"Bloody Mary" Mary I of England

Bloody Mary is a cocktail usually consisting of vodka and tomato juice. Some people know her from the folklore involving ghostly apparitions. You can either picture her spicy cocktail or know about Bloody Mary from saying her name three times and seeing an image related to your future. Whether it be a spouse or a death, Bloody Mary represents challenges that we all face.

Mary has long been perceived as a feared figure and there’s a reason history granted her the title of “Bloody Mary.”

Thought to be among the topmost evil queens in history, she spent her short, five-year reign developing a fearsome reputation for burning many protestants at the stake in her attempt to reverse the English Reformation.

She’d arrange executions by fire while forcing many to watch their peers burn. The unwilling spectators would then suffer the same fate afterwards. To say she was harsh is an understatement.

She threw all of England into terror and chaos without showing any mercy. When we say, “no mercy,” we’re not kidding.

She would even have pregnant women burned if she viewed them as heretics. All in the name of her religious fanaticism.

Still, if you know of her background and origin story, you might start to question whether. Mary was indeed a villain or if she was actually a victim of unfortunate circumstances.

After learning about her story, you can decide for yourself what you think to be the case. Before she was the crazed queen, she was just a little girl. Born in 1516, Mary Tudor was the only surviving child of King Henry VIII and Queen Catherine.

She was a little princess beloved by her mother, her father and by the people of England. There was just one problem: she was a girl. Realizing there may be no other children, mainly no sons to inherit the throne, Mary’s mother, Catherine, groomed her at an early age for a promising future as the queen of England to be. Catherine taught her Latin, thought at the time to be a man’s language, so that Mary could someday fulfill the most masculine of roles, that of a sovereign.

Though Henry was proud of this daughter, her accomplishments wouldn’t be enough for him later and he’d still want a son.

Being the daughter of the king of England and the Spanish princess, Mary was also considered a hot commodity for marriage. Her hand was often promised to sons of various rulers for sake of alliances and political gain. None of these betrothals fell through though.

When she turned 11, only a year under the minimum legal age for marriage, her future betrothal was more seriously considered. Before she could embark into a successful marriage, however, something happened that would forever change her life.

That is, her father fell madly in love with the woman, Anne Boleyn, and wanted a divorce with her mother. This was probably the biggest, most defining event for Mary due to the numerous repercussions that followed.

It was from this moment on that Mary would never again experience a day of happiness. This was also obviously degrading for Mary’s status, position and pride, as she’d now lost the affections of her father. To make matters worse, she was no longer permitted to see her mother either.

The year of 1536 provided two major life events, turning points in her future direction. First, Mary’s mother died, which struck her with further, painful grief. She was depressed beyond consolation and no longer believed there was a life for her in England. She wanted desperately to leave for her mother’s home country of Spain. But then, something else changed. Anne Boleyn was ordered by Henry to be executed for allegations presumably staged against her.

Mary was extremely pleased with Anne’s death. She had absolutely despised her for destroying her life. It also gave Mary a new sense of hope for her future.

The now 38-year-old Mary was not exactly perceived as attractive. Far from it actually, as the charms of her face had faded from years of intense mental pain and suffering. One Spaniard reportedly remarked, “the Queen is not pretty, not at all, is low, fragile structure instead of fat, with very white hair and blond, has no eyebrows, is holy, she dresses very badly.” She was also getting older and her child-bearing years were quickly slipping away. Though it is a harsh sentiment, Phillip very likely only married Mary for political gain, not for love. This is made all the more sad when you consider that she had also gone through a period of feeling unloved by her father.

It seemed she could not catch a break. Life had not been good to her and her misfortunes would only continue. Soon after her marriage, it seemed as though her luck had changed when she’d stopped menstruating, felt nauseated in the mornings and gained weight. Her royal physicians suspected she could be pregnant. People rejoiced, bells rang and there were celebrations held on the streets. Though she grew a belly, however, there was no baby.

It is possible that she had a tumor though many assert she was experiencing a phantom pregnancy, a conditional phenomenon thought to occur when a woman wants a child badly enough and winds up deluding herself into believing she’s pregnant while then displaying the classic bodily symptoms of pregnancy.

At the time, there was no way to distinguish a false pregnancy from a real one, so the only way to find out for sure was to simply wait until a baby was born. A birth chamber had been prepared for her and a nursery contained a beautifully carved cradle. Many women were hired on standby to help care for the baby once it arrived.

Letters announcing the birth had also been written and were ready to be sent. Time passed but still there was no baby. In denial, Mary continued to insist that she could feel the child move in her womb.

Rumors and speculations were quickly spreading as more time passed. Maybe Mary had lied about being pregnant to give the people hope for an heir.

Maybe, instead of a baby, Mary was carrying a monkey! Eventually, even she had to come to terms with the fact that she was not really pregnant. After going through two false pregnancies, Mary faced the cold, hard reality that she would not have an heir. Her child-bearing years were over. She was enraged with the idea that Elizabeth would succeed the throne after her. She hated Elizabeth as the daughter of Anne Boleyn, the woman who’d started all the misery in Mary’s life. She was also incredibly jealous of Elizabeth because she possessed the two main qualities that Mary did not. That is, Elizabeth was both young and beautiful. After a short, disastrous reign, Mary died in 1558, most likely from ovarian cancer derived from her untreated endometriosis. Her vision for a catholic England crumbled and Elizabeth took the throne. Mary’s husband, Phillip, whom she’d loved so whole-heartedly, wrote that he felt only “a moderate grief for her.” Mary was beguiled even after death because she was not buried next to her mother as per her request.

Instead, she ended up being buried next to Elizabeth. To make matters worse, the grave site of Mary and her hated sister is a monument to Elizabeth, which completely overshadows her.

Mary is commemorated only by a slab of black marble with the infamous name, “Bloody Mary” on it.

In this way, it seems that Mary has pretty much gone down as one of history’s biggest losers. She’d had a tremendously difficult life fraught with grief, pain and misery. On top of everything, she never got her way in the end. Even in death, she pales in comparison to her sister and her jealousy may very well extend into the afterlife.

Was Mary a monster or a victim?