Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr (66 page)

1.
Edward VI, the stepson who adored Katherine Parr, shortly before his accession to the throne in 1547.

An older Edward as king, with no evidence of the illness that was to take his life in the summer of 1553.

2.
A recently discovered portrait thought to be Lady Jane Grey, Katherine’s ward and chief mourner at her funeral.

Mary Tudor, eldest child of Henry VIII, in 1544, the year she was restored to the succession. She was close to Katherine, whose friendship brought her much happiness in an otherwise difficult life. Mary’s youthful attractiveness is still evident here.

3.
Princess Elizabeth in the last year of her father’s reign, shortly before she joined Katherine Parr’s household and began her dangerous flirtation with Sir Thomas Seymour.

4.
Mary Tudor as queen, in an unflattering portrait commissioned by her husband, Philip II of Spain. A decade of stress and uncertainty had taken its toll.

The coronation portrait of the twenty-five-year-old Elizabeth I.

Elizabeth’s signature as queen.

5.
The cover of Elizabeth’s translation of
The Mirror of the Sinful Soul
, given to Katherine as a New Year’s gift in 1544/45. The queen’s initials, KP, are in the centre.

Elizabeth’s gift to her father on 20 December 1545 was this sumptuously embroidered trilingual translation of her stepmother’s Prayers or Meditations.

Mary Howard, duchess of Richmond, Norfolk’s daughter and widow of Henry Fitzroy, Henry VIII’s illegitimate son. She was twice considered as a wife for Sir Thomas Seymour, Katherine Parr’s last husband.

6.
Edward Seymour, duke of Somerset. The elder brother of Jane Seymour and uncle of Edward VI, he took over the government of England after Henry VIII’s death. His relationship with Katherine, both as dowager queen and wife of his younger brother, Thomas, was uneasy.

Anne Stanhope, duchess of Somerset, was the duke’s second wife. Fecund and feisty, she had been one of Katherine’s ladies-in-waiting, but despite their shared religious views, the queen disliked her intensely.