Thank you to Tudor Society member Angela for asking the question “Should Ferdinand of Aragon have insisted on Katherine’s return when Prince Arthur died?”. Historian Amy Licence, who is the author of “Catherine of Aragon: An Intimate Life of Henry VIII’s True Wife” has answered Angela’s question…

This is a complex question, because Katherine’s position in England fluctuated during the period of her widowhood between 1502 and 1509. Also, we have to consider the dual impulses in Ferdinand, as a father on one hand, and as a monarch on the other, playing on the international stage, on which all his children were pawns for the furtherment of the Spanish Empire. Out of Katherine’s parents, it was Isabella of Castile who played a more active role in terms of writing to Henry VII before and after her daughter’s wedding, so she was really the commanding figure of the pair until her death in 1505. We must be careful too, with the word “should,” because it is suggestive of hindsight. We know what an awful time Katherine was to have during her widowhood and later, at the hands of Henry VIII, but back then they didn’t know how things would turn out.