When we were children he used to torment all three of us: Sybilla, Amelia and myself. Sybilla, three years older than him, could run fast enough to get away, Amelia would dissolve into the easy tears of the baby of the family; only I would oppose him. I did not hit him back when he pinched me or pulled my hair. I did not lash out when he cornered me in the stable yard or a dark corner. I just gritted my teeth and when he hurt me, I did not cry. Not even when he bruised my thin little-girl wrists, not even when he drew blood with a stone thrown at my head. I never cried, I never begged him to stop. I learned to use silence and endurance as my greatest weapons against him. His threat and his power was that he would hurt me. My power was that I dared to act as if he could not. I learned that I could endure anything a boy could do to me. Later, I learned that I could survive anything that a man might do to me. Later still I knew that he was a tyrant and he still did not frighten me. I have learned the power of surviving.

When I was older and watched his gentleness and his command of Amelia and his pleasant respect to my mother I realised that my stubbornness, my obstinacy, had created this constant trouble between us. He dominated my father, imprisoned him in his own bedroom, usurped him. He did all this with the blessing of my mother and with a proud sense of his own righteousness. He allied with Sybilla’s husband, two ambitious princelings together, and so he still rules Sybilla, even after her marriage. He and my mother have forged themselves into a powerful partnership, a couple to rule Juliers-Cleves. They command Amelia; but I could not be dominated or patronised. I would not be babied or ruled. For him I became an itch that he had to scratch. If I had wept, or begged, if I had collapsed like a girl or clung like a woman he could have forgiven me, adopted me, taken me under his protection and cared for me. I would have been his little pet, as Amelia is: his sweetheart, the sister that he guards and keeps safe.

But by the time I understood all this it was too late. He was locked into his frustrated irritation with me and I had learned the joy of stubbornly surviving, despite all odds, and going my own way. He tried to make a slave of me, but all he did was teach me a longing to be free. I desired my freedom as other girls desire marriage. I dreamed of freedom as other girls dream of a lover.

This marriage is my escape from him. As Queen of England I command a fortune greater than his, I rule a country bigger than Cleves, infinitely more populous and powerful. I shall know the King of France as an equal, I am stepmother to a granddaughter of Spain, my name will be spoken in the courts of Europe and if I have a son he will be brother to the King of England and perhaps king himself. This marriage is my victory and my freedom. But as Henry shifts heavily in the bed and sighs again like a weary old man, not like a bridegroom, I know, as I have known all along, that I have exchanged one difficult man for another. I shall have to learn how to evade the anger of this new man, and how to survive him.