I am so excited to welcome C.W. Gortner, author of The Tudor Conspiracy, to the blog today!
Mary and Elizabeth:
Sisters and Rivals
There is something fascinating, and disturbing, about family
members who turn on one another. The Tudor dynasty is no exception. Though
Henry VIII did not sire many children, considering how often he wed, history
has perhaps no sisters more famous for their rivalry than his two daughters,
Mary and Elizabeth.
Born of the king’s marriages to his first and second wives,
respectively, Mary and Elizabeth were both declared bastards in turn after
Henry divorced Mary’s mother, Catherine of Aragon, and had Elizabeth’s mother,
Anne Boleyn, beheaded. The rivalry between the two mothers, each determined to
hold onto their crown and defend their child, set the stage for a legacy of
mistrust between the daughters, who were as different in temperament as any
sisters could be.
The eldest by seventeen years, Mary went from an adored
childhood to a horrifying adolescence in which she saw her beloved mother
supplanted by another. Humiliated and relegated to the status of a servant in her
baby sister Elizabeth’s household, the scars of Mary’s teenage years can’t be
underestimated.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, was barely three when her
mother died and she was made illegitimate. A famous quip from this time is
attributed to her when informed of her new status: “How is that yesterday I was
Princess Elizabeth and today only Lady Elizabeth?” Young as she was, Elizabeth
had a keen grasp of her situation. She grew into womanhood surrounded by danger
and became adept at the rules of survival, aware that one misstep could lead to
her doom, her mother’s example always before her.
Both sisters understood the perils intrinsic to royal life,
but while Elizabeth learned to play the cards dealt to her, Mary remained
steadfast in her right to stand above the crowd. They both had courage but
their experiences couldn’t have been more disparate. Elizabeth was born into,
and raised, in the Protestant Faith; like their brother Edward, she embraced
it. Mary resisted, both from a deep-seated belief inculcated in her as by the
rigidity of her own character, which was not given to change even when
circumstances called for it. In the end, whatever rapprochement the sisters
found as outsiders uncertain of their place, denigrated into savage rivalry
when Mary became queen against all odds and they found themselves pitted
against each other.
Mary could not forgive the insults tendered to her by Anne
Boleyn and in time, she came to see Elizabeth as the very incarnation of her
late mother. In turn, Elizabeth began to recognize the stony threat that Mary’s
hatred posed to her and her fragile position as the sole hope for the
Protestant cause in England. Their pasts had made them who they were; and their
struggle for supremacy would divide the country, sisters and rivals unto death.
This rivalry is the core of my new novel, THE TUDOR
CONSPIRACY. Thank you for spending this time with me. To find out more about me
and my books, please visit me at: www.cwgortner.com
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