Welcome to a whole spider of a series - Wallis, Duchess of Windsor!

We know her story, or we think we do. In this first episode, we meet Bessie Wallis Warfield, just a tiny girl making her way in the world surrounded by a whole lot of family drama, on both sides. Between her mother Alice and her uncle Sol, it is no wonder Wallis wants to break free to see a different world than the one she knows.

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Alicia is joined by a very special guest this week Alicia King Anderson to break down the story of the original trashy royal couple from mythology, Hera and Zeus. Their story is loaded with tricks, subterfuge and a little revenge too. They take the cake as the trashy couple in mythology, no doubt.

Find more of Alicia K. Anderson, Ph.D. in these links:

Alicia's Patreon

Her upcoming class on "The Dark Feminine for Dark Times"

Fairy Tale Retellings now available for pre-order!

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Free from Henry at long last, and with Thomas Seymour home from his European duties, Catherine quickly, but discretely, found her way back to her old flame. They married in secret, which displeased both the new king, Edward VI, and Princess Mary, Catherine's good friend. Thomas's brother Edward - by then the 1st Duke of Somerset - was more or less running the country for his nephew, then nine or ten years old, and presented a foil to Thomas, and ultimately led to his downfall.

This was a dicey period for Thomas Seymour, because upon his return to England, he fired off a letter to 14-year-old Princess Elizabeth proposing marriage. Catherine must not have known this when, once their marriage was public, she invited both Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey to live in their household, and it is here where Thomas's personality and proclivities take a dark turn. A member of their household would later testify about inappropriate visits he would make to Elizabeth's bed chamber, inappropriate touching, and, as a last straw, a time when Catherine discovered the pair in an embrace. Elizabeth was sent to live in another noble home in May 1548 - which was the last time she would ever see her much beloved stepmother.

Catherine Parr gave birth to a daughter on the 30th of August, 1548, and died on September 5, 1548, of "childbed fever" - a catchall term for any of a number of post-partum infections that were common in the era. Her beloved, but betraying, husband only lived a few months longer. Thomas Seymour was arrested and charged with treason in February 1549, and executed on March 20 of that year.

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Though the twice-widowed Catherine's heart was definitely with Thomas Seymour, Henry VIII had other plans for his future and final wife. He took to spending time at his daughter Princess Mary's court, where Catherine was part of the household, and eventually dispatched Seymour on an important - and open duration - diplomatic mission on the Continent.

It took some wooing, but Catherine finally accepted the King's marriage proposal, and the couple were wed in July 1543 at Hampton Court Palace. Catherine was an exceptional Queen for him. She was deeply engaged in loving relationships with Henry's children, and her influence went a long way to stitching together some sort of family dynamic after the traumas of his exile of Mary's mother and his murder of Elizabeth's.

And she thrived in the role. Catherine is the first woman in England to publish a book in her own name, and stood for the first full-length portrait of an English queen, with a rare and fabulously expensive Turkish rug under her feet, as a king would be presented. She was a reformer at heart who only landed seriously on Henry's bad side once, it seems, but was also enough of a diplomat to smooth things over and, let's be honest, possibly save herself from a bad morning on the Tower Green.

We leave this episode with Henry's death, but that's not the end of Catherine Parr's story.

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As Lady Latimer after her second wedding in 1534, Catherine, her husband, and her step-children found themselves enmeshed in the growing public anger at Henry's moves to impose his new religion, as well as various other political gripes. In 1536 and 1537, a genuine uprising occurred, with Catholic rebels dragging Lord Latimer - a fellow Catholic - from their home to be pressed into service against the King.

Catherine and her step-children were held hostage for months, and Lord Latimer found himself slung up in the Tower of London for some time on suspicion of conspiring with the rebels. The whole episode was enough to leave the family wary of their digs in North Yorkshire and set their sights on olde London town. Finally, Catherine was back in civilization - and at court - and though her much older husband would succumb to ill health in 1543, her adventures in the capitol city were only just beginning.

