As a child, we all played that little scary game of going in the bathroom with one candle in front of the mirror to say her name three times. Many legends arose about who she was, but who is she?

Do You Remember The Game From Your Childhood?

Bloody Mary is one of the classic spooky games that requires nothing to play except a bathroom. The goal of the game remained the same. Players must try to summon the ghost of Bloody Mary with a lit candle by looking in a bathroom mirror.

The player stares at their reflection while reciting the name Bloody Mary three times. Some other variation says to do it five times. The player is often a volunteer, but if none speaks up, it is often decided by drawing straws, and who has the shortest straw goes in the bathroom.

Some people turn off the lights while others play the game without doing so. However, placing the lit candle in the sink is a requirement, so nothing catches fire around the players or on them.

This exercise is about what people saw in the mirror while focusing as much as possible on their reflections. The Troxler Effect takes form after a short amount of time, focusing on an image, especially a mirror. The brain starts to try to make sense of what it sees, and sometimes, it can deform someone’s face.

But why the ‘Bloody’ and who is ‘Mary?’

The Birth Of A Legend

The game Bloody Mary takes its roots from the historical figure Mary I of England of the Tudor House. She was King Henry VIII and Queen Catherine of Aragon’s daughter and the sole surviving child. She was their only daughter and sister to seven miscarriages and stillbirths that her mother suffered through.

Mary was baptized into the Catholic Church only three days after birth and had her confirmation done as an infant. Her mother was a devoted Catholic, and Mary followed in her footsteps. She was well-loved by her father, who treated her affectionately and respectfully.

At a very young age, Mary had many responsibilities as the sole legitimate heir of her parents’ royal duties. However, as a woman, she sadly wasn’t worth as much as a man, despite what would soon pass. Mary lived through turmoil and behind the scenes of her father’s doing to obtain a new wife to have a male heir.

Despite having everything a father and a king could wish for in his daughter, Mary, King Henry VIII married as many as six times. It created a wall between him and his eldest daughter, who remained a Catholic until one begged otherwise to ensure her safety and loyalty to her father, the King of England. But Mary never changed her faith.

The Blood Of Mary Is Building And Boiling

Mary Tudor‘s young life had her go through much stress and anxiety. A woman in the sixteenth century could only be safe through marriage. Sadly, her father’s determination to remarry often threatened her status and may have been the reason for her many illnesses.

As of 1531, Mary Tudor had irregular menstruation and went through depression. Because of her father, Mary wasn’t allowed to see her mother, who brought her comfort. By 1533, Mary witnessed her parents’ official divorce. It resulted from her father refusing the pope’s authority on his demand to marry Anne Boleyn.

Mary Tudor lost her title because her father wanted a new wife and a son. King Henry VIII had to declare himself the Supreme Head of the Church of England to make it possible. It was the birth of the Protestant faith. Princess Mary Tudor was now The Lady Mary, behind her new step-sister’s title, Princess Elizabeth Tudor.

To deepen her pain, her relationship with her father worsened with every decision he made. She had no choice but to see her step-sister grow into a princess and was never allowed to visit her mother. Often sick, Mary Tudor remained at the house her father had her confined to. When her mother passed, Mary was inconsolable.

The Apple Never Falls To Far From The Tree

Catherine Parr reunited Henry VIII with Mary Tudor, and the king named Mary a successor again. It took his sixth wife to realize he was in the wrong of robbing his daughter of her birthright.

When her father passed in 1547, the regency reigned as Protestants to establish themselves throughout the country as King Edward was still a child. Even as a teen, Edward showed signs of his father by acting as he wished when it came to personal matters and ordering his sisters around.

He went as far as removing Mary and Elizabeth from the line of succession out of spite. The reason was simple: Mary wanted to remain Roman Catholic while Elizabeth was Protestant, but he had to remove both step-sisters for it to be a royal decree.

Following King Edward’s death at fifteen years old from possible tuberculosis, Mary prepared herself to win England back. Because the nobility, like the populace, loved Mary since her birth just as they loved her mother, Queen Catherine of Aragon, she had much support. Mary Tudor could dethrone the rightful successor and secure the throne for herself.

Hell Has No Fury Like A Mary Tudor Scorned

For five years, Mary Tudor reigned as the Queen of England. But once she was able to release all Catholics from the Tower of London and start to re-establish Catholicism as the English religion, Mary focused on finding a husband to secure an heir.

Mary Tudor was the first English queen to wear the crown as the ultimate ruler. For the first time in recent history, as it was, a woman was a ruler in her own rights without a man at her side. The first actions of Mary were about Catholicism, and many could say it was to feel closer to her mother, to whom she was denied.

What earned her the name Bloody Mary was the order to capture Protestants and make examples out of them. Her rage toward the Protestants can be understood as a way to get back at her father for how he treated her mother. What people do before children’s eyes one day grows into adulthood and follows them as scars. People needed to understand that in the sixteenth century, but never did.

King Henry VIII went after the Catholic people and created uproars with nearly thirty thousand Catholics. The Church of Rome was the most widespread religion then, reaching pilgrims all over English territories. When Mary took the throne, it was time to undo what her father had done to her, her mother, and her life.

Mary Tudor Will Forever Be Bloody Mary

Just as her father did, Mary Tudor executed Protestants under claims of heresy laws or any word spoken against Catholics. But it didn’t stop at Catholicism but spread to the radical Christians. The legislation affected England and Wales the most. The punishment was nothing less than burning at the stake.

Some people’s torture was extensive, but their deaths were often, but not restricted to, hanging, drawn or quartered. Most of the time, burning the condemned was the final decision route. The magic number attributed to Mary Tudor I of England is two-hundred-and-eighty Protestants burned at the stake.

While the number seems outrageous, more Catholics died under her father’s reign, but Mary was a woman. Therefore, she is Bloody Mary. Men, women, youth and sometimes families all burned together. It created a reign of martyrs from which legends and myths were born.

So, here you have it, the story of Bloody Mary and how she came to be.

The OCD Vampire