I am pleased to welcome Wendy J. Dunn back to my blog to share a guest post about Catalina of Aragon, also known as Katherine of Aragon, and her story before England for the Spanish release of her novel, “The Duty of Daughters.” I would like to thank Wendy J. Dunn and The Coffee Pot Book Club for allowing me to participate in this blog tour.

She was born in winter, as another year closed on her mother’s Holy War—the crusade that drove the Moors from Spain. The last and fifth child of two reigning monarchs, Isabel of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, Catalina of Aragon deeply loved and revered her mother, one of the strongest queens in history.

In England, later events proved Catalina very much her mother’s daughter. Yet the history-changing measures enforced by Isabel—measures her children witnessed through long seasons of war and conquest, and a land often rent by constant change—were lessons she never forgot. In some ways, she proved herself a wiser and nobler woman than Isabel.

Her parents signed and sealed her future before her third birthday, agreeing to wed her to another infant: Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales, the first-born son of a new English royal family and heir to England’s throne.

That wasn’t unusual. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, early betrothals were common for princesses. They were pawns for their families, brokered and discarded whenever needed.

Especially so in Catalina’s case—her parents were gaining a reputation for marrying rather than warring to increase their power base. Their descendants continued this policy, so much so it was said: Bella gerant alii, tu, felix Austria, nube (‘Let others make war, you, fortunate Austria, marry’).

In modern society, we take for granted the fact that our children are more than likely to reach adulthood. Advances in medical knowledge give us confidence our children will outlive us. We face childbirth knowing the great likelihood of a fortunate outcome. Women no longer ready themselves for the possibility of death when they give birth. Far too many times, childbirth meant death for mother or child in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries—sometimes both. For people of this time, death was almost a daily companion. Times were hard and living a daily proposition.

Despite their greater familiarity with death in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, losing loved ones still struck people to the quick.

When Catalina’s eldest sister, Isabel, lost her husband, Alfonso, Prince of Portugal, in a riding accident, she cut off her hair, locked herself away in a dark room, and refused to eat or sleep. Her parents brought their daughter home, but young Isabel never stopped grieving.

Isabel of Castile and Fernando of Aragon gave their eldest child five years of widowhood—then made another marriage for her, this time to Alfonso’s kinsman, now Portugal’s king.

Isabel only went through the motions. She married the king, did her duty by giving him a son, and let go of life. It broke her parents’ hearts when this same baby died in his grandmother’s arms less than two years later.

When Catalina came to marry Arthur Tudor, she already bore this cross of grief. But her belief in God, and the world to come, kept her moving forward.

At fifteen, thirteen years after the first negotiations, Catalina journeyed overland from Granada to the seaports of A Coruña. Ships waited there to take her to England, where she would marry Arthur, now also fifteen.

The dangerous journey across Castile took Catalina months. Her mother, ill and broken by grief, could not bear to accompany her youngest child for any part of it. With her other daughters, she had made a habit of travelling far with them, handing them over to their new lives with joy. But within months, that joy turned to grief.

By the time her youngest child left her side, death had sliced the number of her living children from five to three. Her only son, Juan, died at nineteen. Loved and doted on, his death cast a dark shadow over all his parents’ hopes for a unified Castile and Aragon.

Shortly after Juan’s death, Isabel’s eldest child, a daughter also named Isabel, died after giving birth to a son.

Queen Isabel kept Catalina, her youngest child, by her side as long as she could, giving excuses to the English for all the delays. But the day came when the Queen could delay no more. Catalina left her mother’s arms for the last time in Granada. They both knew they would never see one another again in life.

Coming to England from Castile meant braving a treacherous sea crossing. Storms forced Catalina’s ships back the first time; the second attempt was worse. After many times blowing Catalina’s ship away from England’s shores, the hurricanes finally managed to bring her safely into an English harbour. One of the first things Katherine (the name we know her best by) did was go to a church and give thanks for surviving. She feared then for her future. Future events proved her right.

Already, grief had interwoven its dark threads thickly in Katherine of Aragon’s life; in England, this weave continued its criss-cross to the very end.

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