After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Bloody Mary: The Real Woman in the Mirror

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary. Mary I is known as a brutal tyrant. But what was the reality? In the next two episodes Anthony and Maddy will explore Mary's story. Today they explore the traumatic early years that shaped her.Edited by Tomos Delargy. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.You can now watch After Dark on Youtube: www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitPlease vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link, and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you!Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Hello everyone, it's us, your hosts Maddie Pelling and Anthony Delaney. But before we begin the show, we want to ask for a few seconds of your time. If you're enjoying After Dark and we love you if you are, we would love you just a little bit more if you could vote for us in the Listener's Choice category at the British Podcast Awards. So go to the show notes now, click the link and just then search for After Dark. Fill in your name and your email and don't forget to confirm. They will send you an email you need to confirm. The whole process probably takes about 30 seconds. If you've already voted, we are so, so grateful. If you haven't, stop what you are

doing right now. Vote for us before you enjoy this show. Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie. And I'm Anthony. And in this episode, we are covering a monarch that I cannot believe we have not covered before because of her name. It is Bloody Mary. We are looking at Mary I and here to set the scene is Anthony. Queen Mary I lies propped up in bed in St James's Palace, London. She is dying. Pain is a constant companion as illness strangles life from a still young body. Her family are not by her side as the end approaches. No sign of her husband, still far away, nor her

loyal cousin, the Cardinal, who is too busy dying himself as it happens to be here. Absent too is her sister, Elizabeth, who is all but estranged. Near her, hanging on a wall, is a mirror. As she lies there, too weak to move, she sees herself darkly in it. What visions might come to her then in the corners of that glass? What spectres creep around that mirror? Does she see the white-hot flames that she lit, licking and leaping around her heretical enemies' faces? A spectral haunting of those she had deprived of life? After all,

this is Bloody Mary we're talking about. Maybe she remembers the loneliness and torment of her teenage years, the pen and paper thrust towards her to sign away all that she, by the grace of God, was born to be. But maybe fonder memories fill her final thoughts. Maybe she remembers her all-too-brief happy childhood, her saintly mother and their devoted servants. Perhaps at the last, she was surrounded by the warmth of the religious fervour she once fought so hard to maintain for her people. That fight was now at an end, and she had lost. We have heard about the burnings and the conjurings, the maligned Catholic in a soon-to-be Protestant land. But what of the

woman? Can we get a little closer to her? Across the next two episodes of After Dark, we are going to try to discover who Mary Tudor really was. Let us begin then by summoning the woman herself. Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary came and ended us both. And that was that. The end. The end. Okay, we are doing two episodes, as Anthony says, on Bloody Mary, the daughter of Henry VIII and, you know, a person in her own right, but that's potentially where a lot of people

will know her from. She is infamous in English history because of the burning of heretics, so-called, during her brief reign. In today's episode, the first of two, we're going to be painting a picture of her fractured life before she became Queen and looking at the trauma and the stresses of her childhood that might have left her with a bit of an axe to grind. See what I did there? An axe to grind, a bit of a fire to light. Actually, it's funny, isn't it? Because we talk about, and you know, we're not psychologists, but Mary is one of those people, and Elizabeth actually, I suppose, that draw such a kind of psychological insight. Now, we're not going to be able to offer that because as I say, we're not psychologists, but we're going to put the building blocks of history in place and try and see if we

can get a bit of a better insight into the history of this person as opposed to the legend. But to begin with, I suppose it I suppose we need to acknowledge the legend. So Maddie, what are the stereotypes? Forget about your historian training, forget about all of that now. What are the stereotypes that you think you know about Bloody Mary? Well, we think of her as a pretty brutal, I suppose tyrant really. She is responsible for the burning of Protestants. So really, we could call her something of a religious fanatic. She is someone who forced Catholicism

onto Protestant England, Protestant, of course, after the break from Rome under Henry VIII, Mary's father. And what I find interesting is that I don't really have a fixed identity for her, even her name, for example. Call her Bloody Mary, sometimes she's known as Mary Tudor. We don't often refer to her as Mary the First, which I think is pretty fascinating. I suppose she is depicted as something of a monster. Lots of contradictions at once. She's sort of over emotional, hysterical, things that are often attached to women in the past, being sort of unstable and unmonarch-like. But then also she is described as being cold, being distant, being unfeminine in terms of her physical person, in terms of her beliefs, in terms of her behaviours. She is, I would say overall characterised as quite ugly in

