Almost every child in Britain or America has encountered the legend of Bloody Mary. The idea is that if you stand in the bathroom, stare into the mirror and chant “Bloody Mary” three times before turning around, the ghostly figure of Mary will appear behind you. Sometimes she will be dripping with blood; sometimes she is holding a dead baby. Sometimes she is relatively benign, but on other occasions she foretells death for her unfortunate summoner. The usual practice is for this to be a school bathroom dare – one that usually descends into screaming long before the chanting can be completed.
The legend has proved to be both powerful and enduring, spawning numerous horror films and television programmes.1 But what is the truth and who is the woman behind the legend of Bloody Mary?
MARY TUDOR
It is Queen Mary I who has the dubious honour of being assigned in perpetual infamy the name of ‘Bloody Mary’, and it is most probable that she is the source of the legend.
Mary was the only surviving child of Henry VIII of England and his first wife Katherine of Aragon. Born on 18 February 1516, Mary was a disappointment from the start: her parents had desperately hoped for a male heir to consolidate the Tudor dynasty. Until her teens she was England’s beloved princess; that is, until her father fell in love with Anne Boleyn and was willing to remake the entire religious landscape of England in order to marry her. He broke with the Roman Catholic Church, the faith in which Mary had been raised, and declared himself Head of the Church of England and therefore able to divorce Katherine. Mary was declared illegitimate on the basis that her parents’ marriage had been unlawful in the eyes of God and insteadimprisonment or worse for both herself and her supporters she capitulated. Her father’s threats were not idle ones: just a few weeks after Katherine’s death he executed Anne Boleyn.
