‘The Spanish Princess’: The Real Game of Thrones

There has been great public fascination with the story of the Plantagenet super-dynasties, and particularly, the House of Tudor, since William Shakespeare’s play Henry VIII (also known as All Is True) and its infamous performance in 1613 when a special-effects cannon-shot started a fire that burned the Bard’s Globe Theatre to the ground.

Samuel Johnson believed Henry VIII was written as early as 1603, the year Queen Elizabeth I died. Due to its almost journalistic style, and the political sensitivity of the subject matter at the time, we find no mention of the disgrace and beheading of the Queen’s mother, Anne Boleyn, or the four wives that followed her: Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr.

None get to God but through trouble.
                   —Catherine of Aragon

One of the first movies ever made, The Execution of Mary Stuart, was an eighteen-second short produced in 1895 by Thomas Edison. Mary Stuart, also known as Mary, Queen of Scots, was the great-niece of Henry VIII—her paternal grandmother was Henry’s sister, Margaret Tudor. Edison’s film was also historically significant for using one of the first “special effects” in movies: in the beheading scene a dummy was substituted for Robert L. Thomae, the actor who portrayed Mary. (This custom followed the Shakespearean tradition of men playing women on stage.) The decapitation scene was so convincing to the earliest film-goers that many believed the “actress” had actually given her life for the shot.

In the early 1900s, there were three French and German silent films about Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn. In the 1930s, Alexander Korda’s breakthrough success, The Private Life of Henry VIII, became one of the first British films to achieve recognition in the USA. Charles Laughton won an Academy Award for his portrayal of King Henry and Elsa Lanchester, Laughton’s wife, appeared as Henry’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves.

The most significant film about the Tudors, and particularly, Henry VIII’s brilliant secretary and personal adviser Thomas More, was adapted from the play A Man for All Seasons, written by Robert Bolt and filmed, in 1966, by Fred Zinnemann. Stage actor Paul Scofield was cast as More, Orson Welles as Cardinal Wolsey and Robert Shaw played Henry VIII.  Scofield won an Oscar for Best Actor and the film also won Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture.

In the 1960s a half-dozen other films were made about the House of Tudor but by the early 1970s no film studio in Hollywood was interested in making historical costume dramas. I recall reading of a well-known producer advising his secretary, “Don’t bring me any more movies where people write with feathers.”

In 2003 The Other Boleyn Girl, a television adaption of Philippa Gregory’s novel about the initial amorous relationship of Anne Boleyn’s sister Mary and King Henry, with much improvised dialogue, was produced by the BBC. It was a very tepid production and was not well received.

In 2007, Showtime released the television mini-series The Tudors, telling the extended story of Henry VIII and his six wives. It starred a svelte Jonathan Rhys Meyers, playing against portly type, as a six-pack-fit King Henry. On all the sensuality and sex, jousting, nudity and violence, the New York Times sarcastically commented that the series “radically reduces the era’s thematic conflicts to simplistic struggles over personal and erotic power”. The Tudors created the highest ratings for Showtime in years and was renewed for a further three seasons.

No doubt observing a revitalised market for Tudor period drama, the BBC wasted no time in producing a much larger budgeted film version of The Other Boleyn Girl in 2008, only this time with an A-list of Hollywood actors, including Scarlett Johansson as Mary Boleyn, Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn and Eric Bana as Henry VIII. The screenplay was written by Peter Morgan, creator of the brilliant Netflix series The Crown. Although the two-hour film struggled to tell the complex Boleyn story in such a limited time, and received lukewarm reviews, it grossed double its production budget and opened the door for the current wave of television adaptations of Philippa Gregory’s novels.

In 2015 the BBC released the six-part series Wolf Hall, a fictionalised biography on the rise to power of Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to Henry VIII, and his success in freeing Henry from his marriage to Anne Boleyn. It was an adaptation of two Booker Prize-winning novels by Hilary Mantel—Wolf Hall and Bringing Up the Bodies. Talking to Hannah Furness of the Telegraph, Mantel said:

Many writers of historical fiction … want to give a voice to those who have been silenced. Fiction can do that, because it concentrates on what is not on the record. But we must be careful when we speak for others … if we write about the victims of history, are we reinforcing their status by detailing it? Or shall we rework history so victims are the winners? This is a persistent difficulty for women writers, who want to write about women in the past, but can’t resist retrospectively empowering them. Which is false … a good novelist will have her characters operate within the ethical framework of their day—even if it shocks her readers.             

The Spanish Princess—which can be approached as a kind of prequel to The Tudors series—is an eight-part British-American co-production, developed for Starz. It tells the tale of fifteen-year-old Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Queen Isabella of Spain, between the years 1501 and 1509, when she arrives in England to marry fifteen-year-old Arthur, Prince of Wales, heir apparent to King Henry VII, a boy she has been betrothed to, by proxy, since she was three years old. 

