20 facts about bloody mary

Mary Tudor was born on February 18, , at the Palace of Placentia. Mary was a devout Catholic and spent much of her early life in the care of her grandmother, Margaret Beaufort. She was invested as Princess of Wales in Yet there is much to warrant even a brief examination of her life and reign.

How did bloody mary die

Though her hated half-sister would outshine her in virtually every sphere — physical, political, intellectual, artistic — Mary also had a formidable impact upon English history. Throughout the first thirty-seven years of her life, she was tossed about by the whims of her father and, later and perhaps more galling, her Protestant brother Edward VI and his council.

It was perhaps inevitable that when she first tasted real power, the experience would be both intoxicating and unfortunate. When Mary came to the throne, she was thirty-seven years old. She had never been married though, in her youth, several matches had been suggested and abandoned. Contrary to later beliefs, Henry VIII was pleased with her birth in , proudly displaying the infant Mary to visiting ambassadors and noblemen.

It was only years later, with Mary as his sole legitimate offspring, that Henry began his desperate search for a son. This search would forever brand him as a misogynist and cruel tyrant who discarded, divorced, and beheaded the women who did not bear him sons.

How did mary tudor die

But one must be fair to Henry and judge him by the standards of his time, which certainly his contemporaries did. He was only the second Tudor monarch and, as such, he understood the necessity of stabilizing the English throne. Mary, like her half-sister Elizabeth, was always recognized as his daughter.