Queen Katherine Of Aragon – Old And Deformed Wife Of Henry VIII?
In 1519, the French King Francis I quipped that Henry VIII had “an old deformed wife, while he himself is young and handsome”. It is generally assumed that the French King was referring to Katharine’s corpulent figure - several years later one eyewitness described her as “of low stature” and “rather stout”. Yet there is evidence that King Francis was referring not only to Katharine’s bulky figure but also to a deformity of her jaw—a deformity that has been overlooked by modern historians until now.
Complimentary portrait of Katherine of Aragon, with a slightly protruding jaw (1560) (Public Domain)
Spanish Katharine, England’s Queen
Katharine of Aragon was born in December 1485 as the youngest daughter of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. In 1501 she was sent to England where she married Henry VII’s firstborn son and heir, Arthur Prince of Wales. Arthur died six months after the wedding and Katharine remained a widow until Henry VII’s death in 1509. One of the first decisions Henry VIII made on his accession was to marry Katharine. They were married privately on June 11, 1509 and jointly crowned on June 24. As a young girl Katharine was praised for her beauty but multiple pregnancies and losses of her children aged her prematurely. In 1515, when she was only 30 years old, the Venetian ambassador made a snide remark: “The Queen is rather ugly than otherwise, and is supposed to be pregnant. The damsels of her court are very handsome.” By 1531, when she was 45, she was described as “of low stature, rather stout with a modest countenance.”
Katharine was not the most beautiful of women. By the time she turned 30 she was already corpulent as a result of numerous pregnancies, but she dazzled the spectators with her fashion choices. The oft-repeated notion that Katharine of Aragon wore unfashionable, sombre gowns stems partly from the much later religious propaganda that tried to contrast Katharine’s piety with the pleasure-loving character of Henry VIII’s second wife of evangelical interests, Anne Boleyn.
The Courtship of Anne Boleyn, by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze (1846) showing a soberly dressed Katharine as opposed to her rival, the more flamboyant Anne Boleyn. Smithsonian American Art Museum (CC0)
Whereas Katharine may have worn “the habit of St Francis”—a penitential hair shirt—beneath her royal attire and knelt on the church floor without cushions, other evidence provides clues as to Katharine’s undiminished interest in fashion. A miniature currently preserved in the National Portrait Gallery in London, painted before 1527 and firmly dating to her lifetime, depicts Katharine with low-cut décolletage, bejewelled headdress and a rich amount of hair showing from under a Spanish-styled headpiece. Katharine favoured the fashions of her native Spain, but she also imported cloth and jewellery from Italy and the Netherlands. She liked to show off her long auburn hair, as clearly visible in the abovementioned miniature and in a description from the ambassador who saw locks of hair cascading down over Katharine’s shoulders in 1520 during the summit known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold.
The Field of the Cloth of Gold (circa 1545) Royal Collection at Hampton Court. Henry VIII on horseback approaches at bottom left (Public Domain)