Rob Licuria of Goldderby wrote, “The Tudors have featured in so many films, series and plays over the years. It’s well-worn territory. But this series is not just another re-tread. It’s an origin story, if you will.”

Whereas The Tudors was told more from a traditional male perspective, Gregory’s novels are shown from the point of view of the key women protagonists. Helen Brown of the Telegraph said:

[Philippa] Gregory has made an impressive career out of breathing passionate, independent life into the historical noblewomen whose personalities had previously lain flat on family trees, remembered only as diplomatic currency and brood mares.

In The Spanish Princess, Catherine of Aragon (played by Charlotte Hope) arrives in England to meet and marry Prince Arthur (Angus Imrie), whom she has been corresponding with since they were children, but discovers that Arthur’s younger brother, Harry (Ruairi O’Connor) has been the one ghost-writing the letters to her. Harry and Catherine develop an attraction to each other but Catherine is still bound to marry Arthur, heir to the English throne.

When Arthur falls ill and dies, Catherine declares that her marriage to him had not been consummated and she is still eligible, under Papal Law, to marry Harry, the new heir to the throne, but there arises concern over whether this sibling marriage violates Papal Law. 

After the Queen’s unexpected death, Henry VII (Elliot Cowan) agrees that in order to keep a vital treaty with Spain, he will marry Catherine of Aragon himself. Catherine is now divided between her duty to marry King Henry and her desire to marry Harry but she astutely persuades the King that the treaty will be more secure, in the long term, if he keeps the hereditary line intact by allowing her to marry Harry. The King agrees but declares that it is contingent on a dispensation from the Pope, and on Spain paying the remainder of her dowry.

Catherine’s mother, Queen Isabella, dies and Catherine’s sister Joanna becomes Queen of Spain. Queen Joanna visits England and she and Harry have a brief dalliance. Henry VII dies soon afterwards and Harry, who has now become Henry VIII, renews his intention to marry Catherine. They discover that the Pope has long ago granted them a written dispensation sanctioning the marriage, but his Papal Letter was kept from them.

Catherine receives correspondence from her father, Ferdinand, King of Spain, informing her of the rumour of her sister Joanna’s affair with her husband, but Henry denies it. In return, Henry asks her to vow that she never consummated the marriage with Arthur, which she does, but it is clear that neither of them completely trusts the other.

Philippa Gregory was born in Nairobi, Kenya, but when she was two years old she moved to the UK. She worked as a journalist before earning a PhD in eighteenth-century literature at the University of Edinburgh.

She had planned to write a book about Tudor piracy while reading records of the Tudor navy, but then discovered Mary Boleyn, whom she knew little about. This was the key to the work that would occupy her imagination for the next two decades.

The first television series, The White Queen, is an amalgamation of three of Gregory’s books:  The White Queen, about Elizabeth Woodville, the wife of Edward IV, The Red Queen, about Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII, and The Kingmaker’s Daughter, about Anne Neville, the wife of Richard III.

The second series, The White Princess, is based on her novel of the same name, concerning the relationship of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. The third, The Spanish Princess, is adapted from two more of her books, The Constant Princess and The King’s Curse, telling the story of Catherine of Aragon.

When Arifa Akbar of the Independent pointed out to Gregory that the historian David Starkey alleged that her work had no “historical authority” and that her books were “good Mills & Boon”, Gregory riposted: “I had no idea he was such an expert on Mills & Boon. I’m surprised.” In an interview with Hailey Wendling of CultureWhisper, Gregory said:

It [is] very much like detective work, especially when writing historical fiction. There’s a gap in the records where no one can agree what happened, and you find some really original thinking. Then, I come to it with different prejudices and reach a different conclusion—that’s when history is at its best.

The House of Plantagenet originated in France in the tenth century and comprised four royal houses: the Angevins, the Anjou, and the Houses of Lancaster and York, all emanating from a central grand dynasty established by Fulk I of Anjou in the beginning of the tenth century. The name Plantagenet is derived from a habit of the Count of Anjou, father of Henry II, of wearing a sprig of broom (Planta genista) in his helmet.

The Plantagenet dynasty ruled England for over three hundred years. Both Richard the Lionheart, who led the Third Crusade against Saladin, and Edward I, who conquered Wales and became known as the “Hammer of the Scots” for his campaigns against William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, were Plantagenets.

The origins of the English royal family had been Norman French but the dynasty self-destructed during the Hundred Years War (1337 to 1453), waged by the English against the French over the right to rule France. Five generations of kings fought in this conflict. The War of the Roses (1455 to 1487), between rival factions of the Plantagenets—the House of Lancaster (the Red Rose) and the House of York (the White Rose)—directly followed, eliminating the male hereditary lines of both houses.

The legitimate succession of male Plantagenet heirs ended, in 1499, with the beheading of Edward, Earl of Warwick, grandson of Richard, Duke of York, by Henry VII, founder and first monarch of the House of Tudor.

