I didn’t know there had been so few female rulers. I expected an incredibly long list.
Thomas Boelyn finally succeeded In getting his progeny on the throne.
If Henry VIII did indeed father the Carey children. Wikipedia seems ambivalent on the question, but this page seems rather confident of it, based in part on the honors bestowed on these children, despite that their mother’s family was in disgrace, and the official father rather a nobody. There were strong reasons not to acknowledge fathership publicly, though the linked article shows a 1535 document calling Henry Carey “the Kynge’s son.”
In a further twist, Lettice Knollys (wife of Water Devereaux-Essex, daughter of Catherine Carey so half-niece of Elizabeth I, and ancestress of Queen Elizabeth II) was a beauty of note and took Robert Dudley as lover, infuriating the Queen as this was the same Robert Dudley who had been Elizabeth’s flame.
Another point to be considered is that Henry’s own claim to the throne was a touch iffy. Henry VII was decended from a legitimized line of a second son and his claim was mostly based upon i) every other male Lancastrian was dead ii) He was bethroed to Edward IV’s daughter and iii) Right of conquest. Henry VIII mother was the daughter of Edward IV who had won the throne through conquest from Henry VI and started the War of the Roses. Furthermore, Henry had no surviving brothers, if he did he would have been a little less concerned about the succession.
The Tudors is mostly a big fuck you to historical accuracy, but it does have one excellent scene where Henry in some anguish states that his failure to produce a male heir is threatening to undo all of his fathers work.
A very good example of a successful female monarch was that of Urraca of Castile, who many generations before Mary and Elizabeth ruled as Empress of All Spain.
Urraca was the only unquestionably legitimate child of her father, Alfonso VI, king of Leon and Castile. Her mother was his second wife, Constance of Burgundy, daughter of Robert I, duke of Burgundy 1. In 1086, when Urraca was a child, her mother’s nephew, Eudes I of Burgundy, arrived in Castile to help Alfonso VI fight the Muslims. Accompanying Eudes were two likely young noblemen: his own younger brother Henri and a more distant cousin, Raymond. Alfonso VI arranged for a double marriage of Raymond to Urraca and Henri to his illegitimate daughter, Teresa, who’s mother was his mistress Jimena Muñoz.
Urraca’s mother died in 1093, and her father remarried twice more. His fourth wife, Isabel, was probably identical to his long-time mistress Zaida, a Muslim and the widow of the emir of Cordoba, who’d several years previously given birth to a son, Sancho. Alfonso VI had every intention of Sancho succeeding him, but his sons-in-law Henri and Raymond were given great honors as well and fought beside him in his many wars. In 1105, Urraca gave birth to a son, Alfonso Raimúndez, and she also had a daughter, Sancha. Her husband Raymond then died two years later in 1107.
In 1108, Urraca’s half-brother Sancho, the heir to the throne, was killed at the battle of Uclés fighting against the Almoravids. Their father, Alfonso VI, was left frantically trying to secure some kind of peaceful succession to his throne. He hit on the idea of marrying Urraca to King Alfonso I of Aragon, thereby uniting most of Spain. This is one of those ideas that look good on paper but is a disaster when put into practice. Urraca was a well-educated, sensual woman of 27. Her new husband, called el Batallador, was a real man’s man, a soldier, and the sort of guy who would proudly declare that sleeping with women was a sign of weakness.
Urraca’s brother-in-law and sister, Henri and Teresa, now ruling Portugal, weren’t too pleased with this. Henri of Burgundy was an accomplished warrior and had proven his loyalty to king Alfonso. He and Teresa had a two-year-old baby boy of their own, Afonso Henriquez. But Henri was a foreigner and Teresa was illegitimate; no way Alfonso VI was supplanting Urraca in their favor.
El Batalador and Urraca were married shortly after her father died in June 1109. The marriage was a total disaster. Urraca claimed that he beat her; she took a lover, Gómez González. There were no children. In 1110, Urraca and Alfonso el Batallador had a falling out after he executed a rebel in Galicia who had surrendered to him. This resulted in all-out war between husband and wife. Urraca’s lover González was killed fighting el Batallador, as was her brother-in-law Henri of Burgundy. Urraca and her son Alfonso Raimúndez formed something of a team as they tried to eject el Batallador from their lands and curb Urraca’s scheming half-sister, Teresa.
Urraca’s chief supporter was her lover, count Pedro González de Lara, and she died in 1126, well into her forties, giving birth to their illegitimate child.
- For anyone who remembers my post called All My Capetians, Robert was the hellraising younger brother of King Henri I of France. He divorced his first wife, Hélie de Semur (Constance’s mother) after murdering her father with his own hands.
“Empress of All Spain”? Are you saying she claimed such a title? And aren’t you forgetting several realms?
Well, properly in her charters she called herself Itotius hispaniae imperatrix, which is sometimes translated as Empress of All Spain. 
And while she was not properly queen of all Spain, would you have gotten up in her face about it? Anyway, I think Urraca is an unfairly forgotten badass. This is a woman who, at 27 years of age, a widow with small children, became queen of Castile, Leon, and Galicia and shortly thereafter queen consort of Aragon, then took on her own husband in open warfare for several years and came out on top! She made him and everyone else respect her authoritah, took lovers to suit herself, and raised Alfonso VII el Emperador, one of medieval Iberia’s most powerful monarchs.
Empress of All the Spains; it’s different, at least in Spanish, in that it recognizes that there was more than one political entity. And I still think that an explanation of the geopolitical background would have been helpful, given that most people nowadays think of “Spain” as meaning “the current nation-state by that name” rather than “the Iberian Peninsula, containing upwards of 20 separate Kingdoms and independent Countships”…
The lady was claiming “Imperial rights” over a score domains of which she was neither ruler nor liege lord.
Eh, standard practice of would-be imperial rulers, giving yourself a title more awesome than practicality would call for. Gives you something to aim for 
What the hell does love have to do with a state marriage?! :dubious:
It was hoped that you could get along with your spouse, but it wasn’t a requirement, just that you don’t try to kill the other person in their sleep and you procreate.
Henry VIII was always a romantic in these matters, that’s the point. I repeat, Henry VIII IMO did this in part to spite his fathers ghost.
As an aside I wonder what would have happened if Henry’s mother had lived, she died in childbirth at 37, she had several relatives who lived to 80 so what happens if she lives to see the great matter.