The fertility crisis of Renaissance kings was a defining challenge that shaped the course of European history. Monarchs like Henry VIII faced immense pressure to produce male heirs, ensuring the stability of their dynasties. With limited medical knowledge and deep-rooted beliefs about fertility, these rulers often blamed their wives for childlessness, leading to a cycle of annulments, political alliances, and religious upheaval.
The desperate pursuit of succession exposed the fragility of royal power, influencing not only personal lives but also national policies. Understanding the fertility crisis of Renaissance kings provides valuable insight into the societal norms, medical misconceptions, and political turmoil of the era.
Rough transcript of Henry VIII Wasn’t Alone: The Fertility Crisis of Renaissance Kings
 Today we’re gonna talk about something a little different, and that is the fertility issues of kings in the 16th century and late 15th century. This is something that we think about Henry VIII and his need for a male heir, obviously, and how he broke apart the church and everything like that.
But Henry was not unique in his fertility challenges. Kings across Europe were dealing with fertility issues. Some had much potentially worse consequences, like in France, which we’re gonna talk about a lot because they had Salic law, which meant that legally a woman could not inherit.
It wasn’t like in England where it was just precedent, but it was actually legal in France that a woman could not inherit the throne. So there was a lot more pressure on women on Queens and on men to have heirs on Kings to have heirs. We’re gonna talk about that.
So Henry VIII is famous of course, for marrying six times in his quest for a male heir. In the 1500’s, a King’s legacy depended on leaving a son to carry the dynasty and Henry’s obsessive drive for a son even breaking from the Catholic church to divorce and remarry is legendary, but his fears were not unique.
Across Renaissance Europe, monarchs, fretted over fertility and succession. In particular, French kings, like I said, faced intense pressure under Salic law, which barred women from inheriting the throne. Failing to produce the son could plunge a kingdom into crisis.
This episode we’ll talk about how royal fertility struggles were a recurring theme for European kings, not just Henry VIII’s personal drama and how the stakes were especially high in France. So in France, Salic law shaped royal succession for centuries. This rule was rooted in an old Frankish code and it excluded women, and those descended through the female line from the French throne.
French Royal Succession and Salic Law
While kingdoms like England or Spain until the 18th century could accept a daughter if no sons were available, France had no such fallback. A French king had to have a son or else a more distant male relative would inherit, potentially igniting conflict.
For example, when King Charles IV died in 1328, leaving only a daughter, French nobles invoked the principle that a woman could not succeed passing the crown to a cousin Philip of Valois over the claim of Charles’s nephew King Edward III of England, who was via the female line. And thus began the Hundred Years’ War, which showed how the lack of a male heir could spark decades of war over the French crown.
Fast forward to the late 16th century and the same anxiety loomed. By 1584, the French Valois dynasty had no surviving son, meaning that the Protestant Henry of Navarre was heir presumptive under Salic law. A prospect so contentious that it fueled the final war of the three Henrys in the French wars of religion.
The Salic law made succession a high-stakes affair in France, heightening the pressure on kings to produce sons to avert disputes and maintain stability. Louis XII of France offers a vivid example of these pressures in action. Louis came to the throne in 1498 with one glaring problem. He had no children from his marriage to Joan of France.
Louis XII and Anne of Brittany’s Tragic Struggles
Desperate to secure an heir and the political prize of Brittany, Louis persuaded Pope Alexander VI to annul that marriage so that he could wed Anne of Brittany, the widowed queen of his predecessor. Anne was a valuable bride. She was the Duchess of Brittany, but more importantly, all hopes for a male heir now rested on her.
Anne of Brittany was still only in her twenties, and she embarked on a relentless cycle of pregnancies in pursuit of a dauphin. She conceived easily and frequently, but heartbreak followed time and time again.
Contemporary accounts note that Anne was pregnant at least 11 times. God bless her. Yet only two daughters survived to adulthood, just tragic. She and Louis lost multiple infants, including at least three newborn sons who died shortly afterbirth or were stillborn. It, of course, sounds a lot like Katherine of Aragon, huh?
