Watch out Kate! England has had five Queen Catherines so far – and it hasn’t always ended well…
Millions still think of her as regular Kate.
But when her husband, the Prince of Wales, ascends the throne in due course, we will have a sixth Queen Catherine.
She already looks good and fulfills her royal duties with good-humored devotion. Much has been said about the discipline she has maintained despite overwhelming public interest.
But as the author of a new book, The Catherine Code, notes, the difficulties facing today’s young royals pale in comparison to the snake pits of their ancestors.
Previously, royal women played a game where one wrong move at court could lead to death – and it did.
One Catherine was abandoned, another was beheaded and a third was accused – falsely – of poisoning the king.
“Kate’s five royal namesakes were ill-fated in different ways, and often mistreated by their husbands,” says author Bob Casey.
Watch out Kate!
Catherine, Princess of Wales, looks regal in a specially chosen headpiece during the coronation of Charles II in May
Catherine de Valois 1401-1437
When the English monarch Henry V married the French princess Catherine de Valois in 1420, following his success at the Battle of Agincourt, he strengthened England’s ties with France.
But the heir apparent died two years later and Queen Catherine – played by Emma Thompson in the 1989 Kenneth Branagh film Henry V, and Lily-Rose Depp in the 2019 Netflix film The King – was widowed.
Catherine de Valois is introduced to Henry of Monmouth, who became Henry V. Her father was crazy, her mother negligent
Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson play Henry and Catherine
Branagh and Thompson from the same production with Paul Scofield
Our first Queen Catherine in the 1989 film Henry V. But her husband would soon die
However, unlike the other queen Catherines, she did produce an heir apparent, the future Henry VI, and was the grandmother of Britain’s first Tudor monarch, Henry VII.
Catherine, the daughter of Charles VI of France and Isabella of Bavaria, was neglected by both her parents in her youth: her father suffered from fits of madness while the mother was indifferent to her daughter.
When Henry V came to the throne in 1413, he began negotiations for his marriage, demanding a large dowry and the recovery of Normandy and Aquitaine.
But his mandate led to war against France and it was only after the Treaty of Troyes was signed in 1420, in which Henry was recognized as regent and heir of France, that the marriage took place.
Catherine was crowned at Westminster Abbey in 1421 and the following year she joined Henry in France. She returned to England after his death and lived in the castles of Windsor and Baynard.
She married the Welsh squire Sir Owen Tudor and had three sons and two daughters, one of whom died in infancy. Their eldest son Edmund, who was created Earl of Richmond, was the father of Henry VII.
Catherine of Aragon 1485-1536
Catherine, played by Joanne Whalley, will always be remembered in the drama Wolf Hall as the first wife of Henry VIII, whom he divorced after failing to provide an heir, leading to the English Reformation.
But the daughter of the 15th-century power couple King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile has another honor: as Spanish ambassador to England, she was Europe’s first female ambassador.
Catherine of Aragon was a loyal and loving wife of Henry VIII, but failed to produce a son
Catherine as played by Joanne Whalley in Wolf Hall
Initially married to Henry’s older brother Arthur, she married Henry in 1509, seven years after her first husband’s death – the king wanted to maintain both the Spanish alliance and her dowry.
She produced six children, but only one survived: a daughter Mary I, born in 1516. But the lack of a male heir proved insurmountable and when Anne Boleyn became the queen’s lady-in-waiting, the writing was on the wall. .
After the marriage was annulled by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, rather than the Pope, the king banished Catherine from court in 1533.
He also cruelly banned contact with their daughter. She died three years later at the age of 50. Her last letter to him, signed by Katherine the Queen, read: “My eyes long for you above all else.”
Catherine Howard 1523-1542
As the fifth wife of Henry VIII, Catherine’s claim to fame was her scandalous past: the cousin of Anne Boleyn and second cousin of Jane Seymour, she was found guilty of adultery and executed in the Tower of London.
Catherine, played by Lauren McQueen in Lucy Worsley’s Six Wives, was a member of the Howard family. Her father Edmund was the youngest son of Thomas, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, who had served four monarchs.
A portrait of Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII, who lost her head not because she broke her vows to him, but because she had committed adultery in the past
Lauren McQueen as Catherine Howard
But she was sexually abused by her music teacher Henry Manox before falling in love with Francis Dereham, whom she addressed as her ‘husband’, and becoming engaged to her cousin Thomas Culpepper.
She first came to the king’s attention in 1539, when she was the maid of honor to his fourth wife Anne of Cleves. In 1540 – on the day of Thomas Cromwell’s execution -, after the annulment of his marriage to Anne, he married Catherine.
However, her downfall came after the king discovered her premarital relations. In 1542, Parliament passed a bill declaring it treason for an unchaste woman to marry the king, and two days later she was beheaded in the Tower of London.
Catherine Parr 1512-1548
Catherine had been married twice and widowed when she became Henry VIII’s sixth wife and gave up her lover Thomas Seymour, the 1st Baron Seymour, to marry the king at Hampton Court Palace in 1543.
An ardent patron of the arts – she was played by Alice Patten in Lucy Worsley’s Six Wives – she was the first English queen to write and publish her own books.
The one who ‘survived’ is famous. Catherine Parr was Henry’s sixth and last wife
Alice Patten plays Catherine Parr in a Lucy Worsley drama for the BBC
She met the king when she took a job in Princess Mary’s household in 1542 and became a loving stepmother to his three children, the future Mary I, Edward VI and Elizabeth I. She became the guardian of her 14-year-old stepdaughter.
She was also instrumental in passing Henry VIII’s Third Succession Act of 1543, which brought his daughters back into the line of succession.
After the king’s death, in 1547, she married her fourth and last husband, Thomas Seymour, making her the most married English queen. But a year later she died during childbirth. Her funeral was the first Protestant funeral to be held in English.
Catherine of Braganza 1638-1705
Catherine, the daughter of King John IV of Portugal, was the Roman Catholic wife of King Charles II of England, as part of a major alliance between the two countries.
The marriage, which took place in 1662, gave England trading rights in cities such as Tangier, in Morocco, and Bombay, in India, while England promised to help Portugal maintain its independence from Spain.
A famous Peter Lely portrait of Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II
An illustration of our fifth queen Catherine
But after it became clear that she would not give the king children, she became a target for Protestant extremists, who wanted the king to divorce her and marry their faith.
In 1678 they accused her of plotting to poison the king and put his Roman Catholic brother James on the throne. But the king stood by her and she was acquitted of all charges.
After her husband died in 1685, she returned to Portugal, where she became regent for her ill brother Pedro II.
Played by Shirley Henderson in Charles II: The Power and the Passion, one of her claims to fame was that she popularized tea drinking.
- The Catherine Code: A Thousand Years of Royal Bastards, Inbreeding, and Bad Behavior is available at www.amazon.com