#there's also the question of him breaking the seal of confessional...that would be really heinous

[fideidefenswhore]

Why did you vote for the third one in Katherynparr's poll?

To me, it just seems more likely than not? I'm rereading material on the Anne of Cleves marriage rn and funnily enough am reminded of that, like... to leave the marriage unconsummated was to mean it was very easy to annull, would be to leave the state of it contested and vulnerable. Most CoA partisans insist (and I agree, although I think this became even stronger and reified with her accession in 1509, I think it had always existed to some degree) that Catherine had it absolutely drilled into her that for her to become Queen of England was divinely ordained, her sacred duty, etc. That does not square with leaving the matter insecure. Those that insist on #1 tend to really ignore the timeline here... it's not like they married in November and he fell ill and dropped dead the very next week.

So, to follow that thread...would she have lived in that uncertainty and insecurity for months? I find that unlikely. She couldn't have seen the future, so how was she to know that it could ever become such a contentious issue, the did they/did they not?

Frankly, Catherine in these circumstances was the one that was more (relatively) vulnerable. Arthur was always going to become King of England, come hell or high water. They both would have felt pressure, but Catherine would have felt more; to present grandchildren to her in-laws would have guaranteed the security of her future and been met with the gratitude of her own parents for securing the alliance with finality.

I won't go into all the evidence generally used for Vote #1, but I'm familiar with all the usual points made for it, and I'll address some of them in order.

Catherine's testimony that they only spent 'seven nights' in bed together. There's testimony from members of Arthur's staff that contradicts this (saying the number of nights was much higher) and even if it was true (it's a very specific number to remember, I'll say that, six more than the night of their wedding, which she couldn't dispute because chroniclers recorded it), seven nights is plenty to figure it out, if the motivation was there (and see above, I believe it was)

The impression this was supposed to leave, I believe, was that Arthur and Catherine didn't enjoy intimacy together, and didn't really care for each other. Frankly, this has some support (Catherine's rather demurely ambiguous response to Henry VII's question of the matter of whether or not they should reside together was whatever you think best, Arthur spoke of how pleasing she was to him, but that was boilerplate political speech), even speaking broadly (arranged marriages could be awkward, the only language they shared was stilted Latin). There's also the matter of how Arthur left Catherine absolutely nothing in his will, only leaving things to his sister, Margaret.

However, that doesn't preclude that any attempt of consummation was never made...this was often the case, and those in politically arranged royal marriages (Henry VIII being an anomaly) were supposed to, yk...get over it.

The strongest contender is her swearing otherwise to Campeggio. There was another confessor of Catherine's, though, who believed otherwise in 1502, and whom Catherine refused to ever see or write to again (even when the Pope reccomended him-- Catherine was not always such a staunch, to use a retrospective term, 'Papist' as some have supposed); in the context of Catherine having not yet had any surviving son by her marriage to Henry.

Additionally, while she spoke of many things on her deathbed (feeling some blame for the 'increase of heresy' in Engand, namely), and did take confession, her marriage to Arthur and its alleged unconsummation was not among either. Even Chapuys, her staunchest supporter, was rather distressed and seemingly puzzled by this (he had been "assured" that it was her intention to do so)

We're never going to know definitively, of course (those that say Pope Clement made a final declaration that her alleged virginity of 1509 was 'proven' are incorrect-- he did, on the last, defend the sanctity of her marriage, but on the grounds that Henry had for too long acted on the dispensation given for it, and "deprived himself of the right to protest against it"....a conclusion he surely could have given by 1530 at the latest, if 1527 was so clearly 'too late' to protest, but I digress... no mention made of the state of her marriage to Arthur); but regardless of whatever the truth was, I think something that's often said of Henry applies equally to Catherine (and, honestly, most people):

They believed what they wanted/needed to believe.