The Spanish Princess' Charlotte Hope and Ruairi O'Connor on all the drama of the British court
TV Features Interview
Set in the 16th century London, Starz’ new historical drama The Spanish Princess follows Catherine of Aragon, Princess of Spain who has been promised the English throne all her life. Ahead of the series premiere this Sunday, we spoke with Charlotte Hope and Ruairi O’Connor—who play Catherine of Aragon, and Harry, Prince of Wales, respectively—about the show.
16 Comments
I love these stories told around the women. I will be watching.
Reign 2.0?
Well 1.0 really I guess this would be a prequel
Reign is not based on a novel, but I feel as though it was patterned on Phillipa Gregory’s style of dramatic story telling, and this series is based on a couple of Phillipa Gregory novels (The Constant Princess and The King’s Curse). Now Gregory often tells a compelling story (i.e. The Other Boleyn Girl), but she really does play fast and loose with history. I personally don’t have a problem with that, but I know my history or, at least, how to go about finding the real fact-based story. The problem lies in people who don’t know better taking these highly fictionalized stories for fact. Honestly the juicy events in history really don’t need further dramatizing. They’re pretty darn dramatic all on their own.
Didn’t she write it so that Catherine and Arthur were wildly in love and then the same with Catherine and Henry (until he got tired of her and wanted Anne, anyway?) I like her novels, but I’m like you, I don’t take them as fact so much as taking a grain of truth and building around that.I want a show about Anne of Cleves. No one really talks about her much.
She not only wrote it that Arthur and Catherine were wildly in love but that they’d consummated their marriage, and her marrying Henry was their plan (her’s and Arthur’s) to ensure the kind of rule Arthur had intended. Which is certainly stretching things to the point of fiction. Personally I believe that, for a variety of reasons, Arthur and Catherine probably did consummate their marriage, but that is something only two people ever knew for certain.No one talks about Anne much because she was queen for such a short period of time. Her’s is an interesting story, but, aside from surviving with her head intact, not really that dramatic. She was smart, acquiesced to Henry’s wishes and ended up a contented woman as a result. He was so pleased with her for not making a fuss, that he made her rich, allowed her access to his children (whom she truly seemed to love), and treated her with a high degree of respect after the divorce. She was styled the king’s sister and, when she came to court after the divorce, she was second in rank only to Henry’s queen. I think it’s interesting that, while she was free to, she never opted to marry again. I think she probably relished her freedom and wasn’t about to relinquish it for marriage. She really seems to have been a smart and pragmatic woman.
I don’t know. She was Queen for 14 years. With Henry VIII, that seems like a pretty long time.
Wtf are you talking about? Anne of Cleves was queen for only 6 months.
Anne of Cleves, not Anne Boleyn.
Even if Rochrist meant Anne Boleyn, the time is still wrong. Anne was queen for only 3 years, not 14. In fact, although Henry started pursuing Anne in 1525, Catherine was still queen and at court in 1531, when Henry finally banished her. And it would be another 2 years before Henry would marry Anne in 1533. Depending on whether you believe Henry’s divorce was valid or whether he was still legally married to Katherine up to her death, they were married 24 or 27 years. After Katherine of Aragon, none of Henry’s subsequent queens were married to him for very long, with Catherine Parr being the longest at 4 years. Jane Seymour was queen less than a year and a half, Anne of Cleves, 6 months, and Catherine Howard was stripped of her title 16 months after the marriage (and executed for treason 3 months later).
I didn’t really pay attention to the time they said, I just assumed they read “Anne” and thought we were talking about Anne Boleyn.
I have no idea where that 14 year marriage was supposed to come in. Catherine of Aragon and Henry had a marriage that was almost twice as long, and, if you count the start of Henry & Anne’s relationship beginning in 1525 or ,1526 (dates differ), their relationship is only 10 0r 11 years total. Since Henry didn’t initiate seeking a divorce from Catherine until 1528, I put the start of a serious relationship as sometime in 1527, which I think is fair since Henry only sought her as mistress for the first couple of years.None of his later marriages comes even remotely close to the length of his first marriage.
Sorry, for some reason I confused her with Catherine.
I want to read about her before Henry. I’m sure I can find that somewhere, but I bet it’s not easy to find. Anything I’ve read about all his wives doesn’t go back very far before she met him.
There probably just isn’t that much historical record on Anne of Cleves prior to her marriage to Henry.
The English court. The British court was a hundred years away.