0.5 Arthur- Prince of the Roses by Alison Weir

Author:Alison Weir [Weir, Alison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472235626
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2016-11-09T23:00:00+00:00

Author’s Note

This story is based closely on historical sources. My account of Prince Arthur’s illness owes much to the ground-breaking research of Katherine of Aragon’s recent biographer, Patrick Williams. Thanks to his discovery of the testimony of Katherine’s physician, Dr Alcaraz, given in 1531 at Zaragoza, we can now be fairly certain that Arthur suffered from tuberculosis. My own research uncovered no evidence for an outbreak of the sweating sickness at Ludlow, where he died.

It has often been asserted that Arthur was not delicate as a child, but in fact he spent at least the first six months (and possibly the first two years) of his life at Farnham Castle because he was a frail infant and required careful nursing. When he was not quite fourteen his father, Henry VII, did express concerns about the effect that the physical obligations of marriage would have on Arthur’s weak constitution, and his opinon that the couple should live apart for a time after their marriage had been consummated.

Arthur was also a premature baby, and this early and lengthy separation from his mother, Elizabeth of York, may have affected the relationship between mother and son. A substantial body of modern research has shown that maternal responsiveness towards premature babies can be limited when there has been a prolonged period of separation after birth.

There is no evidence to suggest that Arthur experienced the learning difficulties that can affect premature children, but new research, based on a study of a million births, shows that prematurity can have consequences into adulthood, and that such children have an increased risk of dying in late childhood compared with babies delivered at full term; in late childhood, boys in particular have a seven-fold increased risk of dying. That may not impact greatly on today’s low mortality rates, but it would have had serious implications five hundred years ago. Thus it is likely that Arthur had a lifetime risk of poor health because he was premature – and that this factor contributed to his early death.

We know very little of Arthur’s feelings about his bride. He did write those eloquent, loving letters, but they were probably dictated by tutors. He may well have dreaded marriage, given his state of health and the dynastic expectations that weighed on him. To me, it is telling that he left all his personal effects to his sister Margaret, not his wife of six months, Katherine.

Nor do we know anything of Arthur’s relations with his brother, the future Henry VIII. I think it’s fair to assume that there must have been some sibling rivalry, and that the delicate Arthur felt wanting beside the robust Henry – who was perhaps all that Arthur, the heir to the throne, was expected to be.

It is tantalising to speculate on what kind of king Arthur would have made, had he lived. The impression one gets from the sources is of a budding Renaissance prince who was good at his lessons, but somewhat serious and struggling with the bodily weakness that would eventually overcome him.

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