all meanings of the word. Yeah, it's so interesting, isn't it? It's one of the things that strikes me first when I think about the mythology that's grown up around Mary is this kind of almost grotesque depiction of her, which is very odd. And as we will see at odds with really who she is. But of course, this grotesqueness, I think, is coming to encapsulate some of the history that's been imposed on her as well as some of the history that she probably is linked with. But whether or not that history is fair, we will discover. So I said there in the opening, Maddie, I was like the Bloody Mary three times thing. What do you know about that?

Yeah, tell me about- Oh, do you want me to tell you? Nothing, okay. Yeah, yeah. Please tell me, because I genuinely, I know nothing about this. I have never heard of this. Okay. I mean, I've heard, you know, sort of urban legends, I would consider it to be quite a modern thing of like looking in the mirror and saying like the Candyman or something, right? Is that a horror film or something? Does that does this go back this far? Does this have historical precedent?

You're kind of right. It is it's a looking in the mirror thing. It's evoking Bloody Mary three times. And if you do you're supposed if the conditions are all right, I think you need to be in the dark and there might need to be a candle somewhere nearby as well. It's kind of evoking. You're saying this like this is scientifically possible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the legend, this is what it's supposed to be. Anyway, and look, she or a ghost is supposed to appear. It's a way to summon the dead, basically. So it's, I think, probably, I don't know, but I think it probably feeds into the link between Mary and Catholicism and the kind of the ritualistic and already by the kind of 16th 17th century, the superstition that was surrounding the idea of Catholicism. Now, let me just preface, people were not

saying this in the 16th century that it doesn't go back that far. It is relatively modern. I actually see it as American for some reason, but maybe that's me linking it with the Candyman thing. But again, it's all just legend anyway. Yeah, I would have said it was it was American and much later. Tell me some actual history. Yeah, let's talk about some history that we actually have with Mary. And Mary is born in 1516. As you said, she is Henry VIII's first child and therefore is heir. And I suppose that is important. I think it was really nice that you said, you know, she was a person in her own right, of course, not just Henry VIII's daughter, but actually in terms of royal legacy, that's

one of the most important things about her because it places her at the foremost position in the kingdom. And when she's born initially, she has a pretty good relationship with Catherine of Aragon, her mother, and Henry VIII, her father, until of course their marriage is annulled. And then that changes and we're going to come in and we're going to talk about all of that in a bit more detail. But Mary particularly was close to her mother and this lasts all throughout her life. And she very much identified with her mother's Spanishness and her Catholicism.

So this was quite formative for Mary. Yeah. I'm really interested to hear more about this. I think this is a relationship that is often forgotten about when we talk about the Tudors in particular, you know, and we think about the romantic or the sexual relations in this period within this family. But actually, this mother daughter relationship is so important in terms of the resistance against Anne Boleyn, in terms of this religious divide, and the fanaticism that Mary will become known for. Let's stay in her charter for a moment, because this is something that always fascinates me with the little that I know about Mary is,

of course, her sister Elizabeth is going to be the monarch that we remember. The long serving monarch, the one who shapes Britain in all these important ways. And Mary is going to have this, she is going to become Queen before Elizabeth, but in this very short limited burst. But from her childhood perspective, she is the heir to the throne and she is brought up as an heir, isn't she? Yeah, she is. And I think that's so interesting what you're saying about that kind of mother-daughter relationship because we so link Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth I, but we don't have that same link between Catherine of Aragon and who goes on to be Mary I. And actually that link in

some ways is far stronger and far more blatant as Mary's life progresses and then into her reign. And the reason for this is because Mary is so well educated and her education is overseen by her mother Catherine. And she's given this humanist education, which is very typical of a male heir. So remember I said earlier, like the Henry VIII daughter thing is not the only defining feature of Mary's life, but it's really important because it means as heir, as she is at this moment in time, she is given this heir's education. In 1525 then she's sent to Ludlow Castle, which is again a traditional training ground for the male heirs. And she's called the Princess of Wales publicly and she's given a household, she has titles. So this is something that they're setting up for her,