The first two episodes of The Spanish Princess were directed by Danish director Birgitte Stærmose; episodes three and four by the Australian director Daina Reid; episodes five and six by the British director Lisa Clarke. Although initial press releases stated that the series would have only female directors, the final two episodes were made by the British man Stephen Woolfenden. 

I was captivated by all three series—a real history lesson—particularly the magnificent Spanish Princess, but there have been mixed reviews. Brad Newsome, of the Sydney Morning Herald, wrote:

It’s the older women who are the best value. Harriet Walter is an absolute treat as Henry’s pompous grandmother, Margaret Beaufort, a woman appalled to learn that Catherine takes daily baths rather than weekly ones. Henry’s mother, Queen Elizabeth (Alexandra Moen), reveals a Cersei-like ruthless streak.

Ben Travers, of IndieWire, wasn’t impressed with the series and wrote: “even with a shift of perspective to women and minority characters, there’s not a lot to learn from The Spanish Princess”. Travers used the word hornt to describe the characters’ behaviour and the litany of sexual romps that pepper each episode. (The Urban Dictionary defines hornt as “being sexually aroused to the point of explosion”.)  Bernard Cornwell, author of the Saxon Stories novels, adapted into the popular BBC series The Last Kingdom, refers to these kind of relentless lovemaking interludes as sexplanations.

In the Argentine daily newspaper La Nación, Paula Prieto said The Spanish Princess “lacks a strong protagonist and manipulates historical facts in favour of an outlandish plot … (especially the multiculturalism of the Spanish court).”

Every historical period drama takes dramatic licence with factual history and The Spanish Princess is no exception. Henry VII’s son, Harry, is portrayed as wilful and extremely virile, but actual historical accounts describe him as subdued, especially in the presence of his dominating father. 

Megan Elliott, of Showbiz, said:

Catherine [of Aragon] is shown receiving love letters from her future husband, Arthur, before she arrives in England. But soon, we learn that those letters came from a young [Harry]. But in reality, [Harry] was just 10 years old when Catherine arrived to marry his older brother. Chances are pretty slim that he’d be sending romantic letters to the woman who would marry his brother, and there’s no historical evidence that this occurred.

The character of Queen Isabella of Spain, mother of Catherine of Aragon, is depicted in The Tudors series as a strait-laced matriarch, clad in elegant black regalia, but in The Spanish Princess she is a fearless Amazon-like warrior, wielding a bloody sword in battle.

When Philippa Gregory was asked, in an interview with Charlotte Hodgman of the BBC History Magazine, how she reconciles the political correctness of today with the reality of the historical times she portrays, she said:

No matter how much it goes against your own personal sensibilities, you have to accept the reality of the times—that’s the history bit in historical fiction. My book The Red Queen, for example, discusses the consummation of the marriage between 12-year-old Margaret Beaufort and her 26-year-old husband, Edmund Tudor, a union that resulted in Margaret giving birth, aged 13, to the future Henry VII. The whole episode is very uncomfortable for the reader, but I couldn’t write anything to suggest that it was morally repellent, as it wasn’t to people at the time. You have to write within the sensibilities of the period, especially if you’re writing in the first person.

Gregory’s most recent work—in a series she refers to as her “Plantagenet and Tudor Novels”— is The Last Tudor (2017): “This is, I think, going to be my last book on the Tudors and so I will leave a family and a history that has deeply engaged me for nearly twenty years.”

The Last Tudor tells the story of the Grey sisters, the three great-granddaughters of Henry VII, and potential heirs to the British Crown, and it focuses on the youngest sister, Lady Mary Grey, whose oldest sister, Jane Grey, was the first Queen of England—for only nine days—having been forced onto the throne ahead of Henry VIII’s half-sister, Mary Tudor. When Mary took the Crown by force, Lady Jane was beheaded.

Lady Mary Grey, the youngest sister, a dwarf, and very beautiful, was quite aware of her own perilous position, as the next possible threatening heir, but never mounted a serious claim to the throne. She died in 1578 of the plague, aged 33, and, despite having been under house arrest for seven years, was given a royal funeral by Queen Elizabeth at Westminster Abbey.

Gregory commented:

Elizabeth was the last Tudor, since her refusal to name a Tudor cousin or to marry and bear her own heir, gave the throne to the son of her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots and the Stuart family took the throne of England.

She told Arifa Akbar:

I’m a Republican. I’m not interested in modern-day monarchy and I think a monarchy does not have an effective place in a democracy. The thing that interests me with the Tudors and the Plantagenets is the intersection between political power and personality.

The producers, Emma Frost and Matthew Graham, have confirmed a second season of The Spanish Princess, to be released in 2020, saying they are “thrilled to tell the next chapter of Catherine of Aragon’s story as she negotiates war, politics and marriage to the most dangerous King of England”. In the three previous series, different actors were cast to play the primary characters, but this pattern will be broken in the second season of The Spanish Princess when Charlotte Hope and Ruairi O’Connor reprise their roles as Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII.