6 thoughts on “Spreadin' Love 555”

  1. The Henry VIII theory sounds right.

    Interestingly, none of his legitimate heirs had living children. Edward VI died at 15, Mary married in her late 30s and had no living children and Elizabeth never married, despite many offers. My suspicion is that Elizabeth thought or knew that it would be unlikely that she would be able to have living children, which showed very good sense on her part after all the very public drama and disappointment that the Tudor women went through trying to produce heirs.

    One possibly related issue is that the gene pool Henry was choosing from was very limited–a lot of these people were cousins. Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were first cousins to each other and Henry and Catherine Parr were both third cousins once removed and fourth cousins once removed. Also, I was just looking at a family tree for Mary Tudor, and if I’m reading it correctly, it looks like she and her Spanish husband Phillip were first cousins once removed.

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  2. There’s a Jeff Foxworthy joke about how you might be a redneck if you go to family reunions in order to meet women. That sounds a lot like the Tudors.

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  4. Really interesting about the possible reasons for the miscarriages of Henry VIII’s wives. And, yes, there’s so much marrying of first cousins with that lot that who knows! But on a bit of a side note, Wolf Hall was a thoroughly fabulous story. I highly recommend it. And Bring Up the Bodies is on the top of my stack.

    Also, delighted they’re backing off on turning Merida into a Scottish Spice Girl.

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  5. There are a couple of different theories about Henry VIII’s situation. He was married to Katherine of Aragon a long time with only one child to survive infancy: Mary Tudor. Poor Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour paid heavy prices for bearing Henry’s other surviving children.

    Regarding the cousin situation with the Habsburgs (Mary’s Spanish & Austrian relations). Oh, yeah, horribly inbred. It ended badly for the last Habsburg king of Spain, Charles II: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2009/04/inbreeding-the-downfall-of-the-spanish-hapsburgs/

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