Mary the Twisted Queen by sallyxwang on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

Mary I of England was the only child and daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, she was the first female ruler in English history to exercise king's right and was known for persecuting protestants by massive burning, because of her religious persecutions she became the hated ruler and earned the nickname as "Bloody Mary".
However, when looking at her teenage experience, you might find a reason why she decided to restore Catholicism and brutally burn the protestants. Mary was a talented little princess who was the pride of her parents, she had everyone's affection and was been taught under the traditional Catholic faith. One day, her father felt that a girl could not inherit the throne and so he wanted a son, king Henry went through a tough annulment by breaking away from pope and married Anne Boleyn (Mary's stepmom), suddenly Mary lost her status as a princess, she was known as the king's bastard daughter and was addressed as Lady Mary, her mother too lost her rightful place as queen and got the title as "Dowager Princess" (a title she had when she became Arthur's widow) and mother & daughter never saw each other again. At the age of 17, Mary was rejected by her father, made a servant to her newborn sister Elizabeth and was humiliated by her stepmom (it was partly true so anne's fans pls don't hate me) and the other male courtiers, she was forced to sign the oath to accept her bastard status. Young Mary seemed to lost everything she had: rightful status, parents' affection, chance of a fruitful marriage, and even more importantly the Catholic faith (as the religion was changed to Church of England at that time). Even after the execution of her stepmom she was never again close to her father, and even when she was the queen and finally got a chance to marry a man, she was not benefited from it... due to her sad teenage experience, Mary probably believed firmly that Catholic religion was the only true religion on Earth, while Protestant religion only brought disasters and misfortunes on her self, she decided to get everything she owned once she had the right... in the end, the burning of protestants only made her evil and hateful, and when she passed away at age of 42, she had no heirs or any happiness and died a bitter woman. In the end, Mary was a supposedly fairy tale princess whose life was twisted and got ruined by her father's annulment.
The artwork I created was to show Mary's twisted life, on the left I depicted her as a lovely little princess who is very happy and hopeful at her future, while on the right is her future self, an angry queen who wants to spread her vengeance through kingdom.
The big golden cross at the center is a Catholic cross, and the cross was roughly based on the one I saw on google photo haha~ Below are the victims who suffered Marian executions, and those figures were based on the ones on several historical drawings. The artwork overall was to show Mary's transformation from childhood to later years.
Also here I want to celebrate my one year anniversary in creating my own deviantart page. In one year I had created a little more than 40 artworks and got 14 followers. I sincerely thank those who support and follow me and I will create more amazing works in the future!