SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...

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Henry Tudor’s first order of business after Bosworth Field was to strengthen his
somewhat tenuous claim to the throne. Royal genealogists quickly established a line of
descent from Arthur of Camelot, and Henry capitalized on this by naming his first son
after the legendary king. The Round Table of Camelot was purported to have been
housed in his own Winchester Castle, the painting in the center of the table of a king
bearing a striking resemblance to Henry (Boehrer ix). The connection between Arthur
and Henry VII was thus strengthened as Henry began to establish both a personal and
national identity. His connection to the legendary Arthur was perhaps a strategy to
demonstrate his right to rule through his descent from a famous and well-loved legendary
king.
That the Tudor house sought to legitimize itself through Arthur of Camelot,
whose reign ended in large part because of incest, seems to have been unremarkable at
the time but is of course the ultimate irony when considering the part that incest played in
Henry VIII’s rule. The new Arthur, Henry VII’s heir, married Catherine of Aragon and
died childless, at which time she was married to Arthur’s brother Henry (VIII) in order to
maintain the alliance with Spain. After twenty years of marriage to Catherine, Henry,
desperate for a male heir, declared that his conscience had suddenly awakened him to the
sin—incest—that he had committed by marrying his brother’s wife. Citing Levitical law,
“And if a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his
brother's nakedness; they shall be childless” (Lev. 18:16), he determined that this
illegitimate marriage was the reason for his lack of a son. Catherine refuted this claim for
many reasons, one of which that there had been a child: Mary. Furthermore, when Henry