that she experiences what it's like to be the heir in the kingdoms at this time. . Tell me about the first time she gets betrothed, because this is still within her childhood. And, you know, we often think about in the past, people getting engaged and sometimes even married at what seemed to us ridiculously young ages. But this is probably not untypical, but she's extremely young when this first betrothal is proposed, isn't she? She is. And as you say, we might find this odd because she's betrothed at two to Francois the Dauphin, and he's only a few months old. This is definitely something that happened in royal marriages at the time. But I do want to say this, by the way, they didn't end up getting married. I just want to point out that they

were betrothed. But it says an awful lot about Mary's status once more that she was betrothed to the French heir. Like that is huge. There is no bigger kingdom alongside England. So, you know, it really says something about her status. Sarah- Her status as yes, as a potential heir, but also her status as a bargaining chip. She is a piece we moved across the chessboard, even at two years old. She is something to be bartered with really. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, we see this bartering continuing then because in 1522, she is actually enters into discussions to marry her cousin Charles V, who goes on to

be the Holy Roman Emperor. And this was to form an Anglo-Spanish alliance as opposed to an Anglo-Franco alliance. But either way, we're looking at, you know, they're using her as this pawn, very much like you're saying. Just thinking about her sort of early psychology, and again, we are not psychologists, but she is being brought up from the earliest age to think that she's going to potentially be a monarch herself, but also that she is going to marry the Dauphin of France. And then in 1522, as you say, these discussions shift and now they're talking about her marrying someone else. What does that do to your sense of self, your sense of futurity? What is going to happen to

in your life? Everyone has made decisions for you at every step along the way, what you've learned, what you've dressed, who you've met, how you speak, how you move, how many people are in a room with you, where you go, everything is controlled. And then the boundaries, the goals of that control change, it must be very, I mean, it's probably in this world and this era normal, but I wonder what that does to you on a psychological level. Do you know what, I'll push that question even further and go, what happens then when it's all taken away? It's one thing to be this powerful bargaining chip and to be able to get some agency through that potentially in terms of what female agency looked like in the 16th century. But then we have this,

of course, infamous divorce that comes along between Mary's mother, Catherine, and Henry VIII. We're talking about 1527 here, Mary's 11 at this time, so 11 years of age, and she has been, you know, put on the market as one of the most eligible women in Europe at this time. And then suddenly Henry VIII's great matter and his break with Rome starts and kicks in. And fast forward to 1533 then and he actually annuls the marriage to Catherine of Aragon and therefore Mary, after all of this bargaining, is declared illegitimate and she loses that status. That's huge. It's world shifting, isn't it? And I think also, it's not just her status, it's the status of her mother that's changed so dramatically from being the Queen of England to being a

burden on people, you know, replaced by Anne Boleyn. And, you know, we know that Mary is so close to her growing up that Catherine oversees her education and her training essentially to be a queen. And now Mary has to watch not only she disgraced and pushed the margins, but her mother is as well. And that is a huge thing for her, isn't it, going forward. And she will carry that throughout the rest of her life, that positioning of her mother, of Catherine of Aragon, Mary carries that with her and some of the rhythms of her reign are dictated by that.

And it's really, okay, so we have that kind of macro history, then let's pull it back and look at a micro side of this for a second. She's not even allowed to see her mother Catherine on her deathbed when Catherine is dying in 1536 and her title is downgraded from the Princess Mary to Lady Mary and the household is reduced. So this is world shattering and this is how could you not bring this with you into adulthood? Because you know, these are forms of teenage years. I know teenagehood is different in the 16th century than it is for us now. Nonetheless, we know this is formative for Mary because of what happens in the rest of her reign.

I wonder as well if the separation of Mary and her mother is a way to dilute their power, because together they are these figures around which the Catholics in the country might rally, those who are still loyal to Catherine of Aragon. I mean, it's an incredibly savvy move on Henry's part, isn't it, to separate mother and daughter and to isolate Mary from the woman who has influenced her so much. I mean, even to the point where she can't write to her and she doesn't get to see her when she's dying, it's on a family intimate level, it's really, really brutal. But on a political level, it's incredibly savvy.

