Q&A
Why did Henry VIII never secure a diplomatic marriage for his daughter Mary?
It wasn’t for lack of trying. Daughters might have been disappointments to a king desperate to bolster his dynasty with a male heir, but they were still useful for forging treaties with foreign princes.
At the tender age of two, Mary was promised to the infant son of her father’s great rival, Francis I of France, but that agreement fell through. In 1522, the princess was contracted to marry her first cousin, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V; she was just six years
