ABSTRACT
Elizabeth Tudor was born in the royal palace at Greenwich on 7 September 1533, the child of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. The birth went well for mother and child, and the infant was healthy. Still, Elizabeth's arrival was something of a disappointment since both parents, encouraged in their hopes by royal doctors, midwives and, above all, astrologers, were confidently expecting a son. King Henry VIII already had a healthy daughter, Mary – her mother was his first wife, Katharine of Aragon – and an illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond. To secure the Tudor dynasty, of which he was only the second ruler, what the king most needed was a legitimate, healthy son. When he decided to end his first marriage, to Katharine of Aragon, her failure to provide a healthy male heir was one of Henry's proofs that his first marriage had been against God's law: her failure to produce a healthy male heir demonstrated God's displeasure that Henry had married his elder brother's widow.
