The Tudor Throne

My Council tried to dissuade me. My subjects were openly hostile to the marriage, fearing England would become a province of Spain, yet another coin in the Hapsburg purse, as a wife’s property becomes her husband’s upon their marriage day. They also feared that Philip would embroil us in his costly foreign wars, that he would bleed our nation dry of money and men to settle disputes in which England had no part, and bring the dreaded Spanish Inquisition, and its torture and burning of heretics, with him. And the common, uneducated masses harbored a deeply entrenched but erroneous belief that all Spaniards were cruel and haughty and given to drunkenness, lechery, and thievery, and even murder at the slightest provocation. Catholics and Protestants alike forgot their differences and united in their opposition to my Spanish bridegroom, and raised their voices as one outside my palace or whenever I passed to shout, “No Spaniards on England’s throne!”

But my heart was set on Philip—I would have no one else. The very thought of any other husband was torture to me. And I had given my word; I had solemnly laid my hand upon the Holy Scriptures and sworn that I would be Philip’s wife, and I could not go back on it, nor did I want to.

In my heart, I was already his, body and soul, and waking and sleeping, my mind teemed with dreams of our life together. It had already been noted by my court—some brash gentleman had even dared tease me about it—that whenever I sat I would gaze to the side as if a certain someone already sat beside me. I would gaze at his fantasy-conjured figure with yearning and a wistful, faraway look in my eyes and a dreamy little smile upon my lips, and my fingers would rest tenderly upon the arm of my chair and ofttimes caress as if another’s hand lay beneath mine and our fingers intertwined in a loving flesh-and-blood knot. And my ladies, who took it in turns to sleep on a pallet at the foot of my bed, had reported that often in my sleep I would breathe the name “Philip!” in a long, drawn-out sensual sigh, and hug and caress the pillow beside mine and extend a leg as if I meant to drape it over or entwine it with another’s.

I spent hours every day staring at his portrait and I had confided to Ambassador Renard that the very mention of Philip’s name was poetry to my soul and filled my heart with ecstasy, whereupon he kissed my hand and said, “Ah, Madame, there can be no doubt, you have come to understand what love is.”

“I consider myself His Highness’s wife,” I heatedly informed them in a storm of tears as I leapt up from my chair at the head of the Council table, “and I will never take another husband, never! I would rather lose my crown and my life! And if you force me to take another husband I shall die, I tell you. I shall be dead within three months, and have no children, and then you will all be sorry!”

Unable to control the storm of emotion raging inside me, I ran from them, sobbing loudly, stumbling over my skirts, and nearly colliding with the wall, in my wild, tear-blinded haste. Behind me I knew they were murmuring and shaking their heads, no doubt comparing me to a greensick girl in the throes of her first love, but I could neither help nor change what I felt. The truth was, hurtling over the bounds of reason and common sense, I had fallen in love with a painted face in a gilded frame and a paragon spun from the good reports of others, a man I had never even met, and I could not bear the thought of losing the chance to be with him and belong to him.