not to start diskhorse but i wonder if people would still be saying ‘koa did it all for mary’ if edward vi had…y’know…lived and reigned for at least a few more decades.
I struggle with this. On one hand I truly.l admire koa strength and abhor the way henry viii treated her.
But… she could have had life be so much easier for her. If she had taken the veil as offered, mary would still be legitimate behind any son and would have saved both of them so much suffering.
Its hard to be behind a woman so completely obsiltinate 100%
I mean, that was sort of the crux of the matter (but hindsight is 20/20, tbf)– if we’re saying she did it ‘for Mary’, then okay…that means she actually thought Mary should be the only heir, ever. I find that hard to believe if she knew England’s previous history, for one, and also…was she planning on outliving Henry? She had to know it was a possibility she wouldn’t and that he’d marry and have a son after she died (which did, ultimately, happen).
And it’s hard to have an equitable discussion about this because there tends to be double standards when comparing Henry to KOA; even though ultimately Henry’s behavior and actions were more clearly egregious towards Mary from 1533 onwards.
It’s birds of the same feather– “Henry thought he knew better than the Pope!!” Well, so did KOA, at the beginning– the Pope himself asked her to step down sometime around 1528, and said that action would have his blessing because it would ensure peace in England. She was unwilling to do so; and so the argument that it was 100% based on religious convictions doesn’t really hold water. You could make that after the Pope forbid the annulment and sent the bull to Henry in 1531, and you could make it for after the Supremacy, but it seems that, similar to Henry, her religious convictions aligned with whichever option was the one she truly wanted and gave her the most power.
And “Henry put his own principles/beliefs over that of his daughter Mary”. True, and again, more egregious on his part. KOA did the same when she refused to sign both Acts, even though she knew she would be able to visit Mary when she was ill if she did. And of course, she wouldn’t have had to make that principled stand if Henry hadn’t made his first, and if Henry hadn’t used any possible leverage he could– including that– to get her to sign.
Henry putting his beliefs and ambitions before his daughter is hardly unprecedented for the time. Katherine herself wanted badly to return to Spain multiple times during her widowhood, but her father said nay and left her in what she viewed as agonizing limbo. That’s just one of many examples.
Henry wasn’t *only* a father — he was also a king, and his job, whatever you believe of his motives, meant he was obliged to put England’s best interests (or, rather, of the English monarchy and its sanctified hierarchy) before anyone else. Mary was very, very stubborn, but historians fail to realize she was not merely a rebellious teenager but also a genuine threat. People routinely forget Mary was almost eighteen when she was sent to Elizabeth’s household in 1533.
I believe Katherine was not thinking solely of her daughter’s well-being before her own preservation of her marriage and status, although she may well have believed she was saving her daughter’s soul by insisting she not submit to Henry and sit complacently at the “affront” against God that was Henry’s wish for an annulment.
Katherine was ready to martyr herself for her cause, but she probably should not have dragged Mary so deep into it. Arguably, she was doing almost as much self-serving in this situation as Henry, although it was the latter’s councillers that threatened Mary’s life while Katherine encouraged her to embrace martyrdom. This push-and-pull appeared to be traumatic.
I agree with most of this, but in a way I think “his beliefs and ambitions” doesn’t totally cover it.
What I meant initially about KOA and Henry being held to different standards in discussions in general, and also this topic, is this:
No, KOA couldn’t see the future, and had no way of knowing that this was definitely futile (although, I think at a certain point, she did see the futility of it on Earth, just not in that beyond it, namely heaven– hence the martyrdom aspect). Similarly, Henry couldn’t see the future either– all he knew was the past.
Often the argument is made that Isabella of Castile proved that a woman could rule successfully. But that was rule in Spain, not England (whose only example was the civil war that ensued after Matilda’s inheritance to the throne), and she was married to someone that ruled another kingdom in Spain, thus unifying Spain. Moreover, the most recent example of a daughter inheriting the throne in that country was that of Juana of Castile– and she had ultimately been usurped and imprisoned. Juana was, in fact, forcibly confined and her son Charles was ruling while the events of the Great Matter were unfolding.
Henry VIII’s desire for a son and heir is often misrepresented as a sort of 1950s’ corporate misogyny. That’s not really an equitable comparison. It wasn’t so much that he believed women were physically and mentally incapable of leadership (although that was likely a component); but more that these were the previous examples of how female leadership was received, and what that reception could lead to– namely rebellion, usurpation (in Juana’s case, being literally imprisoned and reduced to a figuredhead, more or less), forced abdication, civil war, instability, etc.
It’s often said that Henry was “proved wrong” in terms of women as rulers, and female leadership. More or less, that is Worsley’s quippy closing of her Six Wives series. But Henry left KOA and Katherine Parr regent, so he clearly didn’t think women were incapable of rule– at least in a temporary capacity. Moreover, that he was “proved wrong” could only be said if he had left neither of his daughters in the Succession, and they had had both reigned despite this– and that was not what happened. He had left his daughters in the Succession.
Again, he wasn’t “proved wrong” when it came to the reception of female leadership, either; even though both daughters managed to reign and neither were ever deposed. Evidently the Monstrous Regiment of Women resonated with quite a few people at the time, given John Knox’s popularity. Another female ruler in the same century, Mary Queen of Scots, was imprisoned and forced to abdicate in favor of her son.
And that’s just in the 16th century. Even as recently as last year, a data analysis done at the PEW Research Center determined that most of the world’s nations have never had a female leader (at the head of government):
the list is still relatively short, and even when women have made it to power, they’ve rarely led for a long time…
Fifty-six of the 146 nations (38%) studied by the World Economic Forum in 2014 and 2016 have had a female head of government or state for at least one year in the past half-century. In 31 of these countries, women have led for five years or less; in 10 nations, they have led for only a year.
While the number of current female leaders – excluding monarchs and figurehead leaders – has more than doubled since 2000, these women still represent fewer than 10% of 193 UN member states.
The U.S. and its neighbors have had little or no time under female leadership. The U.S. and Mexico have never had a woman as chief executive, and Canada’s first and only female prime minister served for just four months.
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