This has been one of the most fascinating and most moving novels to write, from the discovery of the life of the young Katherine, to the great question of the lie that she told and maintained all her life.
That it was a lie is, I think, the most likely explanation. I believe that her marriage to Arthur was consummated. Certainly, everyone thought so at the time; it was only Dona Elvira’s insistence after Katherine had been widowed, and Katherine’s own insistence at the time of her separation from Henry that put the consummation into doubt. Later historians, admiring Katherine and accepting her word against Henry’s, put the lie into the historical record where it stays today.
The lie was the starting place of the novel but the surprise in the research was the background of Catalina of Spain. I enjoyed a wonderful research trip to Granada to discover more about the Spain of Isabella and Ferdinand, and came home with an abiding respect both for their courage and for the culture they swore to overthrow: the rich tolerant and beautiful land of the Moslems of Spain, el Andalus. I have tried to give these almost forgotten Europeans a voice in this book, and to give us today, as we struggle with some of the same questions, an idea of the conviviencia – a land where Jews, Moslems and Christians managed to live side by side in respect and peace as ‘People of the Book’.
A note on the songs
‘Alas, Alhama!’, ‘Riders gallop through the Elvira gate…’ and ‘There was crying in Granada…’ are traditional songs, quoted by Francesca Claremount in Catherine of Aragon (see book list below).
‘A palm tree stands in the middle of Rusafa’, is by Abd al Rahman, translated by D. F. Ruggles and quoted in Menocal, The Ornament of the World (see book list below).
The following books have been most helpful in my research into the history of this story:
Bindoff, S. T., Pelican History of England: Tudor England, Penguin, 1993
Bruce, Marie Louise, Anne Boleyn, Collins, 1972
Chejne, Anwar G., Islam and the West: The Moriscos – A Cultural and Social History, State University of New York Press, 1983
Claremont, Francesca, Catherine of Aragon, Robert Hale, 1939
Cressy, David, Birth, Marriage and Death: Ritual Religion and the Life-cycle in Tudor and Stuart England, OUP, 1977
Darby, H. C., A New Historical Geography of England before 1600, CUP, 1976
Dixon, William Hepworth, History of Two Queens, vol. 2, London, 1873
Elton, G. R., England under the Tudors, Methuen, 1955
Fernandez-Arnesto, Felipe, Ferdinand and Isabella, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1975
Fletcher, Anthony, Tudor Rebellions, Longman, 1968
Goodwin, Jason, Lords of the Horizon: A History of the Ottoman Empire, Vintage, 1989
Guy, John, Tudor England, OUP, 1988
Haynes, Alan, Sex in Elizabethan England, Sutton, 1997
Loades, David, The Tudor Court, Batsford, 1986
Loades, David, Henry VIII and His Queens, Sutton, 2000
Lloyd, David, Arthur Prince of Wales, Fabric Trust for St Laurence, Ludlow, 2002
Mackie, J. D., Oxford History of England: The Earlier Tudors, OUP, 1952
Mattingley, Garrett, Catherine of Aragon, Jonathan Cape, 1942
Menocal, The Ornament of the World, Little, Brown, 2002
Mumby, Frank Arthur, The Youth of Henry VIII, Constable, 1913
Núñez, J. Agustín, (ed.), Muslim and Christian Granada, Edilux SL, 2004
Paul, E. John, Catherine of Aragon and Her Friends, Burns & Drates, 1966
Plowden, Alison, The House of Tudor, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976
Plowden, Alison, Tudor Women: Queens and Commoners, Sutton, 1998
Randall, Keith, Henry VIII and the Reformation in England, Hodder, 1993
Robinson, John Martin, The Dukes of Norfolk, OUP, 1982
Scarisbrick, J. J., Yale English Monarchs: Henry VIII, YUP, 1997
Scott, S. P., The History of the Moorish Empire in Europe, vol. 1, Ams Pr, 1974
Starkey, David, Henry VIII: A European Court in England, Collins & Brown, 1991
Starkey, David, The Reign of Henry VIII: Personalities and Politics, G. Philip, 1985
Starkey, David, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII, Vintage, 2003
Tillyard, E. M. W., The Elizabethan World Picture, Pimlico, 1943
Turner, Robert, Elizabethan Magic, Element, 1989
Walsh, William Thomas, Isabella of Spain, Sheed & Ward, 1935
Warnicke, Retha M., The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn, CUP, 1991
Weir, Alison, Henry VIII: King and Court, Pimlico, 2002
Weir, Alison, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Pimlico, 1997
Youings, Joyce, Sixteenth-Century England, Penguin, 1991