I think that's a really astute way to sum up Henry VIII, right? He can be both things at once. There's this kind of Machiavellian statesmanship going on, which sometimes not always, but sometimes you have to go, oh, that's a good idea if you were in his position. And then at the same time to have this kind of brutality against his own flesh and blood, of course, because remember, this is his own child. To some extent, you can see where he might be coming from with Catherine, although Catherine is my favourite of the six wives. But now she's his enemy. Mary is still his daughter, but he's still willing to inflict this kind of trauma on her too. Catherine's the favourite of your six, of the six of us really?

Yeah, Catherine's my favorite. She is. Why? I like her because of her steadfastness and I like her because of her own knowledge and surety and confidence of her place in the world. She's like, you may take this from me. You may think you can take this from me, but it's actually impossible. You can't take this from me.

This is godly ordained. And it's really interesting, isn't it? Because we talk about kind of Henry VIII and Protestantism, but of course that's a misnomer at this point in time. Henry VIII is not a Protestant. He just is the head of the Catholic, let's call it, church in England in many ways. So it's her going, actually no, Rome is my spiritual home and God has appointed me to this position. And I am sure of that and you cannot take it from me. And I really

admire that about her, I think. I can see what you mean. I don't know if I have a favourite. I always feel really sorry for Anne of Cleves, although she's not exciting enough to be my favourite. I'm always interested in Jane Seymour and what kind of Queen she would have gone on to be. I think she's interesting. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. She is interesting. And possibly the relationship, well, no, I was going to say possibly the relationship between her and Mary might have been a bit better than it was between Anne Boleyn and Mary, but no, it wouldn't because Jane Seymour,

you really are heading towards Protestantism then and that wouldn't have fit well with Mary's worldview. But Eustace Chapuys, talking about that idea of Mary and Catholicism dictating who she sees herself as, Chapuys is an ambassador and he sees Mary that she would rather be a Catholic martyr than even acknowledge Anne Boleyn. So this is something she is probably willing to die for, although it never comes to that. Yeah. And I think we maybe think about her fanaticism coming in later on as this kind of response to her mother's death and the reign of Anne Boleyn. And then it's a sort

of reaction to that. But actually it must already be so instilled in her that at this stage she can say that she would rather be martyred. That's not come out of nowhere, that's very much ingrained from her childhood, from her earliest experiences, I suppose. Okay, so her mum dies, Mary's still isolated. How does Henry and those around him as well treat Mary going forward? Because she's no longer the heir. You say she's downgraded from being a princess to being Lady Mary. Her household has been reduced. I mean, she's a problem to be solved, isn't she? She won't acknowledge the new Queen. What is there to do?

IAN She's probably a problem to be hidden, actually, more than anything else. I don't know how interested people are in solving her position because what they try to do is hide her basically and subsume her within this new order that now includes Anne Boleyn. So Mary's entire household is replaced with those that were loyal to her and her mother, a Catholic household, to those who were loyal to Anne Boleyn. Can you imagine the kind of psychological impact that that's going to have where you're surrounded by enemies? you can't go anywhere as you see them enemies. She is essentially under, you know, it's not official, but it's a house arrest of sorts. She's moved when Henry says she needs to be moved. Any contact she's having with people

in case there's some kind of a talk of revolt or rebellion, that's all looked at and everything is micromanaged from Henry and his minions. Yeah. And of course, her life being micromanaged, that's nothing new in and of itself. She's used to people having this control over her life. But previously, it's been to lift her up, to put her into a position where she will be able to take the throne if called upon. And she is the eldest child of Henry VIII, so why would she not be until

