Historical Inaccuracies in The Spanish Princess | Season 1, Episode 3 by Charity Bishop

Episode 3 of The Spanish Princess, titled “An Audacious Plan,” weaves high-stakes drama and dangerous secrets as Catherine of Aragon schemes to hold on to her place in England, but how much of this narrative reflects historical reality? From a bizarre donkey ride and an out-of-place funeral to fabricated match-making and emotional swordplay, the show continues to blur the line between Tudor history and fiction. In this post, we’ll fact-check the major moments in this episode and uncover what really happened to Catherine, Margaret Beaufort, Elizabeth of York, and the court of Henry VII during this pivotal time.

Inside This Post:

The Donkey Ride: Not If, But When
Arthur’s Funeral: A Study in Absence
Margaret Beaufort: Tiger Grandmother, Not Matchmaker
Anachronistic Touching and Feuding
Catherine’s Virginity: Political Plot Device vs. Religious Conviction
Elizabeth’s Final Pregnancy: Condensed for Drama
Swordplay and Other Modern Fantasies

Episode Three: An Audacious Plan

With her marriage in question, Catherine takes control of her narrative by forming a risky alliance. Her claim to the English crown hinges on a delicate secret, one that could change the course of Tudor history.

The Donkey Ride: Not If, But When

Catherine of Aragon and Arthur Tudor on The Usurper's Throne Book Cover — *Follow the aftermath of Arthur’s death in The Usurper’s Throne*

The show depicts Catherine entering London on a donkey, but as it happen after Arthur’s funeral. In reality, Catherine insisted on riding a donkey into London when she first arrived in England from Spain. It was a deliberate and pious act, grounded in Catholic tradition. Donkeys symbolized humility, religious devotion, and were associated with both the Virgin Mary’s journey to Bethlehem and Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. While English nobles typically entered cities on horseback to demonstrate power, Catherine clung to this expression of religious humility, despite pressure from English nobles to do otherwise. After Arthur’s death, she was in no condition for symbolic gestures, since she was recovering from pneumonia.

Arthur’s Funeral: A Study in Absence

The series muddies the waters around Arthur’s final rites. It shows him buried in London, attended by both his mother and widow. In reality, they laid him to rest in Worcester Cathedral, but none of his family attended. Monarchs and royal family members rarely attended funerals due to the belief that royalty had semi-divine status, and death was an uncomfortable reminder of their mortality. Nor did they want the populace to think about them in context with death (it might arouse feelings of rebellion, based on the idea that God’s anointed can still perish beneath a sword). There were also superstitions attached to death. Elizabeth of York visited her son’s grave later, in private.

The keening of Catherine’s Spanish ladies is historically plausible but unlikely. They would have expressed grief in different ways than the stoic English. Still, no royal women would have attended a public funeral like the one depicted here.

Margaret Beaufort: Tiger Grandmother, Not Matchmaker

Davina wields fire in The Last Fire Eater Cover — *Princess Margaret meets and marries King James in The Last Fire-Eater*

In this episode, Margaret Beaufort pressures for her granddaughter’s immediate marriage to James IV. Historically, this is backwards. Margaret Beaufort, along with her son and daughter-in-law, delayed sending her granddaughter to Scotland for as long as possible. She was extremely protective of her granddaughters, likely due to her own traumatic childbirth experience at age thirteen. Margaret felt adamant that her namesake not consummate her marriage until she reached an appropriate age, and engaged in frequent negotiations with Scotland to keep her in England.

Even though the concept of marital rape did not exist in Tudor England, it’s unlikely that a thirteen-year-old Margaret consulted to her husband impregnating her. Given how avoidant she was of sexual intimacy later in her life (she made a political marriage, but insisted it remain celibate, to which her husband agreed), we would now diagnose her with rape survivor trauma. She would not want any of her granddaughters to experience what she did. I really hate that they made a rape survivor and a remarkable woman in her own right into a cartoon villain.

Anachronistic Touching and Feuding

The show’s continued portrayal of women behaving with modern emotional transparency feels jarring in this historical setting. Margaret Beaufort “feeling Catherine up” to find out if she’s carrying a child is absurd and undignified. In reality, pregnancy checks were discreetly handled by ladies-in-waiting, and high-born women of her rank would not lower themselves to such coarse behavior. She would have gone to Catherine’s ladies-in-waiting and asked if Catherine had bled since her marriage, and if there were other signs of pregnancy.

The constant antagonism between the women in this episode is also silly. While political tension certainly existed, these constant petty arguments do not reflect the refined cultural behaviors and norms of the Tudor court, where dignity and discretion were valued in public.

Catherine’s Virginity: Political Plot Device vs. Religious Conviction

he entire show hinges on Catherine lying about her consummation with Arthur, a claim the real Catherine denied to her dying day. This episode portrays her as manipulative and dishonest, traits at odds with the historical Catherine’s known integrity and piety. She was devout, and saw lying under oath (particularly before God) as a mortal sin. (Mortal sins, if you do not confess them in Catholicism, damn your soul forever.) She would not have lied about remaining a virgin at the risk of her eternal soul.

Chaste marriages were common among young couples, whose parents did not want a new union (with the money, estates, and titles it gave them) ruined by the death of the bride before she could carry a child to term. Margaret Beaufort getting pregnant at thirteen was a shocking scandal for the time. Many couples under the age of seventeen got married but did not share a bed or even a household until the parents deemed them old enough to consummate the marriage. This is why there was such a debate over whether to allow Catherine to go to Ludlow Castle with Arthur; the Spanish did not wish her to become sexually active, but Henry VII wanted to establish an authoritative English court in Wales.

Catherine had every reason to be cautious, since her brother Juan mere months died after his wedding, rumored to be from excessive sexual activity. Her parents, and the English monarchs, would have known about this. They wanted nothing similar to happen in England and threaten their alliance or the health of their children, who held the future of two dynasties in their hands.

Elizabeth’s Final Pregnancy: Condensed for Drama

Young Lambert Simnel and a hawk on The Queen's Falconer Cover — *Elizabeth of York’s meaningful final days play out in The Queen’s Falconer*

The series has Elizabeth pregnant before Arthur’s funeral and give birth prematurely to a dead child. In reality, Elizabeth became pregnant after his death, likely from a shared night of grief with her husband. She entered her confinement (seclusion from the outside world, cloistered among her ladies, in which she could do nothing strenuous) and gave birth to a living daughter who died after ten days. She succumbed to a postnatal infection, likely puerperal fever (it’s caused by an infection in the uterus) that was tragically common before the invention of sterile medical practices. Henry would not have been with her at the time of her death, nor would her unmarried daughter have been present. They limited confinement to married ladies-in-waiting, so virgins would not see or hear anything inappropriate. (I will give them kudos though, in that her death on the show is absolutely horrific.)

Swordplay and Other Modern Fantasies

Catherine sparring with Henry is pure fiction. It’s cute, it’s flirtatious but it’s not historically grounded. Still, as a character moment, it works. Consider it a rare moment of fictional fun. I approve!

Less forgivable is the implication that Lena, a Blackamoor from Spain, is shocked to learn about the Spanish Inquisition. This strains credulity. A person of her background would have been deeply aware of the religious persecution that defined Spanish policy for decades, since her family would have suffered from it and might have even been forced to convert to Catholicism to keep their position at court.