What were the reasons for the ROYAL FERTILITY PROBLEMS suffered by Henry VIII and his wives which made producing a male heir so difficult for the most famous Tudor King and his consorts? Were the Tudors fertility challenged as a group, or was it just one person who had difficulties in this area? In this week’s Tudors and six wives documentary from History Calling we look at the conceptions, pregnancies, miscarriages, stillbirths and royal childbirth experiences of three of the six wives of Henry VIII; Queens Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour, plus one of his mistresses, Elizabeth Blount (aka Bessie Blount) who was the mother of his illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond. We’ll consider the numerous theories which have sought to explain over the centuries why Henry’s quest for an heir was so long and difficult. These include the idea that Henry VIII had syphilis, that one or more of the mothers of his children suffered from the rhesus D phenomenon, or that Kell syndrome may have been to blame. We’ll also examine the theory that Henry VIII was increasingly impotent from the 1530s onward and ultimately try to answer the question, why did so many Tudor children die within this branch of the royal family? This video will also include a discussion of Henry’s problems or potential problems in the bedroom department during his marriages to Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Catherine Parr (none of whom fell pregnant by him).

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SIX WIVES OF HENRY VIII PLAYLIST
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DID CATHERINE OF ARAGON SLEEP WITH PRINCE ARTHUR TUDOR?
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DID ANNE BOLEYN HAVE A PHANTOM PREGNANCY?
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WHAT HAPPENED TO QUEEN ANNE’S CHILDREN [ANNE STUART]    • WHAT HAPPENED TO QUEEN ANNE’S CHILDRE...  
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READ

Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (WileyBlackwell, 2005) https://amzn.to/3h9efQD (UK link) OR https://amzn.to/3xLivgr (US link)
Gareth Russell, Young and Damned and Fair: The Life and Tragedy of Catherine Howard at the Court of Henry VIII (2017). https://amzn.to/3xldHhi (UK link) OR https://amzn.to/2VExTgg (US link)
Josephine Wilkinson, Katherine Howard: The Tragic Story of Henry VIII's Fifth Queen (London, 2016). https://amzn.to/3x7MxdO (UK link) OR https://amzn.to/3rbFuPj (US link)
Susan James, Catherine Parr: Henry VIII's Last Love
(2008) https://amzn.to/2XCS9Am (UK link) OR https://amzn.to/3nLizL1 (US link)
Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives Of Henry VIII (2nd edn, Phoenix, 2009) https://amzn.to/3atiEfi (UK link) OR https://amzn.to/36IqD5r (US link)
David Starkey, Six Wives: the Queens of Henry VIII (Vintage, 2004) https://amzn.to/3k9uD4Z (UK link) OR https://amzn.to/3wImKIh (US link)
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate, 2010) https://amzn.to/3AbIr6D (UK link) OR https://amzn.to/2UQmA48 (US link)

Centre for Disease Control and Infection – article on syphilis
https://www.cdc.gov/std/syphilis/stdf...

Catrina Banks Whitely and Kyra Kramer, ‘A new explanation for the reproductive woes and midlife decline of Henry VIII’ in Historical Journal, 53:4 (2010), pp 82748. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40930359

Sir John Dewhurst, ‘THE ALLEGED MISCARRIAGES OF CATHERINE OF ARAGON AND ANNE BOLEYN’ in Medical History, 28 (1984), pp 4956.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/servic...

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