Mary Tudor (1516 – ), Katherine’s daughter and Henry’s heir.
Born seven years into your parents’ marriage, you are the only surviving child. You are in your mid-teens when you appear in this story. You are small, plain, pious and fragile: very clever, very brave, very stubborn. You hate Anne Boleyn, and revere your father, following your mother’s line in believing that he is misled.
Hilary Mantel, notes on characters
The story so far…
Week 3: An Occult History of Britain (Part 1)
Cromwell considers Mary “two-thirds” of a princess, not a whole one. He cannot help but compare her to his “tough little” Anne Cromwell. Mary is a “pale, clever doll with fox-coloured hair, who speaks with more gravity than the average bishop”.
Week 7: Entirely Beloved Cromwell (Part 2)
They are talking about her at court, because right now she is the heir to the throne of England. Norfolk calls her “that talking shrimp”, a fourteen-year-old with a face “the size of my thumbnail.” But Cromwell demurs. “It depends who advises her. It depends who she marries.”
Week 8: The Dead Complain of Their Burial / Arrange Your Face (Part 1)
Mary, “through pain or fear” had “shrunken into herself.” When she turns “her plain pinched face” to Cromwell, it is “hard as Norfolk's thumbnail.” When it is implied by Cromwell that she may be separated from her mother: “The child is fighting down pain. Her mother is fighting down grief and anger, and disgust and fear.”
Week 14: Devil's Spit / A Painter’s Eye
‘There is but one queen, and that is my mother.’ The king breaks up Mary’s household and sends her to serve Princess Elizabeth. She bursts into tears and locks herself in her room.
There is a young woman walking the roads of the kingdom, saying she is the princess Mary, and that her father has turned her out to beg. She has been seen as far north as York and as far east as Lincoln, and simple people in these shires are lodging and feeding her and giving her money to see her on her way. He has people keeping an eye out for her, but they haven’t caught her yet. He doesn’t know what he would do with her if he did catch her. It is punishment enough, to take on the burden of a prophecy, and to be out unprotected on the winter roads. He pictures her, a dun-coloured, dwindling figure, tramping away towards the horizon over the flat muddy fields.
Week 15: Supremacy
At Hatfield, her gentle keepers are told to beat her — instructions from the Queen of England. They do not comply. Anne Shelton: “You would need a heart of stone not to pity her situation.”
Mary refuses food and a fire because those who bring it to her won’t use her old titles. Cromwell calls himself her friend and tries to help her. He advises her to give her respects to the queen. “It will be done in a heartbeat, and it will change everything.”
But Mary thinks Anne is frightened of her. What if Mary marries? Cromwell can tell the idea has been put to her.
Week 18: Falcons
Anne thinks Cromwell is too favourable to Lady Mary, and they are too soft on her.
‘The king loves his elder daughter still, he says he cannot help it — and it grieves Anne, because she wants the Princess Elizabeth to be the only daughter he knows. She thinks we are too soft towards Mary and that we should tax her to admit her mother was never married lawfully to the king, and that she is a bastard.’
Chapuys is refused permission to visit her.