Jane Seymour

Today is the day she died in childbirth after giving Henry his much sought after son. It was a merciful death considering had she lived she may have ended up like Henry's other wives.

Thank you very much for reminding us! Poor Jane.

Gareth has some great posts about her. Here's one:
http://garethrussellcidevant.blogspot.com/2011/02/defending-jane-seymour.html To quote Gareth Russell:

Personally, I don't agree with Claire's assessment that Jane was a pro-actively virtuous and morally upstanding woman and I definitely don't believe that there's any evidence regarding the old myth that she loved and revered Henry's first wife, Katherine of Aragon. I tend to think the image of Jane as a virtuous "matriarch in the making" (to quote Alison Weir) comes from the fact that simply because she didn't do anything bad or controversial, she must therefore have been good. A lack of malice does not necessarily correlate to being pro-actively virtuous. When I think of Jane, I can't help but remember Stefan Zweig who, writing about another royal woman in the 1930s, said she was "devoid of any vigorous wish to do good, devoid of any inclination towards evil." (I may be paraphrasing slightly!) Even the idea that it was she who rehabilitated Henry with his eldest daughter Mary seems to me to be rubbish, since Jane neither wrote to Mary nor did anything to alleviate her suffering when her father and Lord Cromwell were psychologically torturing her into submitting to the Act of Supremacy in 1536. Her gift of a diamond ring to Mary after the submission was touching, yes, but it was all part of the aristocratic feminine culture of gift-giving. It was standard, not a sign of deeper emotion and above all else, Jane had passively beheld Mary's anguish in the months beforehand. Jane may have liked Mary, but she certainly wasn't her champion! Anyway, I digress! To me, Jane Seymour was quite simply average - neither exceptionally virtuous, nor exceptionally duplicitous.

Julygirl wrote:Today is the day she died in childbirth after giving Henry his much sought after son. It was a merciful death considering had she lived she may have ended up like Henry's other wives.

I doubt that Henry would have harmed Jane. She had given him a son, after all. He would not have wanted to risk tainting Edward's legitimacy by accusing his mother of adultery. The man could be cruel but he was also an astute politician. I think it is often forgotten that Henry would have had absolutely no evidence that a woman could hold the throne of England. As far as he knew, a queen regnant would lead to nothing but discord at best and civil war at worst. The idea is of course absolutely sexist, but this was the time Henry lived in...and it should be recalled that even his daughter Elizabeth, as brilliant as she was, had difficulty holding the throne. Her troubles were not intrinsically due to her sex, of course, and her country's religious turmoil should not be ignored. But I suspect that there would have been fewer uprisings against a King than a Queen. Unfair? Yes. It is absolutely a sign of the backwards notion of the time of the day. But even if Henry was the most forward thinking man of his time, I would mark him as a poor king if he was willing to risk decades of war just to push his modern agenda. And that was how things were, as far as he could have predicted them: unless he wanted to leave his nation with a sequel to the War of the Roses, he would need a son.

The fates of the queens Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn are perhaps better understood as indicators that Henry could be a cold-blooded politician, rather than signs that he was but a hot-blooded murderer.

Long story short: I wager that had she survived, Jane would have had to endure Henry's affairs but none of these would have escalated into her being decapitated or divorced.

Great reflections! Thank YOU!