Divorced,
beheaded,
died.
Divorced,
beheaded,
survived.
The story of Henry VIII and his six wives
is one of the best-known in history.
There's Catherine of Aragon, the bitter, abandoned first wife.
Anne Boleyn, the original "other woman".
Jane Seymour - bit of a doormat.
Then we've got Anne of Cleves, she was the ugly one.
Catherine Howard, the one who slept around.
And Catherine Parr, the saintly nurse.
But I'm going to tell you a very different story.
I'm going to take you back in time,
and into the private lives of Henry's six wives.
I'm going to see the story
from THEIR point of view,
and I'll watch as events unfold.
ANNE: '..and not defy the Church in this way!'
The fate of my soul is no longer your concern!
It will ALWAYS be my concern.
These events all really happened,
and were recorded in historical documents,
or reported by eyewitnesses.
I asked for his head.
Not his coat.
They reveal six complex women who lived in a dangerous age
as they struggled to survive being married to Henry VIII.
You are still prepared to question me?
Six wives, whose names were tarnished
by Henry's propaganda machine.
Six queens, whose stories I want to re-examine.
Is she here?
I'll observe their life at court.
I'll watch them romanced
by a charismatic king...
Tell me you're the same. Always.
..who craves the company of women.
The King is a very...sociable man.
I'll show you how they fall from favour.
I am your loyal wife, my lord!
Leave, or I shall have you dragged from here.
I have here a warrant for the arrest of Queen Catherine.
I'll see how their reputations are destroyed...
I beg of you to tell the King that my heart is filled with sorrow.
And assure him of my repentance.
..and lives cut short at the hands of a ruthless, brutal man.
Six children born!
Five of them dead!
SHE GASPS
This is the ultimate true story
of love, loss and betrayal.
Remember what happened to my last wife and queen?
It's the 18th of January, 1510.
Catherine of Aragon has been married to Henry VIII for seven months.
LADIES GROAN
# Da-da! #
Excellently played, Maria.
Luck, my lady, nothing more.
ALL GIGGLE
METALLIC SCRAPE
DOOR RATTLES >
DOOR RATTLES
Maud.
LOCK CLACKS
Who is it?
Nobody.
SHOUTING
LADIES SCREAM
SHE GASPS, HE CHUCKLES
SHE GASPS
HE LAUGHS, SHE CHUCKLES
My darling lady.
We frightened you? Half to death!
HE LAUGHS
I'm sorry.
Mmm...
We thought you ladies far too clever to be fooled.
ALL CHUCKLE
What does the King think of my new robe?
Beautiful. Every inch of you.
HE CLEARS HIS THROAT
What does the Queen think of the King's costume? Quite the rogue!
Friends,
such a pity you have to leave us.
HE LAUGHS
Henry VIII is a loving husband
to his Spanish queen, Catherine of Aragon.
Those two truly believe that theirs is a match made in Heaven.
A few hours and I miss you with all my heart.
I feel delirious.
What's wrong with me?
Perhaps you're coming down with a fever.
Tell me you're the same. Always.
Henry has been King of England for nine months
and Catherine is already pregnant.
We don't think of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon
ever being in love.
Catherine was his first wife,
and as the rhyme tells us,
the one he divorced.
The bitter ending of her marriage
has come to define her as an angry woman, obsessed with religion,
but I'm going to show you a different Catherine.
In reality, she was a steadfast and popular queen.
And for most of the 24 years of her marriage,
she really was rather good at handling
an increasingly difficult man.
In an age of arranged marriages,
that between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon was unusual
because it was a love match.
He could have had his pick of all the ladies of the Court,
and he later said, that of all the ladies in the world,
he would, again, have chosen her.
She was a bit older than him.
When they married she was 23,
and he was about to turn 18.
But they did have quite a lot in common.
They were both the children of dynasties
that had recently come to power through conflict,
and they were both ambitious.
They wanted to create a bigger role for themselves,
and for England on the European stage.
Ambition was something Catherine had had instilled in her
from a very early age.
This is the extraordinary Alhambra Palace in Grenada.
This is the closest thing that Catherine had to a home.
It was just one of many palaces of her parents,
Queen Isabel of Castile
and King Ferdinand of Aragon.
The Alhambra was Catherine's favourite,
and, by far, the grandest palace in the whole of Spain
with its beautiful gardens.
But it was also a fortress that witnessed battles,
sieges and slaughter.
Catherine's parents were fearsome rulers.
They'd forged alliances, and united kingdoms.
Her mother, Isabel, was known as the "Warrior Queen".
And Isabel had big ambitions for Catherine. At the age of three,
she was promised in marriage to the heir of the throne of England -
we're not talking about Henry here, but his older brother, Arthur.
To Catherine's parents, this was a great opportunity -
a new dynastic alliance.
But to Catherine herself,
it meant that she'd have to go and live in a very different country,
almost a different world.
And once she'd left Spain,
she'd never see her parents again.
Aged just 15, Catherine landed on the shores of England,
there to marry Prince Arthur.
He was the same age.
But their marriage would be tragically short-lived.
