The second match proved legendary: Eleanor proposed marriage to a young nobleman some 10 years her junior. Henry was an attractive guy with good prospects. After all, he was count of Anjou, duke of Normandy and the future Henry II of England.
Their union was the stuff of Broadway plays and Hollywood movies (“The Lion in Winter,” anyone?), with various adulteries (his) and political intrigues and imprisonment (hers). Like Alexander the Great’s mother Olympias, Eleanor had dynasty dreams for her five sons and three daughters by Henry. The oldest two boys died young. But the third and favorite would pass into myth as Richard the Lionheart. He was succeeded by his bad-boy baby bro, John, and Eleanor – having out-lived her sparring hubby to immerse herself in the adult lives of her well-connected children -- earned a place as one of the most influential women in history.
Love, Tudor-style
After some 300 years, it was time for a new dynasty to take the reins. Still, Henry Tudor (Henry VII) and his wife, Elizabeth of York, could lay claim to some Plantagenet blood. Their second son would prove to be one of England’s most famous kings, though not necessarily for the best of reasons. Henry VIII was a real Renaissance man – handsome, virile, erudite, “Defender of the Faith” against the newfangled Lutheranism and chivalrous husband to his brother’s accomplished young widow, Catherine of Aragon, with whom he had a daughter, Mary.
And then it all went to Hades in a handbasket. He threw over Catherine and his Roman Catholic faith for the bewitching Rules Girl Anne Boleyn, then beheaded her when he tired of her, accusing her of being unfaithful (not) and married the slyly demure Jane Seymour, who died after giving birth to his longed-for son, Edward VI.
Never the most original of lovers, Henry’s fourth, fifth and sixth marriages replayed the first three. He divorced wife number four, the dumpling-like Anne of Cleves, as he had number one (the long-suffering Catherine of Aragon). At least Anne got some perks out of the deal. Then he beheaded number five, good-time girl Katherine Howard, as he had number two (Anne Boleyn). Number six, the motherly widow Catherine Parr, survived him barely. But she would later remarry and die in childbirth, like number three (Jane Seymour).
Is it any wonder that Henry’s greatest progeny and England’s greatest ruler, Elizabeth I, never married? Elizabeth, who was 3 when her mother, Anne Boleyn, was beheaded, saw one kindly stepmother after another wrenched from her young life, then had to witness her half-sister Mary’s humiliating marriage to the grasping, pietistic Philip II of Spain, a man who could’ve bored Jesus himself. When Philip, whose real interest was in adding England to the Spanish empire, came sniffing around Elizabeth after Mary died, she coolly asked him what the chances were that he would make her happy, given that he had made her sister miserable.
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Olympias Defamed
Posted by Abigail Quart May 22, 2012 00:31:50