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Article: When Henry Met Catherine - and Anne, and Jane . . .
- Article from:
- Chicago Sun-Times
- Article date:
- February 6, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1994 Chicago Sun-Times. (Hide copyright information)
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The events described in The Wives of Henry VIII, by Antonia
Fraser (Vintage, $14), might have gone differently if the English
sovereign and his six queens had been offered the chance to browse
among paperbacks released in connection with Valentine's Day. Would
it were so, for this excellent history of the Tudor king's fickle and
violent amorous career leaves little question that each of the women
he married deserved a better deal.
Take his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand
and Isabella of Spain. Widowed at age 16 by the death of her
15-year-old first husband, Henry's older brother Prince Arthur, she
married Henry when he was 18 and she was 23. Things seemed to go ...