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The last of Henry VIII's wives, Catherine Parr's story is absolutely fascinating. A daughter of a noble family from the north of England, Catherine was raised by a doting, independent mother who urged her daughters to take a similar approach. Maud Green Parr, Catherine's mother, was a confidant of Queen Catherine of Aragon, and Catherine's younger sister Anne would go on to be a lady in waiting to all six of Henry's wives - including her sister. Catherine was, by all accounts, extremely bright and deeply invested in education, especially languages.

Unlike most of his brides, Catherine Parr had been married prior to their relationship. Twice, in fact, and in each case, the marriages presented Catherine with circumstances that shaped her; into a fully fledged Protestant in the first case, and into a devoted step-mother in the second - a circumstance that would be sorely tested by the religious rivalries shaking Henry's England in the aftermath of his break with Rome. But that's a story for the next episode.

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Even before Henry VIII succumbed to pressure and wedded Anne of Cleves, his attentions had turned to another lady at his court, Katherine Howard. The romance was supported by her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, who had been trying to win back Henry's good graces ever since another one of his nieces, Anne Boleyn, had been dispatched in a Cromwellian conspiracy a few years earlier.

Norfolk was clearly having a run of bad luck though, because it turns out that the teenaged Katherine - Henry was pushing 50 when all this got started - had been poorly used by a music teacher at the boarding home where she had been sent because of her family's deep poverty, and had been intimate with an age-appropriate boyfriend before being sent to Henry's court to serve as a lady-in-waiting.

None of which was known to Henry when he finally wed her on July 28, 1540, the same day that he had Thomas Cromwell executed. The honeymoon was not to last, however, as by the following spring, Katherine was sharing the affections of royal counselor Thomas Culpeper, whose secret assignations with the queen were being facilitated by Jane Boleyn, Katherine's lady-in-waiting and the widow of George Boleyn, who had been executed with Anne.

Everything went disastrously, of course, and Katherine Howard and Jane Boleyn were executed on the Tower Green on February 13, 1542, a few months after Culpeper and her boarding house boyfriend had experienced the same fate at the Guildhall.

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Sources

Jane Boleyn: The Infamous Lady Rochford, by Julia Fox (amazon.com)

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After the death of Jane Seymour in 1537, Henry VIII was once again single and looking to mingle. But he was a man with a bit of reputation by then, and perhaps the daughters of England weren't in a hurry to roll those particular dice. Artist Hans Holbein was dispatched to Europe to paint the portraits of eligible royals and nobles for Henry's consideration. In the Duchy of Cleves (part of modern Germany), Henry found both his next bride and a Protestant ally against increasing pressure from a French-Spanish Catholic alliance.

But it's Henry VIII, so you know the relationship didn't go as was expected. Though Anne of Cleves came to England and was wed to the king, she committed a faux pas in their first bizarre meeting, which hurt Henry's feelings. Henry never recovered, the marriage was annulled after six months, but for whatever reason, the famously vengeful king gave his would-be wife an extremely generous settlement. Anne of Cleves, notably among Henry's wives, was able to live her best single life well into the reign of Queen Mary I.

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On May 19, 1536, Anne Boleyn was executed on the Tower Green at the Tower of London, following months of scheming by Henry VIII's chief minister, Thomas Cromwell. Alicia follows the final, pivotal months of the one-time Queen consort of England, the woman Henry had broken with the Catholic Church to wed, and the mother of the future Elizabeth I, from celebrations of the death of Catherine of Aragon in January to the blade of a hired swordsman from Calais in May.

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Oh my! Our week of All Things Anne Boleyn continues here at Trashy Royals with Alicia bringing you all the details of the very troubled and sticky love triangle of Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon, and Anne Boleyn. There was a time when Catherine and Anne were friends, however Henry was always a monster. This episode covers the period of 1527 to 1531 in this Court of Two Queens, setting up for the conclusion of this arc this weekend, with the story of the murder of Anne Boleyn.

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