The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Monday 7 June 2004

Happy Princesses of Wales - A Royal Oxymoron, Part I

“I often think that we can trace all the disasters of English history to the influence of Wales.”
–The fictional Dr. Fagan in Evelyn Waugh’s 1928 novel, Decline and Fall.

While Dr. Fagan’s statement was clearly intended as hyperbole, it certainly has an application within the context of the modern and historic British royal family. Although I risk sounding equally hyperbolic, many of the disasters in the lives of the women who became Princess of Wales can be traced to their elevated title and position.

When we hear the term “Princess of Wales,” most of us tend to think immediately of Diana and the tragedy and sadness of her life, but the role carries with it a long legacy of tragedy and sadness going all the way back to Joan of Kent in 1361. A quick memory jog reminds us of names like Katherine of Aragon – wife of Henry VIII, Caroline of Brunswick – wife of George IV, and Alexandra of Denmark – wife of Edward VII. Among these three Princesses of Wales, there was the first royal divorce, a miserably contentious marriage, and a notoriously unfaithful husband.  

But dig a little deeper into the history of the role and you also find a highly repressed wife and mother, an unwilling pawn in the royal game, a mother who hated her son, the wife of the most reviled English monarch of all time, and a lively woman broken by tragedy. All told, nine women have held the title Princess of Wales, and most of them in deep discomfort. This week, we’ll rediscover the first three Princesses of Wales, moving on to the following five next week. Regarding the ninth, Diana, more than enough has already been done to document her tragic life. 

Surprisingly, while there have been only nine Princesses of Wales, the title of Prince of Wales has been conferred 21 times since the first English Prince of Wales, Edward of Caernarvon, was granted the title in 1301. Their history is not exactly a lucky one either, with six dying before they could accede to the throne and one forced to forfeit his rights. Of the 13 who did accede, eight either never married or married after becoming king, further contributing to the relative dearth of Princesses of Wales. As Edward of Caernarvon was among this latter group – he was already King Edward II when he married in 1308 – and the title of Prince of Wales skipped over his son, it would be 60 years until the first English Princess of Wales graced the pages of history.  

The first Prince of Wales’s grandson, Edward Plantagenet, the Black Prince, became the second Prince of Wales when he was invested in 1343 at the age of 12. The long awaited Princess of Wales arrived on October 10, 1361, when he married his cousin, Joan of Kent. It somehow seems appropriate that the first Princess of Wales in English history should have been problematic right from the start. Known as “The Fair Maid of Kent,” Joan may have been famously beautiful, kind and lively, but she was far from being a “maid” when she married the Black Prince. In fact, she had already been married twice, with one husband still living.  

At the age of 12, Joan secretly married Thomas Holland just before he went on crusade. During her husband’s absence, Joan – who failed to confess the marriage – was forced to marry William Montague, a son of the Earl of Salisbury. On Holland’s safe return to England several years later, he took the bizarre step of becoming steward of the Montague’s household while he petitioned the Pope for an annulment of his employers’ marriage. The plea was successful and Joan’s marriage to Montague was pronounced bigamous and subsequently annulled, but not before Montague imprisoned Joan in her own home. In due course, she was returned to Thomas Holland, with whom she had five children before his death in 1361. 

With barely a pause for breath, she married the Black Prince that same year at the age of 32. Not only were both directly descended from Edward I, they were only two years apart in age and had grown up together at the court of Edward III after the death of Joan’s father made her a royal ward. By most accounts, the Black Prince had been in love with Joan for many years, so when he found her between husbands, he jumped at the chance to marry her, although his parents were known to be against the match. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury had warned him against the marriage since Joan’s second husband, the Earl of Salisbury, was still alive. Despite it all, the couple somehow managed to obtain the assurance of absolution from the Pope and they were married forthwith. 

While the marriage was reportedly happy, the circumstances of their lives were not. The first ten years of their marriage were spent fighting – and not always winning – fierce wars in Aquitaine, where the Black Prince was duke. During that time, they had two sons, but the eldest, Edward, died when he was just six. The family returned to England in 1371, right in time to experience the worst of the plague, which killed Joan’s mother. During a final failed attempt to save Aquitaine, the Black Prince’s health deteriorated and he died in 1376, missing his chance to be king of England by a little over a year. Instead, their eldest surviving son became the nine-year-old King Richard II on the death of Edward III in 1377.  

As the mother of the new king, Joan had power and respect, but happiness continued to elude her with each new tragic event. She died, broken, in 1385, pleading with her son the King to spare the life of one of her sons by Holland, who had murdered a member of the royal court. Richard II granted the pardon, but Joan didn’t live to know about it, dying the day before. 

If Joan’s life was surrounded by tragedy, the life of the next Princess of Wales would epitomize tragedy itself. Anne Neville became the second Princess of Wales on her marriage to Edward, Prince of Wales, son of Henry VI, in 1470. There is little doubt Anne was used as a pawn by her father, Richard Neville, the first Earl of Warwick, who will always be remembered as “The Kingmaker” during the Wars of the Roses. Whether or not she held any affection for her father or her new husband, it must certainly have been a blow when both were killed within a year of her marriage, leaving her an unprotected, fatherless widow during one of the most tumultuous periods of English royal history. 

She wasn’t a widow long before Richard, Duke of Gloucester, made his move. While the image of Shakespeare’s evil hunchback wrenching the grieving Princess of Wales from her husband’s grave to a miserable second marriage is almost certainly an exaggeration, Anne’s life as the wife of Richard III could not have been considered a happy one. With chronic ill health, Anne stood by as her new husband stole the crown from his nephews and more than likely had them murdered. Her personal misfortunes reached a peak when her only son died suddenly in 1484 – less than a year after being created Prince of Wales – while she and Richard were away.  

During her final illness, rumors abounded that Richard was planning to discard Anne and marry his niece, Elizabeth of York.  Anne’s subsequent death only fanned the flames and it was suggested that Richard poisoned her, although it’s more likely that she died of tuberculosis. Although we will never know whether any of the rumors were true, they did much to contribute to Richard III’s downfall and, perhaps fortunately for Anne, her death in March 1485 saved her from having to experience his ignominious death at the Battle of Bosworth on August 22, 1485. 

It is almost as unnecessary to rehash the painful life of the next Princess of Wales as it is with Diana. That said, Katherine of Aragon’s misfortunes more than withstand comparison with both her predecessors and her successors. Her marriage in 1501 to Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales, and eldest son of Henry VII, made her a 16-year-old Princess of Wales. Less than five months later, she was the 17-year-old Dowager Princess of Wales. On the basis that Katherine claimed she and Arthur had never consummated their marriage, the Pope issued a special dispensation allowing her to become betrothed to the new Prince of Wales, Arthur’s brother Henry.  

Mostly due to the groom’s young age, but with the added benefit of avoiding making the bride a Princess of Wales twice, the marriage didn’t actually take place until after the groom acceded to the throne as Henry VIII in 1509. Although her husband was chronically unfaithful, the marriage was said to be a happy one. That is, until Katherine failed to produce a male heir. From here, the story needs little retelling; but, to sum up… Henry had his marriage to Katherine annulled – returning her former title of Dowager Princess of Wales, forced her into exile, illegitimated their daughter Mary and kept mother and daughter from seeing one another. Katherine was doomed to die alone in 1536, almost 150 years before the next Princess of Wales was born.  

Next week, in Part II, we’ll leap forward to the 18^th century and cover 200 more years of Princesses of Wales. 

Hope to see you then,

- Tori Van Orden