Gah, enough with all the love talk in this latest episode. Sure, it was nice when the participants in these marriages learned to like or even love each other, but none of the people involved here would have at all thought it a serious consideration in who they did or didn't marry. Marriage among royalty was all about alliances and every last one of these people knew that, no matter how many gauzy high pitched fantasies about burning love letters the show might throw together. I'm guessing the show figures that's a more interesting angle to play than the reality of this particular situation, though, where it was years of letters and negotiations and dickering over money back and forth between the Tudor court and whoever happened to be running Spain that week. Catherine's increasing desperation as her financial resources and position in England dwindled as the Tudors tried to basically starve her into giving up and going home was at least decently done.
Uh, Margaret, you were pretty much resentful your whole life that you were married off to an adult man at 12 and all but crippled by birthing Henry at 13. Yes, it eventually worked out in the longterm when your adult son won the throne, but maybe don't be selling child marriage to young Princess Mary as the greatest thing ever.
I liked Catherine's dig at Margaret Beaufort about how she should have been the rightful queen if only England wasn't so darned old-fashioned like that. The only reason the Tudors were ever a thing was her own claim though John of Gaunt, but England up to that point hadn't had a successful queen and wasn't about to start for her. All the special airs and rights she ensured for herself as My Lady the King's Mother could certainly be read as as her trying to make up for her having to accept that consolation prize. I appreciate that the show gave us the followup to Joanna the Mad's story, which is one of how easy it was for a female ruler to be usurped by her male relatives.
I feel like I say poor Maggie Pole every week, but again poor Maggie Pole.
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