The king was historically anointed five times – on his head, breast, hands, back and elbows – but for his consort it would only be the head, hands and breast, and nowadays it is only the head.
She is anointed, but not in so many places.” “But when the queen was anointed, that same idea that she had been transformed was not there. “The monarch, for a long time, right up to Queen Anne, was understood to have healing powers on account of the anointing,” with the oil conferring “semi-divine qualities”. “This was the moment when the man became king,” Dr Hunt says. “Only the king swears the oath, not the queen,” and he is then anointed, which is “the most important part of the coronation, the bit that has a kind of supernatural value still, and was then understood to affect real change”. However, when Henry VIII became king in less volatile circumstances in 1509, he was crowned traditionally with Catherine of Aragon, in a visual display of “a Tudor dynasty being established”. Their marriage would draw together the warring houses of York and Lancaster, but Henry’s claim to the throne was seen as weak, and “the successional dynasty was slightly problematic”.ĭr Hunt says that his being crowned alone was “kind of a statement that he was legitimate” alone, with no attention being drawn to his future queen, who was the daughter of a Yorkist king and the sister of those lost Princes in the Tower. Henry VII was crowned in October 1485, just a few months before he married Elizabeth of York, but he chose not to wait for his wife to join him. “It’s the same ritual that’s been used for hundreds and hundreds of years, but it has always been adapted according to particular contexts and circumstances.” “There seems to be a political decision sometimes around the crowning of a consort,” says Dr Hunt. (Photo: The Print Collector/Getty/Hulton Archive)īut the urgency to communicate a different message can take precedence.
Elizabeth of York (1466-1503), the Queen Consort of King Henry VII.
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