Do you think Henry VIII cared about or even recognised the physiological effect he was having on his daughters with the way he treated their mothers and other wives?
This is just my opinion, so take it for what that’s worth. I believe the facts support it, but one can never be certain what was going on in the head of another person, especially one five hundred years ago.
I believe Henry was completely aware of the trauma he caused the women in his life and he enjoyed it. He felt they fully deserved it, and so he had no guilt or hesitation in piling on the misery.
He rubbed his mistresses in Katharine of Aragon’s face. He showed off his bastard son at a feast Katharine was giving for some French nobles…. soon after Katharine had lost a child of her own. When Katharine (wisely) pointed out the folly of giving the boy two dukedoms because wealthy royal bastards had attempted to usurp the throne in the past, Henry spitefully punished her by dismissing her favorite ladies from court.
And, of course, we all know how he taunted Katharine with his favor to Anne Boleyn and her family.. He knew she loved him. (She was probably the only one of his wives who ever did.) He knew she was suffering, especially when she was so terrified of poison that she cooked her own meals over a fire in her rooms like a peasant. Did he at least reassure her that no one was trying to kill her? No.
He stripped away every friend she had. (At the end of her life, her best friend Maria de Salinas, risked her very life to defy him and see Katharine one more time, so she would not die alone.) He put her in increasingly awful living conditions, in climates that would aggravate her health problems. He went out of his way to do everything he could think of to make her miserable.
Out of all of the hateful and vicious things Henry did during his reign, his cruelty to his daughter stands out as particularly awful. Because she refused to “admit” she was a bastard because her parents’ marriage was unlawful, Henry wouldn’t allow Mary and Katharine to see one another or communicate. It’s often mentioned in almost perfunctory terms in histories of the era, but take a moment to consider how horrifying it is to separate a loving mother and daughter because of spite. Even as Katharine lay dying, Henry refused to allow them to see one another.
He said horrible things about Mary, knowing they’d get back to her, announcing at court he had no worse enemy in the world, and she was a horrible unfilial daughter. He put his infant daughter, Elizabeth, in Mary’s household and tried to force Mary to serve Elizabeth as a maid. (Mary, for her part, adored the infant and spent hours singing to her, playing with her, and making her little dresses.)
Mary could not acknowledge Elizabeth as her superior in rank. If she did, it meant that she was acknowledging her father as head of the church (blasphemy) and betraying her mother, as well as surrendering her claim to the throne. She refused to eat at a table where Elizabeth’s plate was placed at the head of the table, and her own was with the maids. She starved herself instead of eat there and accept her place. The other maids, assigned to serve Elizabeth, abused her.
She fell ill from the stress and starvation. But her father didn’t care. He sent doctors to make sure she wouldn’t die, but other than that, she could suffer the results of her own “stubbornness.”
When he charged Anne Boleyn with adultery, he went out of his way to celebrate ostentatiously, rowing his barge up and down the Thames with torches blazing and musicians playing. Could Anne Boleyn hear it in her prison? Probably not - but not for lack of Henry trying.
After Anne Boleyn’s execution, Mary thought everything would change. She blamed Anne for her horrific treatment. After all, what girl would imagine her father could treat her with such brutal indifference? It had to come from Anne. But to her shock, it only got worse. Her father sent nobles to berate and verbally abuse her until she broke. This girl, who had starved herself, suffered harassment and her father’s nasty comments, and her mother’s loss, finally broke.
She signed what her father wanted her to sign. He brought her to court a few months later to see his new pregnant wife, Jane Seymour. Jane said it would have been a shame if harm had come to Mary, England’s chiefest jewel. Henry replied, “No, that’s Edward,” patting her belly.
What made his comment even more cruel was the fact that Mary had been nicknamed England’s chiefest pearl when she was young.
Mary, learning in the most cruel and stark fashion possible, that her father valued that unborn child more highly than herself, fainted right then and there.
Did Henry care that his eldest daughter had just been traumatized to the point of passing out? No. he didn’t apologize or seek to comfort her when she came to. He just told her to be of good cheer and nothing would go against her. He’d made his point.
When he made an ass of himself introducing himself to his new fiancee Anna on Kleefes, he turned the sting of embarrassment back on her. The look of disgust she had aimed at him wounded him deeply - so he lashed it back at her by declaring her so ugly he couldn’t bring himself to consummate the marriage.
Did he care that this princess was being slandered on an international stage? Did he even pause to think of the humiliation she was suffering? It wasn’t even a consideration in his mind. She “deserved” it for displeasing him with her honest reaction to him. She had embarrassed him for a moment - he would embarrass her in front of the entire world. And historians have tended to continue it by agreeing she must have been repulsive.
He tortured Katheryn Howard by leaving her in Syon Abbey for months, wondering what would become of her. He didn’t want to go through a trial again, so he had her condemned by Parliament. But that took months… while poor Katheryn sat there with nothing to do but worry and weep. But she “deserved” it in his mind for not being as perfect and pure as he had bragged she was. She “deserved” it for embarrassing him by proving he wasn’t the expert in women he touted himself as. He had her executed with an ax, and Katheryn had to be terrified, knowing what had happened to Margaret Pole recently. As he had done with Anne Boleyn, he made sure he was seen as being jolly with the ladies, picking out her replacement.
So, to answer your question, yes, I think he knew the psychological effect he was having on the women in his life… and he enjoyed it.
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