Each tragedy was not only a personal loss, but also a political blow. The King’s mother-in-law, Louise of Savoy, also Anne of Brittany’s mother had a vested interest in this. Her own son, Francis of Angoulême, stood next in line if Louis died without male issue. Rumors swirled that Louise rejoiced at Anne’s misfortunes and even resorted to witchcraft to eliminate Anne’s sons.
I highly doubt that she would wish that on her daughter such personal tragedy. So that’s likely apocryphal. But it does show how dynastic stakes turned the royal nursery into a political battlefield.
When Anne’s final pregnancies yielded no surviving sons. The political fallout was significant. Brittany remained united with France through Anne’s daughters. The elder Claude married the heir Francis, but Louis VII would die in 1515 without a male heir ending his line. The crown passed to his cousin as Francis I showing how Salic law shunted the throne to a new branch when the male line failed.
Louis and Anne’s saga shows the immense pressure on Queens to bear sons and the national anxiety that swelled with each failed attempt. We think about Katherine Aragon and Anne Boleyn and you know that there’s been so many books written about Henry VIII and his blood type and did this cause it and what caused it, and it’s just really interesting that this is something that affected kings in other places as well. So imagine that Anne of Brittany, all of those pregnancies, just heartbreaking.
Catherine de’ Medici’s Fertility Journey
If Louis XII’s story highlighted the difficulty of having a son, the saga of Catherine de’ Medici shows that even having many sons was no guarantee of dynastic security. Catherine was, of course, an Italian noble woman, married to the future Henry II of France in 1533.
For the first 10 years of their marriage, Catherine failed to conceive, a very dangerous situation for a queen. By 1536, Henry had become heir to the throne, making Catherine’s childlessness a pressing issue. People whispered that the marriage might be annulled due to her infertility, and some at court advised that Henry repudiate Catherine to secure an heir.
Indeed, the penalty for a barren queen in that era could be annulment or banishment to a convent, for example, which is why I did an episode years ago on the precedent for divorce from Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. Given everything that was going on in France, Henry probably thought it was gonna be super easy to get an annulment. Of course it wasn’t. But this shows that Queens in France especially had a really precarious position there.
So Catherine’s position grew so precarious that she resorted to every known fertility trick in the book, she applied folk remedies like placing cow dung and powdered stags’ antlers on her source of life. And even drank mules’ urine in hopes of curing her barrenness.
The pressure wasn’t solely on Catherine either. To test the issue, Henry took a mistress who promptly bore him an illegitimate daughter in 1538, proving that Henry was fertile and intensifying the blame on Catherine. Does this sound familiar with Henry VIII and Henry Fitzroy? Right. So many parallels.
Miraculously, Catherine’s fortunes turned. In January 1544, she finally gave birth to a son, the future Francis II. Once that first hurdle was cleared, more children followed in quick succession. Guided by the royal physician Jean Fernel, who reportedly identified subtle anatomical issues and offered advice, though he denied it later.
Catherine went on to bear 10 children, of whom seven, including three sons, survived infancy. By 1559, when Henry II died in a jousting accident, Catherine had provided three young kings, Francis II, Charles I, and Henry III and two daughters who became Queens. It seemed the Valois dynasty was secure with heirs to spare.
Catherine as Queen Mother would even be hailed as the most important woman in Europe for her role in preserving the Valois line during the tumultuous Wars of Religion. However, history is nothing if not ironic, and this played out. Despite Catherine’s remarkable brood of sons, not one produced a male heir of his own.
Her eldest Francis II died in 1560 at age 16, childless. The second Charles I died in 1574, leaving only a daughter by 1584. Catherine’s youngest son, Henry III, had no heir and his last brother had died, a devastating blow. Catherine described as “living long enough to see so many people die before me”.
