Sunday, January 23, 2011

"The Constant Princess" by Philippa Gregory

One thing I have learned, through reading now three of Philippa Gregory’s novels, is she not simply entertains with a compelling story filled with interesting characters in all their weaknesses and strengths.   She also educates a reader with a narrative of history that may strike remarkably close to the way events actually played out.

THE CONSTANT PRINCESS serves as a prime example. 

Here one learns of Princess Catalina, the youngest daughter to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, and the means to an alliance with England through her marriage to England’s future king, Prince Arthur. 

Right here, I personally learned a lot.  Ferdinand and Isabella were already names familiar to me through my elementary education, as the king and queen to finance Christopher Columbus (Cristobal Colon) and his ‘sailing the ocean blue in 1492’.  What I knew nothing of were how they were more than just another royal pair in the long litany of European kings and queens.  They were admired and feared, expelling the Moors from Spain.  In fact, Isabella, often charged into the fray of the battle with the troops, as is evidenced in the story’s open where fire is ravaging the Spanish camp. 

Rather than comforting her frightened five-year-old daughter, who fears a Moorish advance, Isabella rides out to embolden her troops. She is clearly wishing to embrace her child, but refrains from these impulses so Catalina will learn the constancy of being royalty.  It is more than just a privileged state, anointed by God for charge; it is an actual job.  Such becomes an important lesson that will follow the young princess throughout her ensuing travails. 

Catalina, pledged to Prince Arthur at age of three, is reared in this manner to serve not just as Princess of Wales (a title she assumes at that young age); she grows into a young woman believing God’s plan for her life is also the throne of England.  When she and Arthur do marry (she is sixteen; he is fifteen), this notion seems to be playing out as reality, as she and Arthur both hold grand plans on how to fashion England into the Camelot of the country’s first Arthur.

The discourses between them sound precisely like two teenagers in love.  There is an idealism expressed through their words; there is a naiveté that is found in one’s youth.  It was most impressive to read these subtleties that made what the two lovers spoken sound so real.

Catalina’s mother planned to utilize her children to create alliances throughout Europe and unite Christendom against the threat of Moorish invasion.   It is a belief Catalina adheres to even after Arthur dies, stripping from her any English royal titles, and leaving her future no brighter than any of her siblings who faced likewise deaths.

However, in Catalina’s situation, a difference arises.  First, her father never paid the English king the full dowry he expected, making Catalina’s release to return to her parents in Spain a conundrum from which neither king wishes to budge.  Second, she answered a deathbed request of Arthur’s to marry his brother Harry, next in line to the English throne.  Circulating the story that their short marriage was never consummated, would free her to be pledged in marriage to Harry – taking her back to the English throne.  She would tell everyone Arthur, her love, was unable to fulfill his marital responsibilities.

Two problems exist.  Prince Harry is a mere child of eleven when his brother Arthur dies – too young an age even during those days for one to marry; and the current English king, Henry VII, is attracted to the Spanish princess.  When his wife, Queen Elizabeth, dies, he seeks to marry Catalina and make her Queen at his side.

During these days, Catalina remains constant.  She doesn’t know if she will be marrying King Henry (he’s 46 to her 17) – the idea is appalling to her – Prince Harry, or returning to her mother and father in Spain.  All she knows, and adheres fervently to with utter aplomb, is her promise to Arthur to carry out their plans (perhaps marrying his father is the path), and her lifelong belief she was the Princess of Wales and future Queen of England.  It was God’s plan for her life. 

Through the years of poverty and hardship she is forced to endure while in this limbo of obscurity, Catalina remains a princess.  She holds fast to her convictions.  She remains true to her promise to Arthur.  She fervently believes what her mother taught her, that she was destined to be Queen.

THE CONSTANT PRINCESS was my personal introduction to Katherine of Aragon (Catalina of Spain) and the supposed tale of her lie.  Katherine maintained to her death that her marriage to Arthur was never consummated.  Contemporary belief says otherwise.  The story Gregory writes is a plausible look into that scenario and how it may have developed – if her statement on the marriage was indeed untrue. 

I am no historian, so I cannot say one way or the other what the actual truth is.  However, I do know a good story when I read it.  THE CONSTANT PRINCESS gives a reader a heroine who stands fast in her beliefs, a woman of royalty anyone would look upon as a true queen, and a girl, daughter, woman, and expectant mother even the plebeian members of any society can relate to.

Catalina (Queen Katherine) is a woman who is a queen, but that makes her no less a woman.  She is still a woman who wishes for a husband’s love, a mother’s embrace, and a child’s cry.  She is a queen who directs the affairs of her country, encourages and loves her husband, and leads her troops boldly into battle.  She is the model of her mother Isabella.  The world needs more such women.

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