'The Spanish Princess' Season 2 Finale: Catherine might have left court, but here's how victory was still hers
Spoilers for 'The Spanish Princess' Season 2 Episode 8
It is finally time to bid adieu to the titular Spanish Princess - both from King Henry VIII's court and from the Starz network as the two-year-long series wrapped its finale with Season 2 Episode 8 titled 'Peace'. Although hinting at a little fraction of serenity, Catherine of Aragon's journey was anything but that. In the end, we see her leaving the court of her beloved husband, for whose affection and country she fought so hard and so strong, only to be met with consistent disgrace from his end. But even though Catherine leaves behind a family and home she had weaved out of foreign people in a foreign land, victory, finally, was hers.
This victory wasn't a very physical one as we see Henry raging at Catherine and threatening to behead her for losing yet another son to miscarriage and hiding it from her husband. Thus Catherine once again loses all of Henry's favors that had spurred with her new pregnancy and those closest to her start giving up her secrets too, in the wake of her madness over cruel justice towards heresy. This was namely Maggie Poe, who tells Henry that Catherine had, in fact, consummated her marriage to his brother Arthur, thus giving him legitimate reasons to annul their marriage and reduce her to a dowager.
This also allows Henry to pursue his romance with Anny Boleyn once Catherine is removed from the status of his wife and the queen, and in the end, stripped off of her titles and honor in the court, it might seem like Catherine is left with nothing. That assumption, however, might be wrong, because Catherine's victory lies in more emotional magnitudes than physical. That she professes her love to a husband who couldn't see her worth and bequeaths to them their daughter who would actually grow up to become the infamous queen Bloody Mary is Catherine's victory over all the people in the Tudor court who did her dirty.
Bereft of her husband's love for a final time, Catherine drives her purpose into educating Mary so she could stand side-by-side her half-brother, Henry's bastard son from Bessie Blount. Although at her last presence in the court Catherine was disgraced once again by Henry saying he has a son to inherit all of his titles and Mary needn't bother about that, that Catherine would go on to exchange handwritten letters with Mary, albeit illegal and forbidden, in the years to come in banishment until her death is what grants her the final victory. Here was a woman reduced to nothingness in the eyes of many all because she couldn't bear a male heir, but Catherine was so much more than just that. Her biggest victory lies in her silent acceptance of seclusion as she leaves court for love - the biggest war she had been fighting all along.