Under Salic law, the heir presumptive now became the head of the Bourbon branch, Henry of Navarre, the future Henry IV. This succession complicated by Henry of Navarre’s Protestant faith ignited a political and religious crisis. The Catholic League refused to accept a Protestant king leading to renewed civil war. Henry III was assassinated in 1589, and this was after he had named Navarre as his successor and this left France in a succession war until Navarre agreed to convert to Catholicism.
Thus, having many sons did not prevent a succession crisis. It merely postponed it. Catherine’s initial infertility almost cost her her crown, and decades later, the extinction of her male line plunged France into turmoil. Her story shows both sides of fertility anxieties, the desperation to have an heir and the cruel reality that even a quiver full of sons could still end in dynastic failure.
These royal struggles occurred in a time of limited medical understanding. Renaissance medical beliefs about fertility were riddled with misconceptions, often placing the blame squarely and unfairly on the woman. When couples failed to conceive, a queen who did not produce children was typically labeled barren, and its seldom occurred to contemporaries that the king could be the infertile party.
In Catherine de’ Medici’s case, modern analyses suggest that Henry II may have had a condition called hypospadias impairing conception, but in the 16th century, Catherine bore the brunt of the blame. Royal couples under pressure would try a mix of folk remedies, religious interventions, and early medical advice to overcome fertility. We’ve seen how Catherine de’ Medici tried exotic concoctions like animal dung, and urine tonics, etc
Likewise, many believed in the power of prayer and pilgrimage. Kings and queens would implore patron saints for an heir, donate to shrines or wear charms, thought to enhance fertility. For example, Katherine of Aragon undertook pilgrimages to pray for sons, and similarly, French royals invoked saints like Saint Anne, the Virgin Mary’s mother for help in conceiving royal physicians, began to play an increasingly important role.
Though their treatments were hit or miss, the doctors would examine the king and queen for physical problems, often very cautiously given the sensitivity of questioning a monarch’s virility, and recommend adjustments. In the one example of Catherine de Medici, her doctor Fernel possibly advised the royal couple on a different sexual technique or position to compensate for Henry’s issue. After observing slight abnormalities in their anatomy, whether by luck or Fernel’s counsel, Catherine of course, conceived shortly thereafter.
Physicians also monitored pregnancies and advised on diet and regimen, but they had no real tools to treat recurrent miscarriages or genetic issues. Often the diagnosis for repeated failure was simply God’s will. This led to quasi-spiritual remedies.
Kings would issue extra alms or consult astrologers and soothsayers for good times to conceive. Queens might be put on bedrest, engage in ritual fasts or feasts, thought to improve womb warmth or partake in the era’s version of fertility. Diets with dishes like rabbit or special herbs believed to stimulate conception.
Remember, this was also during a period when it was forbidden to have sexual intercourse on certain religious days, so, during lent, during fast days. So we now understand ovulation and timing, everything like that, but they of course didn’t.
And so knocking out a third of the days when you could even try certainly wasn’t helping the intense scrutiny of queens was a constant. Their bodies were effectively considered state property closely watched for any sign of pregnancy. Courtiers studied a queen’s complexion, her appetite, even her urine for clues.
False pregnancies or miscarriages weren’t just personal tragedies, but they were public events whispered about in every court in Europe. So royal couples tried everything that their world offered, science, superstition, and prayer under immense pressure to produce heirs. And when those efforts failed, it was usually the queen who is judged harshly.
Philip II of Spain’s Marital Endeavors
Royal fertility woes were a pan-European phenomenon. Other monarchs watched the dramas in England and France and knew “There, but for the grace of God go I“. In Spain, for example, Philip II Henry VIII’s contemporary later husband of Mary I injured his own long quest for a male heir.
Philip married four times in pursuit of securing the Habsburg lineage in Spain. Despite siring children, he suffered heartbreak and anxiety over the succession for decades. His first wife, Maria of Portugal, bore him one son, Don Carlos, but died in childbirth. That son was sickly and died young.
