Post
by Margaret » Tue May 24th, 2011, 6:58 am
What a fascinating thread! I didn't vote because I haven't read enough nonfiction about Katherine to know enough to base an opinion on. Actually, I doubt that at this remove in time we can ever really know enough to be certain whether they did or didn't. Both the pro and con arguments have some strong points to make.
Arthur and Katherine would have been under pressure to produce an heir during their marriage. That doesn't mean they did have sex, but it seems pretty likely that they must have tried.
After Arthur died, the political pressure for Henry and Katherine to marry must have been quite intense. I just don't know enough about Katherine to form an opinion of her personality, but I do think even a very devout young woman could have succumbed to the pressure to go along with the flow and say her marriage had not been consummated so the marriage with Henry could go forward. She was very young and was not in Spain at that point, but in England, surrounded by people who had worked very hard for the alliance with Spain that her marriage represented and who would have seen Arthur's death as a crushing blow which could be reversed only by finding a way for Katherine to marry Henry. England was still a Catholic country, so the people who were pressuring her were as Catholic as she was, and some of them were likely high church officials. And if once Katherine publicly went along with the pressure to say her marriage had not been consummated, it would be very, very hard for her to backtrack and then say it had been.
People are surprisingly capable of persuading themselves to believe things it is to their advantage to believe, especially when not altering their beliefs would produce the kind of powerful cognitive dissonance a pious girl like Katherine would surely have felt if her marriage had been consummated and she had lied and said it had not. Over the years, she might have altered her memories enough to actually believe her marriage had not been consummated even if it had. Seems weird, but similar things happen.
I'm playing devil's advocate by arguing for the side fewer people voted for, when in fact, I really can't make up my mind one way or another. Based on the little I do know, I think both the pro and con have strong arguments going for them.
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