Kate's link to The White Queen

Kate, Duchess of Cambridge and Elizabeth Woodville have a bit more in common than the fact that they're both labeled commoners in the strange language that tells royal history.  Ambitious mothers might be another strand that draws them together and that, allied with happy home lives as they grew up, produced two women who both knew their own minds and how to make happy lives for themselves as adults.  But one thing they have in common, a trait shared by very few other queen consorts or queens in waiting, comes down to age.  Both Kate and Elizabeth are older than their royal husbands.

 

Kissing an older woman - William and Kate do the now traditional balcony snog on their wedding day in April 2011

Elizabeth Woodville wasn't the first bride to have been born before her king.  That prize went to Eleanor of Aquitaine who was eleven years older than second husband, Henry II of England.  Eleanor was thirty and her bridegroom was nineteen when they married in Poitiers on May 18th 1152.  Her marriage to the King of France, Louis VII, had been annulled just two months earlier. 

Eleanor of Aquitaine portrayed here with her youngest son from her marriage to Henry II.  By the time John was born, the couple had got right royal rows down to a fine art

 

But the attraction each had for the other was strong and not just on a physical level.  Henry got an older, wiser, wealthier wife and a stronghold in the south of France.  He also stopped this ambitious, determined and strong willed woman throwing in her lot with anyone else and so stopped a potential threat to his plans to rule England before they got going.  Eleanor got a stronghold in the north of Europe and the chance to carve her court of love in a part of the world as yet untouched by her brand of chivalry.  And with Henry all but guaranteed the English throne by 1152, she knew she was getting another crown and a whole kingdom to rule.

Eleanor of Aquitaine was queen of France then queen of England and the first royal consort to be older than her husband

 

But normal service was resumed after that and princesses got younger while kings got older for the next two hundred years.  But in 1360 all that changed when the heir to the throne married a woman who was not only two years older than him but had already been married twice and had one husband still alive.

 

Joan, the fair maid of Kent, was in line to be queen of England but like a later would be consort, the fact she had two previous husbands didn't make her popular with her future royal in laws

 

Edward, the Black Prince was the eldest son of Edward III and the most famous knight in Europe.  And with a crown coming his way and a reputation as a soldier and a crusader, he was definitely up there on the eligible bachelors' list of the 1350s.  He apparently had a soft spot for a third cousin called Joan but she had been married before - twice.  She'd kept the first hubby a secret while he went off crusading but forgot to mention him when it was suggested she marry someone else.  And when husband number one returned to England he asked for his wife back, much to the annoyance of the second Mr Joan.  She ended up with her original spouse but when he died, the Black Prince wanted to marry her and take on her four children regardless of the second husband still being alive.  Marry they did and two more sons were born but by the time Edward III died, the Black Prince was dead as was his eldest child with Joan and their ten year old second son became Richard II.  The fact that Joan was two years older than her husband was the least of the worries the royal family had about her.

 

Joan, the fair maid of Kent seen here in a stained glass window at St Mary the Virgin church in Ware, Hertfordshire.  The man with her is Archbishop Anselm and not one of her three husbands

(photo Barking Tigs)

Richard II took up where his dad had left off and married an older woman.  Anne of Bohemia was the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor and eight months the senior of the man who made her a queen.  When Anne and Richard married in 1382 he had just turned sixteen meaning that their ages were the same on the marriage record even though his new queen turned seventeen not long afterwards.  Their wedding happened just a year after the Peasant's Revolt where the young king had proved himself through his handling of complex politics and popular uprisings.  The couple seemed fond of one another but had no children.  His wife was hugely popular, which makes her almost non appearance in British history surprising, but her death in 1394 destabilized her husband who had already run into trouble with his lords because of his high handed manner.  The loss of his calm queen is seen by some as the beginning of the end for Richard II.

 

Anne of Bohemia was eight months older than her husband, Richard II

And then we come to Elizabeth.  Miss Woodville was five years older than her husband, Edward IV, when they married in secret in 1464.  The new queen, aged twenty seven, had to wait several months before she was acknowledged as official consort of the twenty two year old king but acknowledge her he did, much to the surprise of many of his advisers, and the marriage lasted until his death in 1483. 

 

This portrayal of Edward IV and Elizabeth from the time of his reign shows them of much the same age - the five year gap either wasn't evident or wasn't shown

After Elizabeth, another Catherine played older woman to younger husband and with a pretty similar age gap.  Catherine of Aragon was the first of Henry's Kates - and the one the others were named after.  She was five and a half years his senior when they married in 1509.  But then if you marry your older brother's widow you have to expect an age gap.  But Henry's obsession with his grandfather, Edward IV, is often overlooked and there is nothing to suggest that in the case of marriage, Henry wasn't trying to emulate a man he saw as a great English king.  An older wife had worked well for Edward - why shouldn't it do the same for Henry?

Catherine of Aragon - five years older than Henry VIII, she was the only one of his wives to be born before him

 

We all know it didn't and after that he stuck to young lovelies though the only huge age gap between him and a wife came with marriage number five where Catherine Howard was around 25 years her bridegroom's junior.

And so fast forward through hundreds of years of royal history and we have to wait until the 18th century for another wife older than her husband.  Caroline of Ansbach was seven months older than George II who was still a prince when they married in 1705.  It was the same year that the British parliament decided that George's grandmother, Sophia, was a British citizen as were all her descendants.  Sophia was the heir to Queen Anne who was three years into her reign but had no heirs and was unlikely to have any more.  So Georg became British and acquired a wife and the following year was given a British title to complete the package.  He became Duke of Cambridge meaning that Kate isn't the first duchess of that city to be older than the man who will make her queen.

Caroline of Ansbach became Duchess of Cambridge the year after her marriage to the future George II.  They were devoted to one another but Caroline died relatively young in 1737

 



And since then, queens have been younger and their royal husbands older.  But the 21st century brings new demands and the two future kings with older wives.  Prince Charles was famously much older than Diana, Princess of Wales but his second marriage to Camilla Parker Bowles made him the younger partner.  The prince was born fifteen months after the Duchess of Cornwall but as the couple have said that she will be Princess Consort rather than Queen Consort when he takes the throne, it falls to Kate to be the next older woman to wear a crown.

 

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall on their way to a garden party

(photo copyright Clarence House)

Kate will be the sixth queen consort to be older than her king.  In this case, she is five months senior to Prince William, arriving in January 1982 while he was born in June of the same year.  She's the only one of the future queens of Europe to be born before her husband and will be the first queen consort for three hundred years to be older than her monarch.  Just like The White Queen, she's a royal older woman.