His second marriage to Mary Tudor produced no children. A third wife gave him only daughters and died at age 23 after miscarriages and a premature birth. When his only male heir Don Carlos died young in 1568, Philip urgently arranged for a fourth marriage, this time to his niece Anna of Austria, explicitly to beget a son. Courtiers, joked quietly that the 41-year-old king visited his 20-year-old bride’s bed chamber with tireless determination.
The effort paid off, but only after multiple tragedies. Anna bore four children who died in infancy, three sons and a daughter before finally giving birth to the future Philip III. In 1578, Philip II at last secure in his succession, famously said that he would not marry again after Anna’s death. The stress of these dynastic stakes had taken a toll. So despite four wives and eight children, Philip was plagued with concern for the succession for most of his reign.
Habsburg Succession Challenges
Meanwhile, in the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg emperors also faced succession anxieties. Maximilian I who straddled the late 15th and early 16th centuries had early success in producing an heir. His son, Philip was known as Philip the Fair, but fate intervened cruelly.
Maximilian’s beloved first wife Mary of Burgundy, died young and his attempts at remarriage, including a union with Bianca Sforza, yielded no further legitimate children. The future of the Hapsburg Dynasty came to rest entirely on Philip.
When Philip the Fair died unexpectedly at age 28 in 1506, Maximilian was left with two very young Hapsburg grandchildren, Philip’s children who would become the emperor, Charles V and Archduke Ferdinand.
During those years, the aging Maximilian fretted that the glory of his lineage might unravel. He even attempted to secure rights for his daughter, Philip’s sister, Margaret of Austria, to act as Regent, and he negotiated marriages that would protect his grandchildren’s inheritance.
Ultimately, the Hapsburg legacy injured through Charles V, but Maximilian’s late life is a formidable empire scouring Europe for reliances and guardianships to safeguard his bloodline. Acutely aware that one twist of fate could extinguish his entire house. Similarly, a century later, Maximilian II and others would face pressure to produce multiple sons to split vast realms, or continue elective titles in smaller kingdoms too.
Broader European Succession Crises
Such issues arose the Kings of Poland, Lithuania, for example, frequently died without sons leading to elections and foreign candidates vying for the crown in Scotland. King James V’s death in 1542 left an infant, queen Mary, Queen of Scots on the throne, triggering power struggles and regencies time and again across Europe.
The lack of a male heir was a catalyst for diplomatic scrambling. Marriages were arranged, treaties struck or broken. Sometimes thrones were even offered to distant relatives to avoid falling into rival hands. The broader lesson is that Henry VIII’s concerns were shared by his peers from Spain to the Empire succession anxieties shaped royal behavior led to multiple marriages and influenced international politics throughout the Renaissance.
When royal fertility failed, the consequences could be dire for kingdoms, often leading to instability or war. We’ve already seen how France’s lack of a male heir in 1328 sparked the Hundred Years’ War as the English and French royal families battled over the succession. Similarly, the end of the Valois line in 1589 plunged France into a succession crisis amid its civil wars.
These are dramatic examples, but there were many other instances in which an heir shortage upended the political order. A monarch’s death without a son or a clear successor was one of the most dangerous moments a realm could face. It opened the door to rival claimants power, hungry nobles, and foreign intervention.
Some succession crises were resolved peacefully, but not without anxiety. England itself avoided war when Henry VIII died, leaving a young son, Edward VI and two daughters. But after Edward’s early death, a brief dispute, the attempt to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne over Mary Tudor showed how quickly factions could mobilize when the succession was in question.
England had fresh memories of the Wars of the Roses in the 15th century. A civil war fueled in part by questions of legitimacy and rival claims. When the lines of succession grew tangled, that Civil War taught the Tudors that uncertain succession could mean national catastrophe.
This specter haunted Henry VIII and explains much of his obsession with securing a male heir. He feared a repeat of the dynastic warfare that had brought his father to power. In Spain later on, the lack of a male heir to King Charles II in 1700 would ignite the massive war of Spanish succession.
