18 April 1536: Italian Ambassador Eustace Chapuys, Ann Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell.

 

What was so important about Catherine of Aragon's marriage to Henry VIII? The marriage is typically presented as a failure due to Catherine's inability to provide Henry VIII with a son, Pope Clement VII's  unwillingness to grant  Henry VIII a divorce to find a queen who could give him an heir, the resulting English Reformation (breakaway from the Catholic Church), Catherine of Aragon's unwillingness to enter a convent, and Henry VIII's ultimate execution of the Queen. Maybe all that is enough for a TV Drama, but there were deeper issues that had to do with Geopolitical Alliances.

In the video above, Eustace Chapuys (France's ambassador England) is set up to encounter Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's new Queen. Chapuys is reluctant to acknowledge Anne because he wants England to return to the Roman Catholic Church and become aligned with France.

 

The conflict here is that recently executed Catherine of Aragon is part of the Spanish Branch of the Habsburg Monarchy (graphic above, double click to enlarge).  Anne Boleyn, on the other hand, was English (educated in the Netherlands and France) and offered (1) no opportunity for Geopolitical Alliances and (2) was the daughter of Thomas Boleyn (later Earl of Wiltshire) that created favorites among the English Nobility. But Henry was in love with Anne Boleyn and alliances be damned.

Eventually, Chapuys and Thomas Cromwell became friends (as a result of a long discussion presented after Chapuys acknowledges Anne Boleyn). But much is potentially lost here to include the Spanish Habsburg foothold in the New World (graphic above--I live in what was once the Habsburg-Spanish Empire in the US--favored by John Dee) and Henry and Catherine's daughter, Mary I, who would go on to be Mary I Queen of England.

We know so much about Eustace Chapuys because he carried on extensive correspondence with France (one of the major attributes of a good ambassador) and he is a great character in Wolf Hall! John Dee's future forecasts for Spain (here) and France (here) don't look particularly good and you have already seen the forecast for England (here) and the best future doesn't have anything to do with Spain or France.