Doomed Queens by Kris Waldherr

Author:Kris Waldherr
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780767931038
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2008-10-28T04:00:00+00:00

The humanist glories of the Renaissance did not extend to the royal women of this era. During this dangerous period, there were two primary forces threatening to push queens off their thrones: infertility and religion.

England was an especially treacherous place for queens, four of whom lost their lives after embracing King Henry VIII as husband. Henry married a total of six times in hopes of scoring a male heir. The king, in his infinite wisdom, judged his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, infertile when she proved incapable of giving birth to a son who could live past infancy.

Ironically, it may have been Catherine of Aragon’s surplus of piety that contributed to her woes. A devout Catholic, Catherine fasted to win God’s favor—lack of male issue was believed to be punishment for one’s sins—which most likely affected her menstrual cycles, making conception problematic at best.

Aside from religion, what were other popular cures for infertility? Since there were no reproductive endocrinologists at this time, remedies leaned toward the DIY variety. These included limiting intercourse, increasing foreplay, uterine fumigation (as unpleasant as it sounds), and elaborate herbal remedies that were inserted into the vagina; one such concoction consisted of galangal, marjoram, and mushrooms (presumably not of the hallucinogenic variety). Conceiving a boy was a whole other ball of wax. Some advised that the couple should gaze into each others’ eyes while they mated, an act that supposedly balanced their bodily humors.

To shed Catherine as his spouse, Henry pioneered the use of divorce, founding a new and Protestant church in the process. Afterward, the king fell back on beheading as his preferred méthode de mort—dead wives were less trouble when it came to remarrying.

Henry’s new church led to years of religious struggles and royal fatalities beyond his reign. After the king’s death, both Jane Grey and Mary, Queen of Scots, lost their heads for God and England; Jane was Protestant and Mary, Catholic. On the Continent, Jeanne of Navarre was also entrenched in the Protestant struggle, which may have led to her demise.

In other parts of the globe, queens lost their thrones because of maternal death, insanity, and inbreeding—not necessarily in that order.

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