Sunday, May 29, 2011

The Last Plantagenet

Yesterday was the feast of Blessed Margaret Pole, last princess of the royal house of Plantagenet. Accounts of her heroism and suffering, HERE, HERE and HERE.

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2 comments:

laBiscuitnapper said...

Usually when I study history, I find myself becoming more - if not sympathetic - empathetic with some of the more unpleasant characters. Henry VIII is completely the opposite and the case of the Countess of Salisbury is one of the many reasons why.

The more I read about him and his reign, the more angry and disgusted I become with him (as if he'd care, of course. Weird as this may sound from an Anglican, one of my main gripes was upon realising that through his selfish cruelty he deprived us of having a Queen Mary minus the father issues and though we wouldn't have had Queen Elizabeth, Mary was the descendent of Aragons and as much a Renaissance Princess as her half sister).

And the fact I've come out of my lurkerdom just to say that is proof of the pudding, methinks!

elena maria vidal said...

Thank you for commenting! I think that Mary would have made a great, great queen if her parents' marriage had lasted. Both her mother the Queen and her governess the Countess of Salsbury (Margaret Pole) were training her for the role. But the way Mary was treated by her father when he married Anne was quite damaging to her psyche, I think.