Anne comes along? This is a completely different scenario even though in some ways on the ground it probably looks quite similar to most of the life that she has lived. She's in prison essentially, it is house arrest as you say. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows where Samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by HistoryHit. There are new episodes every week. You know, later in Mary's life, and when she's, when we saw her dying at the, in the opening

narrative there, we know one of the things that I always know, and I remember this, I think from the film from, you know, the Cate Blanchard film where her sister is depicted dying in the beginning. And it's like their stomach problems, right? But Mary's health issues have been there throughout these teenage years too. And some of them included irregular menstruation, stomach issues, and general ill health and headaches. Now, a lot of that, again, you know, you don't want to impose too many things in the past, but you also can't help being a little bit of a detective and putting all these pieces

together. A lot of that sounds like bloody stress to me and how this poor girl, of course she's having stomach aches, of course she's having headaches, of course this is physically manifesting in how she is interacting with the world. Like, how could it not? So to me, all of these changes and impacts that Henry and Anne's relationship is having on Mary's life is manifesting itself in her health issues, I think. Yeah, and I suppose also, there's something in there about the health of the potential future monarch and that she is no longer that and that she's seen as weakened in some way, you know, that her body is not that healthy and that she is not suitable to take over the throne,

not just politically anymore, but in terms of her physical health. At a time when women's physical health and particularly their reproductive health was absolutely paramount to their status in society. I mean, look at Anne and the miscarriages that she suffers and the pressure on her to produce specifically a male heir. I feel at this point that I want a little bit of nuance, please, around this divide between Catholicism and Protestantism in England at this time. Because as you said, Henry is not necessarily a Protestant for his whole entire life. He is after the break of Rome, the head of the church in England, but he does die a Catholic. So it's not simply 50% of one and 50% of the other, is it? There's more complication going on here. So can you

explain a little bit? I mean, it's a huge question, sorry. No, I suppose in many ways to simplify it and boil it down, Mary's faith probably had more at the end of her life, Mary the first's faith probably had more in line with Henry the eighth than Elizabeth the first's faith did, if that makes sense. Because Henry dies a Catholic. That's not debated. What he's really rejecting is not the Catholic faith. He's rejecting papal authority in England. And we know the reason he's rejecting papal authority, it's just to suit himself basically. And there are reformist ideas that are being very widely spread throughout England at this time. Anne Boleyn is one of those

people that are talking about Tyndale's banned books on reform. She has a copy of his book, doesn't she? Yeah. Famously. And talking about this kind of personal relationship with God, which goes on to inform Protestantism, of course. But what we have on that reformer side of things is this idea that Catholicism is corrupt and there is too much wealth. There's too many indulgences. It's too powerful.

The Catholic church has become too powerful in their eyes and they want to reform it. Mary, on the other hand, as opposed to what Anne Boleyn might be thinking, Mary is a very devout traditional Roman Catholic. She believes in the focus on the mass, the importance of transubstantiation. She is devout. She believes in the sacraments. And of course, crucially, and this is probably one of the main differences between herself and her father, she believes in papal authority. And it suits her too because the Pope at the time is very much in favour of Mary's position and Catherine's position, obviously, as we know in terms of Henry trying to get this divorce underway. I think as well, it's important to maybe circle back to this relationship with her mother. For Mary, I think

it's fair to say that her Catholicism and her devotion, her loyalty to Catherine, both alive and dead, is such that the two become almost interlinked. They're not separate issues for her. Her devotion to the Catholic Church in Rome, to her faith faith and to her mother are all the same thing. I think it feeds into what is eventually termed, you know, absolute monarchy where you are divinely appointed. You have no say in whether or not you become king, queen, heir, whatever it is, member of the royal family, because God has put you in that place. And that links to how Mary understands her faith. One thing I will say is there is this perception, right? And I can understand it, that during these teenage

years, this is when Mary starts to become kind of radically Catholic, right? I think we need to look at that framing because it smacks to me of a later Protestant 17th century imposition where we never hear that England is becoming radically Protestant whereas actually what's happening is, you know, monasteries are being looted and books are being torn up and this is also quite radically reformist. So there is this idea that Mary's Catholicism is radical only because of the context of what comes after her as opposed to at the time where she potentially would have seen it as just holding the line, you know, she wouldn't necessarily have seen herself as a radical Catholic.

