Hello and welcome to the Renaissance English History podcast. I'm your host, Heather Tesco. I realize that I've been really negligent in my reporting of Renaissance English history,

and then I've actually never done an episode dedicated to Mary Tudor, the first daughter

of Henry VIII and Catherine Varragon, who reigned in her own right as Mary the First.

She was the first woman to successfully reign on her own in England, and though her time as

monarch had a lot of

strife, there were some rebellions, and she's left with the nickname Bloody Mary, much of her

reputation has suffered because she's been compared with her half-sister Elizabeth, who was born

into much different circumstances than Mary, and benefited from some of the mistakes that Mary

made in her reign. If Mary hadn't died so young,

and if she hadn't been immediately followed by Elizabeth, chances are that the impression that we

would have of her would be very different. So Mary's story begins over 30 years before she was

born when her mother, Catherine Varegone, was engaged to Prince Arthur, the oldest son of Henry

the 7th.

Her parents were the very famous Ferdinand and Isabella, famous for both recapturing Spain

from the Muslims when they captured Granada, and for funding a little explorer called

Christopher Columbus.

Her mother, Isabelle of Castile, was a strong and independent

woman who ruled Castile and united with Ferdinand of Aragon to bring together two of the largest

kingdoms in Spain. But when Isabel died, she actually didn't leave Castile to Ferdinand, but to her

daughter, Hwana. So the idea of strong women kind of ran in Catherine's blood. So Catherine

goes to England as this young teenager. She was married to Arthur, but of course he died five

months into the marriage. After her own mother died, Catherine was just this kind of political pawn

...