They were to be each other's support and affirm it before God. But only she cared...
Already the weather in English harbour foretells that the Spanish infanta Catalina will have to arm herself thoroughly against the unkindness of the North. Marriage policy has appointed the local first-born prince Arthur Tudor as her husband, but fate has other, far grimmer plans for her. When her ailing husband dies soon afterwards, her young brother-in-law Henry finds a crush on the young widow. Although he eventually takes her to the altar, the suffering in the life of Queen Catherine (1485-1536) is far from over. Neither of their sons is given even two months to live, the death is mounting, the years are passing. Temperamental Henry VIII. desperate for an heir, he sacrifices first warmth, then loyalty, and then judgment. And so, as the history of Tudor England, with Anne Boleyn's complicity, hurtles towards an infamous divorce that will shake the mores of early modern Europe, the fading Catholic queen worries not only about survival in conditions determined by male will or the legitimate claims of her only daughter, but also about the salvation of her own soul...
The first volume of the Six Tudor Queens series presents a dramatic epic about an inwardly honest monarch whose saintly patience contrasts sharply with the actions of her husband, who asserts his ego against all odds, both temporal and spiritual. Not to mention the blood spilled.