It's interesting that you say that's probably a sort of 17th century imposition, because I would say the 17th century is full of radical Protestantism in all its different forms, right? But yes, if that is the case and it's a retrospective reassessment of her that it would absolutely make sense that the 17th century and later centuries would see Mary's Catholicism as fanatical maybe rather than radical. I think that's definitely fair to say. How much danger is she in though? Because she continues to attend and hold Latin masses. So not only is she practicing her religion out loud in public, but she is also doing things like she refuses to sign a document that is relating to her reduced status in 1536. She's under

incredible pressure for several years to do this and she holds out a bit like her mother actually and you talked about that sort of determination in Catherine. You can see that in Mary. But also she refuses to say the oath of supremacy in 1534. This is the oath that acknowledges that Henry is the supreme head of the Church of England and that his marriage therefore to Anne is legitimate. Of course, that would also mean acknowledging the illegitimacy of the marriage to Catherine and Mary's own illegitimacy therefore, and also the legitimacy in her place of the newly born Princess Elizabeth in the line of succession. So surely this is a problem. I mean, she's looking down the barrel of not a gun, but,

you know, the execution is acts surely at this stage. Well, you say that this is a problem that's more than a problem of treason. That is what Mary is undertaking. Let's be really clear about it. And for that, she should in many ways have been executed. Other people were executed for the exact same thing. So Thomas More, who becomes a saint, John Fisher, who is a bishop, they are both executed for not swearing the oath of supremacy. And that's what Mary is refusing to do. But they're not going to do that to Mary because,

and it's interesting because it says something about they can take away all these titles and they can take away all of the kind of pomp and circumstance around her and take away Princess's title and all of those kinds of things. But they still want her to sign the document to say, oh, by the way, I acknowledge all of this. They still want her to take the oath of supremacy in 1534, which she refuses to do. She refused to, as you say, sign that document as well. So it's like they need her to step away, that it can't just happen regardless of what they say, because they're not going to execute this woman. They're just not. She is related to the Holy

Roman Emperor Charles V. He's putting pressure on Henry VIII to leave her as she is. And the consequences of any potential execution could be too high. Can you imagine this is royal blood? We talk about different understandings and different insights into how people understand royalty at this time, as opposed to how we understand royalty now. And we've talked about Amberlynn before and be heading there, but this is royal blood. This is the king's blood flowing in her veins. So what might that insight in a nation that rests on monarchical authority, it's too dangerous for them to do this. So realistically, they can't kill her. Henry VIII cannot put his own daughter to death. It would be

catastrophic and she has the backing of the Roman Catholic Church behind her. So what happens next? Because this cannot continue. This scenario cannot continue for much longer. She cannot continue to defy her father and he cannot be threatening to make her into a martyr every five seconds. So what's going to go on? Yeah, that's a good point actually that she has power in her martyrdom, right? So he can't allow that to go on either. It's so true. The turning point comes with the fall of Anne Boleyn. And it isn't until this point that Mary feels like she can acquiesce slightly. Or actually quite radically, I suppose, because what she does is she then is willing to take on parts of the oath of supremacy where she says, okay,

I acknowledge that Elizabeth comes before me in the line of inheritance. So it does go to show how much of a sticking point Anne Boleyn specifically was for Catherine and therefore for the future Mary the first. I mean, you can see why. Of course, of course. But as soon as she's out of the picture, then Mary is willing to acquiesce slightly, which is really interesting, I think. Yeah, it is. And it comes back again to that, the kind of balance between political dynamics and then family dynamics, right? That maybe this is, I mean, it's very clearly a political act on Mary's part to finally acquiesce to her father, but also there's obviously a personal block there,

isn't there, with Anne that cannot be overcome until she's executed herself. So, I mean, this is a remarkable turning point. Let's just really emphasize that Mary at this point has stood her ground for so many years. She has resisted being degraded and marginalized by her father. I mean, she has been those things, he has done that to her, but she has held on where possible to what she sees as her dignity, the status that she's entitled to. And now she is making an interesting chess move. Now Anne is out of the picture. And of course, in doing this, she is acknowledging not only that Henry is the rightful and supreme head of the church, which is against her own faith. But also she's acknowledging that Elizabeth, her little sister, is ahead of her in the

line of succession. I mean, this is a huge turnabout really. I was just thinking as you were talking there when you said chess move, okay, let me talk to you about some of the things she's living with when she makes this submission. And then I want to talk about something that you just kind of sparked in my mind that the first thing was she, so she enters Elizabeth's household. Now you will hear from different sources that she was a servant in Elizabeth's household. That's not actually true, but she did have a demoted status below Elizabeth and she was

