The Spanish Princess Review: Peace (Season 2 Episode 8)

It’s hard to watch The Spanish Princess Season 2 Episode 8, “Peace,” and not wish this show could go on a bit longer. 

The end of Catherine of Aragon’s story is full of so much heartbreak and sadness, it would have always been impossible to wrap it up in an hour, or even perhaps another entire season.

But showrunners Emma Frost and Matthew Graham do their best to allow the story to take its natural course, while still allowing their Spanish queen to hang on to her dignity and strength in the end.

There is something powerful in the final images that surround this Catherine, who at last dresses in the dowdy black gown and heavy gabled hood we’ve come to historically associate her. Who strikes out into her isolation on her own terms, who claims her daughter for herself and England’s future. 

Who gets the last word with the husband that so wronged her. 

True, the story bends the facts of history a bit to get there. And even giving Catherine a few moments of peace at the end of this story can’t erase the truth of what still waits for her. The unhappiness, the loss of her daughter, those last days alone. 

But this final sequence at least allows the show to present Catherine as a person who chooses her fate, and who faces down her ensuing troubles with grace and strength. 

“He who endures to the end shall be saved” is a Bible quote from the book of Matthew, but it is also a mantra that suits Catherine of Aragon down to the ground. And that, truly, is the end of her story — she endures.

She clings to her truths — her God, her daughter, her belief in the fact that to rule England was the destiny of her life — and does not let go of them, even when it would have been better for her. She hangs on, even and especially perhaps, when most would not.

The idea that Catherine got to voluntarily choose a life with her daughter is perhaps the ending we all wished for her, but it is certainly not even close to what happened.

In fact, Henry infamously and cruelly kept Mary from her mother for years and used the promise of seeing her again to try and convince Catherine to enter a convent or otherwise give up her marriage and crown. Mary herself eventually had to fight her way to her mother’s throne. (Though she does get there, in the end.)

The real Catherine faced multiple confrontations, public questioning, and even a full-on court trial at Blackfriars at which she appeared to give a statement. And through it all, Catherine insisted, without wavering, that she was a maid when she was wed, and all of Henry’s accusations were baseless.

This is, of course, why it’s so strange that The Spanish Princess chooses to have Catherine confess her years-long deception to Henry.

The real Catherine of Aragon went to her grave insisting that she was Henry’s true wife and Queen of England, and would have never done anything that might jeopardize her position, even if — as the show itself hints — on some level Henry himself was aware of the lie. 

That he wanted Catherine enough to overlook his suspicions, or even full knowledge, about her sexual relationship with Arthur is certainly an early sign that Henry has always been the sort of man willing to claim any truth that dovetails with his own desires. 

But she herself would have died before giving her husband any pretext to declare Mary illegitimate, which is almost certainly what he would have done if anything like their hunting confessional really happened. (Not to mention, had Henry been able to simply claim his wife had confessed it would have saved years of public turmoil over the so-called King’s Great Matter as he sought to extricate himself from the marriage.)

Henry’s rapid mental deterioration makes for great television, even if it does come a few years too early to be entirely accurate.  Yet the degree of Catherine’s suffering is so finely wrought here, how could The Spanish Princess present her husband as anything other than a monster, even if his worst acts are still far in his future?

The Henry who beheads women, who starves the poor by bankrupting the monasteries that feed them, and who imprisons all who oppose him finds his seeds here in this man, whose petty cruelties are both many and varied and whose sense of his own righteousness is already unshakeable.

And maybe given Catherine an ending where she is allowed to escape from that, on her own terms, even for a moment — that’s the happiest ending we could have hoped for her in this story. Even if it cannot, will not last — for a little while, at least, there is peace. And an English princess who also will come to her throne in the face of long odds, as her mother before her did.

Stray Thoughts and Observations

• There is no way that that parakeet would still be alive, and no one is going to convince me otherwise.
• The creepy parallels between Henry and Meg reach their zenith in this installment, as the Scots queen begins arresting and jailing those who attempt to stand against her, insisting that she can do as she wishes as monarch. It is true that Meg’s real story was every inch as dramatic as the one presented here, possibly more so. But she wasn’t crazy, and she wasn’t a tyrant, and though I can see how The Spanish Princess might have wanted to give us to see a woman triumphing to balance out Catherine’s fall, this….does not feel like the way to me. It leaves Meg as every inch the monster her brother is
• The revelation that it is Maggie Pole who sold out Catherine for her own comfort and advancement is…well, it’s perhaps the worst moment in the series to date. An emotional betrayal that sets two of the series’ women against each other in a way that they never have been before,  it is also something that almost assuredly would never have happened. The Countess of Salisbury was Mary’s governess for over a decade, even offering to serve the princess at her own cost when Henry declared her a bastard and broke up her household in 1533. 
• Hello, Anne Boleyn! I’m not sure the series ever names the dark-haired girl that captures Henry’s favor directly, but her infamous “B” necklace is certainly a giveaway. As is the clunky attempt to illustrate her “thus far but no further” temptation of the king, as she lures Henry on by frolicking naked in the palace courtyard, but won’t sleep with him. (Ostensibly until she is queen.)
• I truly would have loved to see what Frost and Graham would have made of the Lady Anne. 
• I understand why the show didn’t have more time to dedicate to the story of Lina and Oviedo this season, and the fact that it touches on how difficult life was for immigrants and people of color at this point in history is something to be applauded. But much of Lina’s storyline feels more like it was simply her trying to find reasons not to return to Spain than any real arc for her or her family.

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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