25. Elizabeth’s Creepy Stepfather
When Thomas Seymour’s marriage proposal was rejected by princesses Elizabeth and Mary, he simply moved down the ladder to the next closest royal marital link. He made his moves on their stepmother and the late king’s widow, Katherine Parr, who had been his lover before he ceded her to Henry VIII. They wed within six months of the king’s death – a scandalously brief period of mourning for Parr. Thirteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth, who had rejected Seymour’s marriage proposal, faced a serious problem when he married her stepmother. Elizabeth’s father had chopped off the head of her mother, Anne Boleyn, and now that he too was dead, the princess was a double orphan. Katherine Parr had filled the role of mother when she married Henry VIII, and Elizabeth was raised in her stepmother’s house, Chelsea Manor.
Parr’s marriage to Thomas Seymour brought into that house as a stepfather the man who had sought to marry Elizabeth just a few months earlier. He proved himself an exceptionally creepy stepfather. Katherine Parr had been in love with Seymour since before her marriage to Henry VIII. However, whatever affections he might have felt for her years earlier, he probably married Parr only to get closer to her stepdaughter, Princess Elizabeth, who lived in the dowager queen’s house. Elizabeth was a potential route to power, and perhaps to the crown itself, so Thomas was determined to secure her. He decided that the best way to do that was to seduce the thirteen-year-old old. He got started on that before he had finished unpacking.