answerable to the household staff, but that doesn't necessarily mean she was put to task. It just means she had to be there doing certain things at certain times as they dictated. This was Elizabeth's time that she was on. It wasn't her own time. So, you know, Yeah, she's not emptying the bedchambers. This is very sort of ceremonial and performative levels of hierarchy. But it is intended to put her in a child's house because bear in mind Elizabeth is a child at this time and it is intended to humiliate Mary. But one of the things I think is so interesting about this is

when women in the 16th century are put in these positions, we see it as acquiescing, we see it as a submission, we see it as, and it almost baffles us. But actually what's far more in line potentially is that this is a strategic move. Now this is just my interpretation, but you know what? I'm going to interpret it like this. That this could be a strategic move on Mary's behalf where she sees everything in the kingdom is moving at such a rapid pace and with such, you know, transformative power that she goes, right, hold on, let me bring myself back into the fold. Let me ingratiate myself a little bit further with my father. Now that I'm Belin's out of the way, Elizabeth is probably quite vulnerable actually, because who's going to be standing up for her ultimately. She doesn't

have her mother like I do, I.e. Mary, to kind of fight her corner. Not that Catherine is that powerful now. But you could argue that this is strategic on Mary's behalf, that she's bringing herself back into a fold she's been excluded from and she's positioning herself closer to power, even though there's elements of humiliation here, but she's positioning herself closer to power than she has been in the previous kind of decade. So I don't know, maybe let's not underestimate some of the strategy that Mary might be thinking at this point. Yeah, it's sort of, you know, better the devil you know, isn't it? She's willing to put herself

close to the, I was going to say close to the fire. That's probably not the best expression to use when we're talking about Mary. Episode two, guys. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where Samurai Warlords and Shinobi Spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History,

a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by HistoryHit. There are new episodes every week. Talk to me then about the burgeoning relationship between Mary and her little sister Elizabeth, who, as we've said, you know, there's a, I think, a 17 year age gap between them. I was going to say at this point, mathematically that doesn't change. It increases later. There's a 17 year age gap between them. They're now living in the same household. Both their mothers are gone. They are both the daughters of a difficult man, shall we say. They have a lot in common, but they also have a lot that divides them, let's be clear.

Well, the common ground is about to increase because, as I said, there is this thing that things change very fast in Tudor England and Mary makes that strategic move in 1536. By 1537 there is a new prince on the scene because Mary and Elizabeth have a new brother and that of course is Edward the future, Edward the sixth. And this now means that Edward supersedes both Elizabeth and Mary. So in a way she was right to go, anything can happen here. And that puts them in a very similar category where now Edwards, the main focus, he's getting all that air attention and he is going to eventually secure a Protestant succession. Of course, that has more of an impact for

Mary because there goes all of her Catholic hopes for Elizabeth. That's not possibly so detrimental. Also, Elizabeth is a child at this point. So, you know, she's probably not thinking in terms of what her reign might look like now because it's going to be her brother's reign. Whereas Mary has had decades now of being, well, a couple of decades of being able to think about what her reign might look like and whether or not she was going to inherit. However, with the arrival of a boy, she will know that this is a real dash of hopes that, you know, Elizabeth was one thing, but Edward is a totally different game. Yeah, I wonder what the mood was like in that household with Elizabeth and Mary when they found out that Edward had been born and that it was a boy. Because, as you say, Mary's been brought up

with a very specific idea of how she is going to be queen, how she would rule, what her faith would mean in terms of her monarchical reign. And then you have Elizabeth who is still very young, of course, but you know, for the earliest years she's been raised and is being raised in a reformist household, initially under Anne and then under Anne's surviving allies, and both of these are completely oppositional in terms of how they would deal with taking the throne. They're being groomed and bred to be very different queens. And then you have Edward, who comes on the scene and everything's changed. And I wonder if part of Mary felt relief in that moment,

when she heard the news. I know why you're saying that, like on a human side, right? I think I might. I must be like, oh, God, okay, I don't need to deal with any of this now. You can sit down finally. I doubt that was what she thought. Given the conviction of her beliefs and her determination, I'm sure she was absolutely fuming. But yeah, for me, I'd be like, oh. Yeah. Because I mean, in terms of Jane Seymour, the third wife, she's not legitimate in Mary's eyes either, technically, or even if she's willing to say she is for now. If Anne Boleyn wasn't

