Katherine of Aragon
Coming to England from Castile meant braving a treacherous sea crossing. Storms forced Catalina's ships back the first time; the second attempt was worst, except the hurricanes finally managed, after many times blowing Catalina's ship away from England's shores, to bring her ship safe into a English harbour. One the first things Katherine (the name we know her best as) was to go to a church and give thanks for surviving. She feared then about her future. Future events proved her right.
Already, grief had interwoven thickly its dark threads in Katherine of Aragon's life; in England, this weave continued its criss-cross to the very end.
In modern society, we take for granted the fact our children are more than likely to reach adulthood. The advances in medical knowledge have gifted us with the expectation that our children will out-live us. We face childbirth knowing the great likelihood of a happy 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 then, death was almost a daily companion. Times were hard and living a daily proposition.
Despite their greater experience of death in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, losing loved ones still struck people to the quick. When Catherine's eldest sister lost her husband, Alfonso, prince of Portugal, in a riding accident, she cut her hair off, locked herself away in a dark room, 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 King of Portugal.
Isabel only went through the motions; giving birth to a son she let go of life. It broke her parent's hearts when this same baby died in his grandmother's arms less than two years later.
When Katherine came to marry Arthur Tudor she already bore this cross of grief. But her belief in God and the world to come kept her going forward.
Katherine's cross of grief only grew heavier in England. Her marriage to Arthur, celebrated with such hope and joy, lasted only short months. He succumbed to one of the many illnesses that struck hard and fast, and so often took young lives. Within short months, Katherine was promised to
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