Episode Details

Mary I of England burned nearly three hundred Protestants at the stake and earned the name Bloody Mary. But the woman behind the legend was a devout Catholic princess who watched her mother humiliated, her parents' marriage annulled, and her own legitimacy stripped away before she fought her way to a throne that few expected her to reach.

This episode traces Mary from her childhood as the adored daughter of Henry VIII through her years of disgrace under Anne Boleyn, her improbable accession, and the religious persecutions that defined her reign.

• She was the first woman to rule England in her own right, not as regent or consort
• She burned approximately 280 Protestants during her five-year reign, earning the name Bloody Mary
• She married Philip II of Spain in a deeply unpopular union that produced no heir
• She was declared illegitimate by her own father after he annulled his marriage to her mother Catherine of Aragon