After just a few months, Arthur sickened and died.
It must have been devastating for Catherine,
who was now a teenage widow.
Her father then tried to marry her off
to the new heir to the English throne,
Arthur's younger brother, Henry.
The Spanish and English kings spent seven years
trying to agree on the marriage contract.
Eventually, Henry's father called the marriage off.
But behind the King's back,
the young prince had grown rather fond of his Spanish princess.
And when the old king died,
the first thing the new king, Henry VIII, did
was to marry Catherine of Aragon.
So, Catherine and Henry were the ultimate thrusting power couple.
But top of the agenda for their marriage
was the continuation of the dynasty.
It was now her job to have children
and she did manage to get pregnant pretty easily.
It was only a few months later that the problems began.
Catherine's nearly five months pregnant
but it looks like she's had a miscarriage.
Has the King been told?
Not yet, my lady.
Then he must know.
Somebody fetch him.
Wait!
What is it?
Please, speak.
I'm confident, Your Highness,
the situation is not as we had feared. How so?
You are still with child.
It's impossible. I have taken the utmost care,
a thorough examination has been made, and the evidence is there.
My womb is empty.
I've seen the evidence myself.
How do you dismiss that? I do not, Your Highness.
My explanation is thus.
A twin pregnancy.
One child lost,
the other child continuing to grow.
Your belly is still full.
You're certain?
Quite.
Then I must take your word.
The Queen will require meticulous care during her confinement.
Of course.
Thank you.
This is a miracle from Christ, is it not?
The weight of expectation that Catherine is under
to produce an heir to the throne is absolutely crushing.
Oh, quickly.
Can you feel it?
I think so.
A miracle.
On the physician's word,
relief and excitement flood through the royal household...
..and preparations for Catherine's confinement can proceed.
She will spend the last month before the birth locked away
with her personal servants, including her ladies-in-waiting.
The Tudors believe that disease travels through the air,
so the floors, doors and windows of her chambers are sealed
to prevent her or the baby from getting ill.
The groaning chair is prepared.
The mother sits in this to groan her way through labour,
and to give birth with the aid of gravity.
And, finally, the bed is blessed.
The day has come. My queen must go.
Only as far as my bedchamber. Which might as well be in Spain...
Gentlemen, I trust you'll look after the King in my absence.
I'll be in good hands.
But none as fair or kind as these.
My heart aches at the thought of weeks without you. Mine too.
But what prize at the end?
Indeed.
Pray for me.
I'll pray for you both.
Catherine enters confinement in spring 1510.
Ahead now lies the ordeal of childbirth.
It's terrifying, because of the distinct possibility
that you might die.
Husbands often have portraits painted of their wives
while they're pregnant, so that a baby will have something
to remember its mother by if she doesn't make it.
I would prefer to undress alone.
But there's something Catherine fears more than death.
And that's failing in her royal duty.
With just weeks to go before the birth,
should she trust her doctor
who believes there's a surviving twin still inside her?
Or should she trust her instincts?
All she can do is wait and pray
that God will deliver the Tudor dynasty a son.
SLAMMING
You've loaded them, surely?
KNOCK AT DOOR
Your Grace.
What is it? The Queen, my lord.
What's the matter with her?
The matter is not with the Queen herself...
..but with the baby.
It's been born?
I'm afraid she has suffered a loss of the child.
The physician has just left the Queen's chamber,
he confirms as much.
Please leave us.
Get out!
The child?
What was it,
male or female?
I do not know.
You do not know?
How can that be so?
I came in haste.
'The Queen asks if you will pay a visit to her chamber.'
She is bereft, my lord.
Maud, a stillbirth?
No birth.
There was no child.
Catherine's bump has simply disappeared.
It looks like the doctor's got it spectacularly wrong.
Not a second baby,
but an infection.
The infection must have made Catherine's belly swell up.
And I believe she was so desperate to have a child
that she convinced herself that she was still pregnant.
It was humiliating.
All of that time spent in confinement,
all of that ceremony, and absolutely nothing to show for it.
Rumours started to circulate
that Catherine was unable to conceive.
And people at Court began to think that she was,
maybe, unsuitable as a queen.
And what about Henry?
He must have been disappointed too.
After all, he had the future of the dynasty to consider.
We sometimes forget,
but he was only the second Tudor king after his father, Henry VII.
The dynasty was young, it was still insecure.
And then, there was the security, the peace of the country.
If Henry were to die without an agreed heir,
there could be civil war -
exactly what his father had managed to stop.
So, it's difficult to underestimate the pressure
that Catherine must have felt, literally, to deliver.
Fortunately for her,
her luck was about to change.
A few months later, she did conceive again,
and, this time, it was a real pregnancy.
It was also a smooth pregnancy.
On New Year's Day, 1511,
Catherine gave birth.
It was a boy,
and he was christened Henry.
It looked like God was happy at last with Henry VIII,
with the Tudor dynasty,
with the whole kingdom of England.
London went wild with celebrations,
there were bonfires and fireworks,
and, here at Westminster, there was a joust.
The grandest jousting tournament of Henry VIII's reign
was now held in honour of Catherine delivering him a son.