legitimate, then Jane's not legitimate. If it was a strategic move on Mary's behalf to acquiesce or to be seen to acquiesce in 1536, by 1543, she is restored in the succession act. So she comes after Edward. She's now second in line to the throne. And of course, it's not so dangerous now because we have a male heir. And this is seen as the kind of most secure point for Henry to be able to die in good conscience that he has provided the nation with a male heir. But Mary is now number two. And you know, she becomes more visible. She becomes more guaranteed of safety because of this. No real power, obviously, but she still has this. Her position is somewhat restored, I think.

I'm amazed that she's now second in line and not third behind Elizabeth. Why is she second now? Well they just revert to birth order because Anne is now a problem because we know what Anne Boleyn I mean. So we know what has happened there. So we can't have Elizabeth superseding her. Elizabeth has to come third now. So Elizabeth is pushed so further down the line. This is why I'm not a Tudor historian, because the whiplash, everyone, the whiplash. I can't deal with the ups and the downs. It's too much. I think this is exactly why we should think of Mary as being more strategic, because I

think she's acknowledging that whiplash and she's going, she rides the waves. I'll say whatever I want. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to say whatever you want me to say. I'm going to hold on. I'm going to just stay here and hold my ground, but let all this happen. And she learned that from her mother. All this though, is mute. It's really irrelevant because the king is still on the throne. So there's been all these machinations going on behind the scenes, these ups and downs, the whiplash of you're first in line, no, you're first in line, blah, blah, blah. Henry is still on the throne. He is still ruling.

This is all academic until his death. So he dies? Then what? He definitely dies. I can confirm. Edward inherits as the plan is. And Edward is a child at this point. I think he's nine, right? I think he's nine at this point. And so it's not a case that he's necessarily ruling. So that's going to be shaping the kingdom. This is where the Seymour faction come in. And this is, this is when England starts to become a Protestant nation. So we have Edward on the throne and we're going to explore in the next episode what happens next. But Maddie, before we finish up for today on

this episode, you talked earlier about Mary having an axe to grind, a figurative axe to grind. So just let's go back over that landscape. What are the forms of things that you have kind of picked up on in this episode that might lead to that axe grinding in episode two? The lighting of the bonfires, yeah. I mean, I didn't know that much about her childhood. I knew about the isolation and imprisonment of Catherine, her mother, but it's been really interesting to see how she replicated that in her own behaviour, her own life, largely due to circumstances outside of her control, but actually she rose to meet those challenges and she had, I think

it's fair to say, a pretty iron, steadfast will actually. I think she's more strategic – you've convinced me – that she was more strategic than I'd previously thought her. I always imagined her to be somewhat reactionary, that things would happen to her, she would be sent to places, she would be kept away from her mother for example, or she would be sent to a certain location or have spies living with her who are, as you say, connected maybe to Ambelin at certain points. And I always imagined that she just waited it out. But actually you've painted the portrait of someone who is far more involved and far more strategic in terms of the Tudor court, in terms of how that world works and the political machinery, I suppose, of this era. She understands it, she's engaged with it, she knows how to play it,

but also she is not afraid of taking risks. She plays it pretty close to the bone, not afraid of taking risks. She plays it pretty close to the bone. Having the mass openly, never fully giving up her religion, certainly until Anne is gone and acknowledging that Henry is the head of the church, she's a fearsome person. I suppose my concern for episode two and knowing something of what's coming up is that that fearsomeness, that ferocity is going to turn into extreme fanaticism and violence. Well we shall discover and we shall have that conversation in episode two. We are at a point now where Mary has had all of that difficulty that you just recounted. She is not forgotten. She has taken note of everybody who slighted her on the way and

what reformist factions they belonged to. Oh, my God. She's Taylor Swift. She's the Taylor Swift of the Tudor period. Look what you made me do. She strikes a match. Oh, my God. Somebody needs to make that. Come back to us for episode

two. There's a lot more, as you can imagine, to discuss about Mary the first. She does become Queen spoiler. And it's during that reign that her legacy, for better or worse, is secured. So join us on After Dark for the next episode of Mary I to hear more about that. you