The Three Daughters of Henry VIII

Couple of thoughts on that - pressure for Henry to remarry speedily after Jane Seymour's death - he delayed quite a bit in otl until pressured into remarriage to secure a protestant alliance (duchy of Cleves).

He began searching for a wife almost immediately, the issue was that no one would have him and negotiations were difficult - Marie of Guise, Christina of Denmark and others were less than keen.
 
Yes Elizabeth was a bastard. And personally I don't understand why, when Henry tried to divorce Catherine, that a special reminder wasn't added to keep Mary legitimate.

But he didn't divorce her; the marriage was annulled - i.e., declared to have never been valid in the first place. Accordingly, the child of a non-existent marriage can't be legitimate. In any event, he was not interested in pulling of a Pragmatic Sanction-type deal to put a girl on the throne if he could still produce a son.
 
Yes Elizabeth was a bastard. And personally I don't understand why, when Henry tried to divorce Catherine, that a special reminder wasn't added to keep Mary legitimate. It was done several times in divorces for Iberian Royalty. I can't remember an example of the top of my head but I'll hunt for it a bit.

Because as noted, it was annulment, and because Mary, much like Elizabeth, needed to pay for the "crime" of being the child of a wife Henry's affection for had turned to resentment.
 
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