![]() ![]() Mary and Elizabeth rode into England’s capital side-by-side, one as a queen and the other as a queen-in-waiting.ĭuring her five-year reign, Mary navigated the manifold challenges associated with her status as the first English queen to wear the crown in her own right, rather than as the wife of a king. Eluding the armies of her antagonists, she rallied support from nobles across the country and marched on London. Though Mary could have sought refuge with family members in Europe, she chose to remain in England and fight for what was rightfully hers. When Edward died six years later, he attempted to subvert his father’s wishes by leaving the crown to Protestant cousin Lady Jane Grey, excluding those next in line-Mary and her younger half-sister, Elizabeth-from the succession. Welcomed back to court, she survived Henry-and three more stepmothers-only to see her younger half-brother, Edward VI, take the throne as a Protestant reformer, adopting a stance anathema to her fervent Catholicism. Mary I's parents, Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon It was only in 1536, after Anne’s execution and Henry’s marriage to Jane Seymour, that Mary finally agreed to her mercurial father’s terms. Declared illegitimate, downgraded from the title of “princess” to “lady,” and separated from her mother, Mary refused to acknowledge the validity of her parents’ divorce or her father’s status as head of the Church of England. ![]() But she survived infancy and grew up in the public eye as a beloved princess-at least until her teenage years, when her father’s infatuation with Anne Boleyn led him to divorce her mother and break with the Catholic Church. It’s a tale of sexism, shifting national identity and good old-fashioned propaganda, all of which coalesced to create the image of an unchecked tyrant that endures today.īorn on February 18, 1516, Mary was not the long-awaited son her parents, Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, had hoped for. In the words of one contemporary chronicler, “It was said that no one could remember there ever having been public rejoicing such as this.”Ĭenturies later, however, the Tudor queen is remembered as one of the most reviled figures in English history: “ Bloody Mary.” This is a story of how a heroic underdog became a monarch who was then mythologized as a violent despot-despite being no bloodier than her father, Henry VIII, or other English monarchs. Still, she rode into London on August 3, 1553, to widespread acclaim. Historian Sarah Gristwood describes the ascension of Mary I as a “staggeringly bold” course of action undertaken with little chance of success. She seized it with unprecedented ambition from those who sought to thwart her. ![]() The first woman to rule England in her own right didn’t simply inherit the throne. ![]()
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