The Spanish Princess Review: Grief (Season 2 Episode 3)

The Spanish Princess Season 2 Episode 3, “Grief,” marks the first truly low point in Henry and Catherine’s marriage, and is full of warning signs that as their relationship goes, so goes Henry’s ability as a ruler. (And possibly his moral compass.)

It’s hard not to wonder what might have been — if, somewhere in an alternate history version of the Tudor family saga, one in which Catherine successfully gives birth to the son Henry so desperately wants, blocks the influence of men like Thomas Wolsey, and holds her country together. 

It’s heartbreaking to watch her try to do it here, to see her swallow up her own pain and humiliation in the name of Henry’s happiness, to sit by and stay silent as he belittles her accomplishments and shames her choices. 

Henry Tudor has never deserved this woman, is what I’m saying. Just imagine him trying to put someone else’s feelings above his own, like one single time.  

One of the best things about The Spanish Princess — and truly, the entirety of Starz’s series Tudor period dramas — is that it shows us how capable and amazing the women of this time truly were, oftentimes much more so than the men around them. It’s the kind of recognition they absolutely deserve but rarely get.

One of the worst is that it also shows how very rarely that fact matters. 

Because as “Grief” illustrates, no matter how capable a strategist Catherine is or how fiercely opinionated Mary might be, Henry’s rule is the law. If he decides that England will abandon its alliance with his wife’s home country or that his sister must marry a man almost three times her age against her will, then neither woman is really capable of gainsaying him.

They can, of course, choose to make the best of it and accept their fates with grace, as both eventually are forced to, but whether they do or do not the end result is the same. And isn’t that depressing as heck?

Charlotte Hope continues to turn in an astonishingly powerful and layered performance as Catherine, a woman grappling with the personal pain of a miscarriage in a world that doesn’t even grant queens the space to mourn their loss properly.

Instead, she’s blamed and harangued by the very man who is supposed to love her best, and constantly asked when she’ll do her duty and give the kingdom an heir. 

Her feelings of shame and frustration, as well as the myriad hurts she must publicly bury in the name of being a good woman and a proper wife, are deeply understandable and sympathetic, particularly when the loss of her two sons has — for a time — soured the best thing in her life: Her marriage.

Never before this moment have we watched Catherine and Henry engage in anything that might be called dutiful sex, but here they must make love for the good of the kingdom and it’s a depressing and sad thing. 

True, we see them find their way back to each other by the end of the hour, and things seem as though they might be okay again. (Or, as okay as they can be in a relationship in which Henry has told his wife, to her face, that he wishes she were other than she was and made a “joke” about her first “first time” with his brother.)

In this episode, we see the seeds of the tyrannical Henry whose whims will one day come to terrify his court, as he publicly humiliates his wife, verbally abuses her in front of his friends, and makes foreign policy decisions that are as based on his desire to spite her as they are diplomatic concerns. 

Wolsey remains generally terrible and his insidious influence on Henry continues to make itself felt here. (That offhand comment from Henry that implied Catherine’s miscarriage was due to her attempt to “be a man” at Flodden certainly didn’t  come from his brain, let’s just put it that way.)

Let’s not kid ourselves: Henry Tudor is a man that’s easy to dislike. We know what a monster he’ll become, and we know what he’ll do to this woman we’ve come to care about, and nearly a half dozen women after her. But The Spanish Princess seems clear about the fact that the reason he becomes a monster, is because he doesn’t really know how to be a man. 

Unlike Catherine, whose grief manifests in very human, understandable ways, Henry’s upset turns outward, because he — as Maggie warned the queen so long ago — is a man who has been coddled all his life and is unprepared for anything that might not go his way.

Henry wants a son, therefore he should have a son — because God loves and favors him and always has. The fault that he does not, therefore, must lie in someone else. This time, he blames Catherine, because she is the most convenient scapegoat for his unhappiness. 

It’s her fault he lost his son, that he now can see sex with her as sad and depressing. It will one day be her fault that he doesn’t have one at all, that he cannot marry again, that she will not admit her alleged wrongdoing.

Sadly, it’s only a matter of time — and the road to that sad end starts right here.

Stray Thoughts and Observations

• Truly I could watch The Spanish Princess go on for several more seasons, not only because there is so much rich story to be mined, but because it would ease some of the narrative stress that this overly condensed timeline causes. It’s a bit…odd to watch Wolsey go from merely an influential court chaplain to the Archbishop of York in what feels like twenty minutes, and some of the intricacies of these relationships — Princess Mary and Charles Brandon’s flirtatious goodbye has to do a lot of work here — feel a bit like they’re on fast forward. 
• The deal that Princess Mary makes, about marrying the man of her choice once King Louis dies, is a thing that appears to have actually happened.
• Yes, the dark-haired girl named Anne who is sent to France in the train of the Princess Mary is that Anne, future wife of Henry VIII, Queen of England, and mother of Elizabeth I.
• Catherine’s reluctance to visit Lina –as well as meet her two sons — is so painfully understandable, and the kind of complex portrayal of female friendship that we rarely get to see in stories like this. The queen loves her friend, of course, she does, but she’s also wildly jealous that Lina, who isn’t royal, who doesn’t have her duty hanging over her has everything she herself has been denied.
• Though the idea of poor Maggie Pole and Thomas More finding a sort of romance of the spirit in their later years before both are ultimately martyred by the king is rather kind of poetic, it probably didn’t happen in real life. More did marry his second wife, Alice, almost immediately after his first wife’s death — so quickly that he had to get s special dispensation to do away the with traditional banns that were read beforehand. By most accounts, they appeared to have been quite happy together, and More was considered a dedicated family man. 
• Love that James’ death has not erased Meg from the show, and hope we follow continue to follow her journey as well going forward,

What did you think of this episode of The Spanish Princess? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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The Spanish Princess airs Sundays at 8/7c on Starz.

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Why ‘The Spanish Princess’ Is Exactly the Kind of Period Drama We Need More Of