The Making of “Wives of Agency” (Progress Update #3)

Update

Since my last update, I’ve been doing more reading into the history of these Tudor women, especially looking into Catherine of Aragon, learning about her, writing some descriptions for her events, and finding more media that either shows her or talks about her. Label writing is not always easy, it is very different than writing traditional research like essays, in fact, much of the things you would want to include in an essay are specifically not important in labels, and much of what would be considered “common knowledge” to professionals is not for the audience. While this is a preliminary draft, here are a few of the events I have written for Catherine of Aragon and in some cases a creative commons image to accompany it:

• 1485 – Catherine of Aragon is Born: Catherine of Aragon was the fifth child of Spanish rulers, Ferdinand and Isabella. This meant it was unlikely she would ever become Queen of Aragon. Her best chance at success was to be used in a political marriage to a crown prince of another kingdom.
• 1493 – Catherine of Aragon as a Child: Catherine’s education was impressive for a girl due to her status as a princess. She was taught manners, philosophy, needlework, Latin, and French. It is assumed she would have also understood some Spanish or Catalan, and eventually learned English from living in England later in life. 

• 1501 – Sent to England: Fifteen year old Catherine is sent from her homeland of Spain to live in England with her fiance, Arthur, crown prince of England. 
• 1501 – Catherine of Aragon marries Prince Arthur: The royal wedding between Arthur, Prince of Wales, and Catherine, Princess of Aragon, was one of celebration. The wedding was full of decorations, guests, music, and dancing. Arthur was easily exhausted by the events so it is unlikely they consummated their marriage that night or even later during their marriage. 

Challenges

One of my greatest challenges right now is balancing the research for the events, writing of the descriptions, finding media, and eventually inputting it into the timeline software. I could easily spend a year working on this project, but I’ve instead got a few weeks to turn these plans into a product. While it is fun to create these update posts, sometimes I feel like it is distracting me from making more progress on the project itself.

Next Step

The next step is very obviously continuing to make progress on research, writing, media searching, and inputting. While it is not mechanically difficult work, it takes a lot of thought, patience, and time to accomplish. Likely the next update will have a similar visual progress of more event description drafts and potential images to go with them.