Katherine of Aragon as Persephone???
crossposting from tumblr bc wow it's really not every day lately that I have a potentially semi-original and at least interesting academic type thought :)
I don’t have access to JSTOR anymore and it’s KILLING ME right now because surely, surely someone has written a peer-reviewed piece about this concept before, no? Or a non peer-reviewed piece? From the little I can see via Google, there’s some mention in discussing Katherine’s heraldic device of the obvious mythological connection, but mostly people focus on the general symbolism of the pomegranate for fertility, sanctity, etc, obviously good things for a princess/royal family to want connected to themselves.
But KATHERINE, the youngest princess, the beloved of her powerful mother (and let’s not forget her mother and father’s reputations as near to the divine, infinitely blessed, and powerful in their divine favor), sent/taken into a stranger, colder new land (and I am consistently interested in the delightful fact of the different diets of 14th/15th century Spain and England, esp. in that the Spanish had much more fresh fruit and vegetables ahem ahem goddesses of growth and harvest and springtime whaaaat) to be married.
And it’s not a violent abduction like Persephone’s, it’s not a rape, but it’s a political treaty requiring her to be subsumed (and so young - basically from what, age 3? she was titled Princess of Wales) into another kingdom, at the behest of an historically hard and cold king and a young (arguably) sickly prince, a line newly enthroned from desperate civil war, the picture of which altogether is quite deathly and foreboding. And then her husband dies but she cannot leave her new country (she will not leave), and she is tossed about and left to languish and her father and father-in-law haggle over the price of her but she sticks it all out! She becomes the Spanish ambassador, the link between her two worlds, she scrapes and suffers and holds out and her awful awful entry into England turns into her triumph and she is Queened.
I guess this necessarily requires a somewhat subversive view of Persephone, idk? Except that I’m not necessarily arguing that the seemingly placid acceptance of the difficulties/horrors that go along with their marriages and crownings is a positive thing - my least favorite part of the Persephone myth is its classical aspect which negates Hades’ crime and turns the rape into lawful and good marriage. But the comparison is still there, the powerful ladies who retain power and influence.
Katherine who becomes a tie across all of Europe, Persephone who dispenses advice and judgement in other tales. In another aspect, the cold queen of the dead, the woman set aside, hidden, her springtime power frozen away, who still commands respect and admiration. Who still speaks.
I don’t have access to JSTOR anymore and it’s KILLING ME right now because surely, surely someone has written a peer-reviewed piece about this concept before, no? Or a non peer-reviewed piece? From the little I can see via Google, there’s some mention in discussing Katherine’s heraldic device of the obvious mythological connection, but mostly people focus on the general symbolism of the pomegranate for fertility, sanctity, etc, obviously good things for a princess/royal family to want connected to themselves.
But KATHERINE, the youngest princess, the beloved of her powerful mother (and let’s not forget her mother and father’s reputations as near to the divine, infinitely blessed, and powerful in their divine favor), sent/taken into a stranger, colder new land (and I am consistently interested in the delightful fact of the different diets of 14th/15th century Spain and England, esp. in that the Spanish had much more fresh fruit and vegetables ahem ahem goddesses of growth and harvest and springtime whaaaat) to be married.
And it’s not a violent abduction like Persephone’s, it’s not a rape, but it’s a political treaty requiring her to be subsumed (and so young - basically from what, age 3? she was titled Princess of Wales) into another kingdom, at the behest of an historically hard and cold king and a young (arguably) sickly prince, a line newly enthroned from desperate civil war, the picture of which altogether is quite deathly and foreboding. And then her husband dies but she cannot leave her new country (she will not leave), and she is tossed about and left to languish and her father and father-in-law haggle over the price of her but she sticks it all out! She becomes the Spanish ambassador, the link between her two worlds, she scrapes and suffers and holds out and her awful awful entry into England turns into her triumph and she is Queened.
I guess this necessarily requires a somewhat subversive view of Persephone, idk? Except that I’m not necessarily arguing that the seemingly placid acceptance of the difficulties/horrors that go along with their marriages and crownings is a positive thing - my least favorite part of the Persephone myth is its classical aspect which negates Hades’ crime and turns the rape into lawful and good marriage. But the comparison is still there, the powerful ladies who retain power and influence.
Katherine who becomes a tie across all of Europe, Persephone who dispenses advice and judgement in other tales. In another aspect, the cold queen of the dead, the woman set aside, hidden, her springtime power frozen away, who still commands respect and admiration. Who still speaks.