have explained that that's not how sex works. Eventually, long afterwards she marries Henry, they fuck, and she finally realizes she isn't a virgin anymore, but she was up to that point.

>>18537052
Queen Isabella wrote that she was aware they were very young and thought perhaps they ought to hold off on consummating the marriage for a while.

>>18537065
They had a dispensation declaring that Catherine could still marry Henry even if she wasn't a virgin. Communications were slow in those days, getting a letter from Spain to England via the overland route through France took three weeks and they would have made sure to cover all possible scenarios in there. Also Catherine was a very very pious woman even for the standards of her day and would have believed with great sincerity that lying was a mortal sin.

>>18537052
Arthur was also sick was he not?

>>18537082
>Arthur was also sick was he not?
He got sick sometime during their winter sojourn in Wales but was healthy and vigorous prior to that. He had been an athletic, fit youth and skilled at archery.

it would have been easier for Catherine to say they had consummated the marriage. Which leads me to trust her word that they didn't. She had nothing to gain by falsely insisting on her virginity.

>>18537089
She had nothing to lose, that needs to be pointed out. I think that if Catherine had said she consummated her previous marriage, that doesn't bar her from remarrying, only from remarrying Henry. If she had said she consummated with Arthur she would have just gone and married someone else (and she was one of Europe's most eligible brides and would have had her pick of suitors), so yes, from her perspective at the time there's no real advantage either way.

>>18537092
She still could have married Henry, too. Look at her sisters: Isabella married the brother of her first husband after he died, and then when Isabella died, her sister married her widower.

All admitting consummation would have done was require a very slightly differently worded dispensation.

The biggest stumbling block to the re-marriage was always Isabella's premature death, and Henry and Ferdinand's subsequent game of dowry-chicken.

>>18537099
the laws of Leviticus allow for a man to marry his deceased wife’s sister. That is not the case for a woman marrying her deceased husband’s brother, where it is explicitly forbidden. Nonetheless, a papal dispensation solves everything.

>>18537103
>>18537099
Forbidden in Leviticus, but required in Deuteronomy 25:5 in the case of a childless man who dies and leaves a widow. Also the story of Onan and Tamar in Genesis. A theological argument could be made either way.

>>18537099
the money issue with Ferdinand might have hurt her though. He was refusing to pay the dowry to Henry, another prince may not have trusted that they would get any dowrys promised by Ferdinand.