Earlier, a 16th century example in Eastern Europe, the Jagiellonian dynasty in Poland and Hungary ran into succession troubles when Kings died without sons leading to those crowns, passing to the Hapsburgs and sparking conflicts over the inheritance of Hungary.
Often these dynastic crises forced shifting alliances and diplomatic maneuvers. Other powers would endorse one claimant or another using succession disputes as an opportunity to expand their influence. For instance, during France’s Wars of Religion, Spain’s Philip II supported the Catholic League against Henry of Navarre in hopes of preventing a Protestant on the French throne.
Some even touted Philip’s daughter, the Infanta Isabella, as a candidate since she was the granddaughter of Henry II, only to be disqualified by Salic law. The resolution of that crisis, Henry of Navarre’s, eventual kingship as Henry IV required not just military victory, but also careful political compromise, Henry’s conversion to Catholicism to be accepted.
In other cases, personal unions of crowns were broken or formed depending on heir availability. The union of Castile and Aragon under Ferdinand and Isabella, for example, nearly fell apart when their only son died. It was preserved through their daughter, Joanna, but of course she is known as Joanna The Mad and was seen as not capable of governing, and that led to Habsburg rule in Spain.
In the Holy Roman Empire, the elective nature meant that if an emperor had no son, the empire could elect a different dynasty. A scenario that the Hapsburgs staved off by diligently producing heirs or arranging for the election of a relative like Maximilian did for his grandson, Charles V.
So fertility failures had massive political ripples. A king’s bedroom and the nursery might determine whether kingdoms emerged, wars erupted or dynasties changed. Behind grand political events were often very personal, tragic stories of marriages, miscarriages, and infant losses. When those personal struggles went badly, they could destabilize nations.
European history is dotted with regencies successions and conflicts. All trace back to fundamental uncertainty of reproduction in an age before modern medicine. Monarchs and their ministers were keenly aware of this uncertainty, which is why so much statecraft, marriages, treaties, even divorce, centered on the need for heirs.
Conclusion: A Shared Royal Struggle
The anxiety that Henry VIII felt was shared by his contemporaries and the destinies of nations often hung in the same hope that a healthy prince would be born and survive to adulthood. By looking beyond the infamous story of Henry VIII, we find that the obsession with securing a male heir was a common thread linking Renaissance monarchs.
Henry’s drastic measures, multiple marriages, executions, and a religious schism made his case extreme, but at root, his worries were the same as those of Louis XII, Francis I, Philip II, and so many others. These rulers lived in a world where the death of a king without a son could invite chaos or conquest.
France’s Salic law meant that not having a son was almost unthinkable. A daughter simply would not do, raising the stakes even higher. The examples of France’s Valois dynasty, Spain’s, Hapsburg Kings and the Holy Roman Emperors all show that Henry VIII was far from alone in fearing a succession crisis. In fact, one could argue that Henry was just one player in a broader European drama where every King’s fertility was a matter of state security.
Showing these parallel stories challenges the notion that Henry’s situation was unique across Renaissance Europe. The cradle and the grave were perilously close high infant mortality. Maternal mortality made every royal birth a triumph and every failed pregnancy a source of dread. So when we picture Henry VIII brooding over his lack of a son, we should remember that he was in distinguished if unhappy company. The kings of France, Spain, and the Empire and beyond, all grappled with the same fears.
In the end, the story of Renaissance monarchs is a collective one, a story of dynasties secured and lost in the royal bed chamber of great power hanging on fragile newborn life and of an era when the quest foreign heir was truly a king’s paramount duty and often his deepest sorrow.
So we’ll leave it there, my friend. I wanted to explore that topic just because I just see so much about the idea that Henry was unique, that Henry was the one who was struggling with this issue. And the more you read and you read about these other people, like everybody was struggling with this issue. It’s a very human, human thing to be struggling with.
Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast,  the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop.
She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 30 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history (how exciting when she got to interview Alison for the first time!). In addition to history, she is passionate about travel, and has lived in 3 countries and 4 states (not counting her perpetual state of confusion), and her family (who help her host her YouTube channel occasionally).
