This Is What I Mean, This Seems So Cynical ?? Its Like At The Price Of Portraying Her As Someone In-control

This is what I mean, this seems so cynical ?? It’s like at the price of portraying her as someone in-control at all times that she must be in control her emotions at all times too, to the point of only displaying them strategically.

And then there’s this.... clearly her tears did move him.... because he said something awkward and then left? That sounds less like they ‘moved’ him and more like they made him uncomfortable. Esp. since their private interactions from this point on are decidedly more barbed , angrier, whilst they’re treating each other ‘courteously’ in public.

I’m sorry to keep bringing up Anne Boleyn, but it’s such a sharp distinction in their historiographies here that I have to mention — I cannot recall a time when Henry abruptly leaving Anne is ever interpreted as ‘he did this because he was so emotionally moved’.

It’s oddly reminiscent of how some historians speak about Anne Boleyn, and like, not in a good way-- I’m thinking here of how Starkey wrote about how she “wheedled, pleaded, and cried” to effectively berate~ Henry into exiling Katherine from court/his presence.

I find it weird when Katherine of Aragon biographers try to shoehorn in her being ‘Machiavellian’, like…I think she was politically gifted, I think she used her networks well, I think she knew how to utilize her public moments for public sympathy/approval (famously, like Blackfriars) but sometimes I feel like biographers apply this…weirdly, to private moments?

“The early sixteenth century was a time when prophecies were popular and prophets were confident: men and women puzzled over ancient rhymes which might (or might not) be held to have predicted such mighty topics such as the fall of Cardinal Wolsey, the split from Rome, and the dissolution of the monasteries. But no one ever predicted the King would marry six times and, if they had, he would not have believed it. Nor for that matter would any of his six queens have believed the various densities which lay in store for them, if predicted at birth: not one but two princesses were to die cast off; equally surprising, four women of modest enough birth were to become royal consorts; most astonishingly of all…two of these apparently unexceptional women were to die a traitor’s death.” Antonia Fraser, The Wives of Henry VIII.

Pictured in order: Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Parr

The example that came to mind for this was actually Julia Fox, because when she talks about the first time Henry told KoA he was seeking an annulment, and that “all would be for the best”, and how she cried when he told her this, she was like “oh she was probably using tears to manipulate him” and I was like.......uhm....that seems...decidedly unkind?

I find it weird when Katherine of Aragon biographers try to shoehorn in her being ‘Machiavellian’, like…I think she was politically gifted, I think she used her networks well, I think she knew how to utilize her public moments for public sympathy/approval (famously, like Blackfriars) but sometimes I feel like biographers apply this…weirdly, to private moments?

Be strong, my daughter…Remember who you are