jaylahve:H I S T O R I C A L   F A N C A S T S // Juno Temple as Mary Tudor or Mary I of England

jaylahve: H I S T O R I C A L   F A N C A S T S // Juno Temple as Mary Tudor or Mary I of England Mary Tudor was the first queen regnant of England, reigning from 1553 until her death in 1558. She is best known for her religious persecutions of Protestants and the executions of over 300 subjects. However, her life (in my opinion) is a sad one. Poor Mary Tudor, destined – like her half-brother and predecessor – to languish between those two giants of English history, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Declared illegitimate, forced to be lady-in-waiting to her physically, politically, intellectually, better half-sister, it was no wonder that despite her happy early years her reign would turn out to be short and tragic. Mary was thirty-seven when she inherited the throne. At the time she had never been married despite several matches having been suggested and abandoned in her youth. She knew, however, that if she remained childless the throne would pass to her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth. She needed a Catholic heir to avoid the reversal of the religious reforms that would later make her infamous. To accomplish that goal, she arranged a marry Philip II of Spain. The public response to Mary’s marriage was extremely unpopular, but she pressed on, repealing many of Henry VIII’s religious edicts and replacing them with her own (which included a very strict heresy law). The enforcement of this law resulted in the burning of over 300 Protestants as heretics. Mary’s religious persecutions made her an extremely unpopular regent, earned her the nickname “Bloody Mary,” and gave her a villain-like legacy that would long last her reign. The marriage to the Spanish king produced no children and Philip, bored with his wife, spent little time in England and provided no part of his vast New World trade network to the British crown. Childless and grief-stricken by 1558, Mary had endured several false pregnancies and was suffering from what may have been uterine or ovarian cancer. She died at St. James Palace in London, on November 17, 1558, and was interred at Westminster Abbey. Her half-sister succeeded her on the throne as Elizabeth I in 1559. (x) And the title “Bloody Mary” isn’t even accurate when you compare her reign to her father’s and brother’s and probably even her sister Elizabeth’s. Henry VIII executed between 57,000 and 72,000 of his subjects, I believe Edward VI executed around 6,000, and Elizabeth undoubtedly executed more than 300 people during her reign. -- source link

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