The event was recorded on a spectacular 60-foot-long manuscript.
For the last 500 years,
it's been looked after by the College of Arms in London.
Its custodian is the York Herald, Peter O'Donoghue.
So, Peter, this is the actual moment of jousting.
What's going on here? It looks very exciting.
This is Henry on his horse,
and he has struck his opponent on the head, and broken his lance.
It's the most prestigious blow in jousting -
to break your lance on your opponent's head.
You can't really tell that he's the King, can you?
Because he's in disguise. Yeah, that's right.
There is this disguising, this playful element to it.
He's fighting under an assumed name.
You can make out what that name is with the heart,
that's a "Coeur Loyal".
He's called "Sir Loyal Heart"? That's it, exactly.
So, tell me a bit about the ladies.
The most important lady here, of course, is the Queen.
So, here's Catherine of Aragon, watching.
And here we have this motif of Ks everywhere.
'By calling himself Sir Loyal Heart,
'Henry was declaring his love for Catherine.
'She'd done everything right. She'd given him a son.
'This really was the high point of their marriage.'
And this is the King on the way home again afterwards?
That's right. "Desarmey" - "disarmed", on the way home.
He's out of his armour,
in his golden robe which is very spectacular.
And what I really like is the way you can see his piercing blue gaze
and he's training it straight on the beautiful queen.
He is looking right at the woman he loves.
Oh! Look at this, all the other ladies are looking at her
and they're going, "Oh, isn't your husband gorgeous?"
You know, you see him here
painted in this, sort of, wonderful work of art.
He's just had his son, so the dynasty is established.
The whole kingdom waited with bated breath
to see what the outcome of that pregnancy would be.
If you've got a son and heir, everyone can relax.
And he is the hero of the day.
He's young, he's incredibly rich,
he's incredibly glamorous and handsome...
And a beautiful wife as well.
What could possibly go wrong(?) PETER LAUGHS
Exactly right.
There were endless celebrations for the royal birth.
But they were all in vain.
At just seven weeks old, Prince Henry sickened and died.
Three barges draped with black cloth
brought a baby's body down the river from Richmond to Westminster
where he was buried in the Abbey.
For Henry, he could hardly bear to talk about it.
One ambassador going in for a meeting with the King
was advised not to mention it,
lest it "revive his grief".
And we're told that Catherine made much lamentation.
She was inconsolable.
She'd now lost two babies.
Catherine is struggling to give the King an heir.
But in pretty much every other respect,
she's still his perfect queen.
It's two years later,
Henry is away fighting the French.
This is an on-off war that'll go on throughout his reign.
And in his absence, he's made Catherine regent.
She is running the country.
Now, this is quite uncommon.
For me, it's evidence that not only does he still love her,
but also, that he respects her judgment.
With Henry away, the Scottish king, James IV,
has seized an opportunity to invade England.
But he hasn't calculated on the Spanish warrior queen,
Catherine of Aragon.
DOOR OPENS
She's deployed an army of 26,000 Englishmen
and is awaiting news from the battlefield.
Your Highness...
..the Scot is dead.
CHEERING
And what proof is this?
The Earl of Surrey thought it more...palatable
to send his clothing.
LAUGHTER
SHE CHUCKLES
"More palatable"?
For whom?
He was killed on the battlefield in Northumbria yesterday,
along with scores of his men.
The Queen can be assured that this is his blood.
That may be so.
But where is the body?
I asked for his head.
Not his coat.
The body's in London. Then have it brought to me.
As you wish, Your Highness.
Majesty.
Your Majesty.
This shall be sent to King Henry.
A reputed 10,000 Scots lie dead on the battlefield -
the invasion defeated.
Catherine's popularity as queen soars,
and the dead king's coat is dispatched to Henry in France.
She'd wanted to send something even better,
as she wrote to Henry...
"I thought to send himself unto you."
By which she means she'd wanted to send
the actual corpse of the dead king.
"But our Englishmen's hearts would not suffer it."
By which, she means her wimpy English servants
had thought that this was a bit too much.
Later on in the letter, she says something rather intriguing.
That she is off to see "Our Lady at Walsingham".
Walsingham in Norfolk
is the site of a religious shrine.
Since the Middle Ages,
it's been associated with fertility and childbirth.
It was a hugely popular place in Tudor times.
Catherine came here in 1513
to pray and give thanks.
She had lots to give thanks for.
There was that victory over the Scots, and, even more significantly,
she was, once again, pregnant.
And Catherine believed that she was in need of God's protection.
This was her third pregnancy in four years of marriage
and she still had no children.
Catherine of Aragon was now 27 years old,
in Tudor terms, that's middle-aged.
Royal women were giving birth at 16, even 15.
In fact, Henry VIII's own grandmother
gave birth to his dad when she was just 13.
So, Catherine was definitely an older mum.
She must have felt like time was running out.
But Catherine's prayers weren't answered.
For the third time, she'd lose the baby.
Tragically, it had been a boy.
Catherine's success as queen was now being overshadowed
by her failure to deliver a healthy son.