Catherine of Aragon (also spelt as Katherine, historical Spanish: Catharina,[1] now: Catalina; 16 December 1485 – 7 January 1536) was Queen of England as the first wife of King Henry VIII from their marriage on 11 June 1509 until its annulment on 23 May 1533.

Catherine was born at the Archbishop's Palace of Alcalá de Henares, and was the youngest child of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon.

During that time the English defeated a Scottish invasion at the Battle of Flodden, an event in which Catherine played an important part with an emotional speech about courage and patriotism.

[3] By 1526, Henry was infatuated with Anne Boleyn and dissatisfied that his marriage to Catherine had produced no surviving sons, leaving their daughter Mary as heir presumptive at a time when there was no established precedent for a woman on the throne.

When Pope Clement VII refused to annul the marriage, Henry defied him by assuming supremacy over religious matters in England.

Catherine refused to accept Henry as supreme head of the Church in England and considered herself the King's rightful wife and queen, attracting much popular sympathy.

"[6] She successfully appealed for the lives of the rebels involved in the Evil May Day, for the sake of their families,[7] and also won widespread admiration by starting an extensive programme for the relief of the poor.

Catherine was quite short in stature[10] with long red hair, wide blue eyes, a round face, and a fair complexion.

She studied arithmetic, canon and civil law, classical literature, genealogy and heraldry, history, philosophy, religion, and theology.

[14] She had been given lessons in domestic skills, such as cooking, embroidery, lace-making, needlepoint, sewing, spinning, and weaving and was also taught music, dancing, drawing, as well as being carefully educated in good manners and court etiquette.

Because of Henry's descent through illegitimate children barred from succession to the English throne, the Tudor monarchy was not accepted by all European kingdoms.

On Midsummer's Day, Sunday, 24 June 1509, Henry VIII and Catherine were anointed and crowned together by the Archbishop of Canterbury at a lavish ceremony at Westminster Abbey.

[26] On 11 June 1513, Henry appointed Catherine Regent in England with the titles "Governor of the Realm and Captain General", while he went to France on a military campaign.

She wrote to Wolsey that she and her council would prefer the Duke to stay in the Tower of London as the Scots were "so busy as they now be" and she added her prayers for "God to sende us as good lukke against the Scotts, as the King hath ther.

[39][40] Catherine was issued with banners at Richmond on 8 September,[41] and rode north in full armour to address the troops, despite being heavily pregnant at the time.

Henry began to believe that his marriage was cursed and sought confirmation from the Bible, which he interpreted to say that if a man marries his brother's wife, the couple will be childless.

[60] Both the Pope and Martin Luther raised the possibility that Henry have two wives,[61] not to re-introduce polygamy generally, but "to preserve the royal dignity of Catherine and Mary".

[68][69] Other people who supported Catherine's case included Thomas More; Henry's own sister Mary Tudor, Queen of France; María de Salinas; Holy Roman Emperor Charles V; Pope Paul III; and Protestant Reformers Martin Luther[70] and William Tyndale.

[72] Upon returning to Dover from a meeting with King Francis I of France in Calais, Henry married Anne Boleyn in a secret ceremony.

[77] Until the end of her life, Catherine would refer to herself as Henry's only lawful wedded wife and England's only rightful queen, and her servants continued to address her as such.

She was then finally transferred to Kimbolton Castle, Cambridgeshire where she confined herself to one room, which she left only to attend Mass, dressed only in the hair shirt of the Franciscans, and fasted continuously.

It has been claimed that she then penned one final letter to Henry:[80] My most dear lord, king and husband, The hour of my death now drawing on, the tender love I owe you forceth me, my case being such, to commend myself to you, and to put you in remembrance with a few words of the health and safeguard of your soul which you ought to prefer before all worldly matters, and before the care and pampering of your body, for the which you have cast me into many calamities and yourself into many troubles.

[87] Chapuys reported that it was King Henry who decked himself in yellow, celebrating the news and making a great show of his and Anne's daughter, Elizabeth, to his courtiers.

After the annulment, she was quoted "I would rather be a poor beggar's wife and be sure of heaven, than queen of all the world and stand in doubt thereof by reason of my own consent.

"[92] The outward celebration of saints and holy relics formed no major part of her personal devotions,[93] which she rather expressed in the Mass, prayer, confession and penance.

[93] Her doubts about church improprieties certainly did not extend so far as to support the allegations of corruption made public by Martin Luther in Wittenberg in 1517, which were soon to have such far-reaching consequences in initiating the Protestant Reformation.

After her death, numerous portraits were painted of her, particularly of her speech at the Legatine Trial, a moment accurately rendered in Shakespeare's play about Henry VIII.

In 1967, Mary M. Luke wrote the first book of her Tudor trilogy, Catherine the Queen which portrayed her and the tumultuous era of English history through which she lived.

In recent years, the historian Alison Weir covered her life extensively in her biography The Six Wives of Henry VIII, first published in 1991.

Antonia Fraser did the same in her own 1992 biography of the same title; as did the British historian David Starkey in his 2003 book Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII.