Two unhappy medieval queens

Since I can count upon Rania to post historical happenings for today’s date, I can indulge myself by looking back at a date I missed earlier in the month. This gives me a chance to snipe at two of my least favorite kings—the Tudor Bluebeard and the hard-hearted Philippe Capet.

November 14, 1501 was the date of the wedding of the young Tudor prince, Arthur, and his Spanish bride, Katherine of Aragon. She would soon be a widow and many years later, her second husband, Arthur’s brother, Henry, would attempt to use this marriage to rid himself of a wife he no longer wanted, suddenly discovering that she (gasp!) had been married to his brother, and citing his own interpretation of Leviticus to argue that his marriage to Katherine was accursed. He must have been greatly surprised when his hither-to docile and dutiful wife balked, insisting that the marriage to Arthur was never consummated and she came to Henry’s bed a virgin. The sad story of what followed is very well known, of course, for although the Tudor dynasty ruled for little more than a hundred years, they managed to capture the imagination of historians, screen-writers, novelists, and the general public. This has always been hard for me to understand when the Plantagenets were just as colorful and most of them were more likable than the Tudor usurpers. (Excluding Elizabeth, of course, whom I call the only good Tudor.)

Henry’s abusive treatment of Katherine was eerily similar in some ways to the way the French king, Philippe Capet, treated his unwanted wife, the Danish princess Ingeborg. Ingeborg endured twenty years of imprisonment, deprivation, psychological torture, and general misery as Philippe sought desperately to end their marriage. He disavowed her the day after their wedding night, had his tame bishops declare the marriage null and void based upon a forged chart showing consanguinity. That did not impress the Popes, either the timid Celestine or the strong-willed Innocent III, and Philippe’s next ploy was to claim that the marriage had not been consummated because Ingeborg had cast a spell upon him. Temporary impotence caused by sorcery was a recognized ground for dissolution of a marriage, but Innocent was not buying this, either, and the impasse dragged on. In 1212, Philippe came up with my personal favorite of his arguments. He finally admitted the marriage had been consummated—which Ingeborg had been insisting all along—but claimed there had been no insemination. (I bet I am not the only one who remembers a claim of smoking pot but “not inhaling.”) Innocent’s response to this was priceless. He told Philippe to spare him “insanities of this kind.” Philippe caved in the following year and released Ingeborg from confinement, although they never lived together as husband and wife. Ingeborg’s story actually had a happier ending than Catherine of Aragon’s, for she outlived Philippe by thirteen years, devoting herself to good works and acts of piety, while being kindly treated by Philippe’s son and grandson. Henry VIII, took a different tack, of course, when he could not browbeat the Pope into getting his own way; he simply started his own Church.