Sending babies away to be married

It's a common theme that royal women were expected to be married off or be subjected to various marriage proposals to foreign kingdoms, since the medieval times up until the late 20th century.

In the medieval times, it is unusual if a royal woman, especially a daughter of a king, was still unmarried by the age of 20. Like for example, Isabella of England, eldest daughter of Edward III, married Enguerrand VII, Lord of Coucy, when she was already 33, which was quite a surprise back then considering that she was Edward III's eldest daughter, and also considering that her surviving younger sisters, Mary and Margaret were married before the ages of 18. Another example was Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and sister of Henry IV of England, and therefore a granddaughter of Edward III. She was married to John I of Portugal when she was 27, and thought to be too old to be a bride and was questioned if she could bear the king's children, fortunately she did, becoming the mother of the "Illustrious Generation" in Portugal.

There were several cases of royal women who didn't adjusted to their married life in another kingdom. A notable example of this was Margaret of England, the grandmother of Margaret, Maid of Norway, who married King Alexander III of Scotland when she was just 11. She disliked Edinburgh Castle, complained about the Scottish climate, and missed England and her relatives there, and she wanted to visit them, though her request was not granted as the Scots feared that she would never return back.

Of course, there were several royal women who got married, but then, was widowed immediately, the most well-known case was Catherine of Aragon, daughter of the "Catholic Monarchs", Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. Catherine married Arthur, Prince of Wales, eldest son and heir of Henry VII, when she was 15. The couple were possibly in love, evidenced by their exchanged letters before they got married, though their marriage was cut short by Arthur's death in 1502. After Arthur's death, there was a period of time when Henry VII considered marrying Catherine himself when he was widowed with the death of his wife, Elizabeth of York, though her father opposed it. And when Henry VII died and his second son Henry VIII took the throne, he married Catherine less than two months after he became king, and we all know what happened next.

And then, there was the case of Henry VII's own mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort. She had four marriages, her first one was to John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk, in 1450, when she was just seven years old, though that marriage got annulled in 1453. The most egregious of all her four marriages was her second marriage, to Edmund Tudor, 1st Earl of Richmond. She was 12 when she married him, and Edmund was 25, and he didn't bothered to wait for his young wife to come of age and immediately consummated their marriage, resulting into the birth of their son, Henry Tudor, after Edmund died, and Margaret was only 13 when she gave birth to the future Henry VII, and the birth was so dangerous that Margaret could not haveany more children after Henry, despite having two more marriages to Sir Henry Stafford, who died in 1471, and to Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby, who died in 1504.

There were also some cases that royal women literally wept when they got married, such in the case of Mary II of England, when she found out that she would marry her first cousin, William III, Prince of Orange, she wept and continously so during their marriage ceremony, but of course, their marriage became very important for political partnership. And we can't forget, those royal women who really want to get married, and were only married late into their lives, the most notable case being Mary I of England, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. Being Henry's daughter, she was subjected to various marriage plans early on, most notably to her cousin, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, though the proposal was broken off as Charles didn't want to wait until Mary came of age, and also to her another first cousin, James V of Scotland, during the late 1520s, before Henry annulled his marriage with Catherine. As years passed by, Mary had wanted to be married and have children, and was only able to be married to Charles' son and successor, Philip II of Spain, when she was already been Queen of England, though her dreams of having children ended when she died in 1558, after experiencing several false pregnancy alarms.

As royal women were pressured to be married and have children, I personally admired those royal women who refused to get married, for one reason or another. The most notable example was Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Despite receiving so many marriage proposals to various foreign princes and English nobles, she never married, possibly stemming from her own personal experiences, such as her mother's execution when she was just two years old (she didn't want to repeat the same fate as her mother did), having a husband who would usurp the royal power for himself (this became a case to her half-sister, Mary I, who made her husband Philip II of Spain to be her king consort and co-ruler), and of course, she couldn't marry the man she wanted to marry, her own childhood friend and royal favourite, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, as marriage between them would be controversial as Robert was previously married (and his wife Amy Dudley was rumoured to be murdered when she died after falling down from the stairs), and his rank as a nobleman is not good enough for the Queen of England, and therefore, Elizabeth became known as "the Virgin Queen", and refused to name her heir until she died.

For today's time, it became much better that royal women, and basically all royals in general, were free to marry anyone they wanted to marry, and of course, there were no longer child or teenage marriages happening in royal families in today's world.