“The Spanish Princess’s” Greatest Legacy Will Be Lina and Oviedo’s Love Story
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Lina (Stephanie Levi-John) and Oviedo's (Aaron Cobham) love story continues in season 2 of The Spanish Princess.
Speaking to OprahMag.com, Levi-John calls Lina and Oviedo "relationship goals," and speaks to the power of depicting Black love in a period drama.
Spoiler alert: Most of the characters in The Spanish Princess, a sumptuous Starz period drama about the marriage of King Henry VIII (Ruari O'Connor) and Catherine of Aragon, do not have happy endings. After being abandoned by her husband of 23 years, Catherine dies alone. Margaret Pole (Laura Carmichael) and her friend Thomas More (Andrew Buchan) are both beheaded by the king. Many others die of sweating sickness.
Which is why, watching Catherine's lady-in-waiting Lina (Stephanie Levi-John) and her husband Oviedo (Aaron Cobham) navigate the treacherous terrain of the Tudor court and an increasingly xenophobic England, I yearn for them to find an escape hatch and retire to the country, where they’ll be safe from the royal court's whims and dangers. Levi-John, the actress who has carried Lina throughout her journey from recent Spanish immigrant to mother of England-born sons, feels the same.
"Lina is a simple person. All she wants is peace. I think a happy ending for her would be to lead a peaceful life with her wonderful husband and her beautiful family," Levi-John tells OprahMag.com. "People are really rooting for her and Oviedo to work.”
The series finale of The Spanish Princess will determine whether Lina and Oviedo's hard-won peace is here to last. They’ve endured much at the hands of the Tudors: In the first season of The Spanish Princess, Lina rebelled against the plan for her to marry the nobleman Charles Brandon (who would later marry Henry VIII's sister), and fought for love. Now happily married with twins, Lina and Oviedo offer audiences respite from The Spanish Princess's multiple crumbling marriages—most notably, Henry VIII and Catherine's increasingly vexed partnership.
In many ways, part two of The Spanish Princess is a tale of two marriages. The show follows Henry VIII and Catherine through miscarriages, affairs, and ultimate abandonment. Equally important to the series—if not to the history books—are Lina and Oviedo, who approach Outlander's Jamie and Claire and Friday Night Lights's Coach and Tami Taylor in the pantheon of functional, aspirational TV couples.
"He's quite the modern-day man—he has the utmost respect for Lina," Levi-Johnson says of her character's fictional husband. "People everywhere would love to find a partner who loves, respects and hears them. We're all trying to find our Oviedos. That's the beautiful thing about their relationship: It's portraying relationship goals. We all want to be with somebody who puts in the same amount of effort as we do."
Their “healthy, functioning” partnership is a glaring foil to Catherine and Henry’s, whose once-golden relationship crumbles under the pressures of the crown. At first supportive of Catherine’s warrior spirit, Henry grew to loathe his wife due to her inability to bear a male heir, and fulfill her wifely "duty." Eventually, Henry divorced Catherine after 23 years of marriage, and married five other women.
“Part two of The Spanish Princess has a great way of comparing and contrasting what a healthy relationship looks like versus what an unhealthy toxic relationship looks like,” Levi-John says. “It’s funny. They’ve got all the money in the world, they’ve got servants giving them baths and feeding them grapes. But if there's no love there, if there's no trust there, what does any of that mean?”
Aside from being, well, dreamy, Lina and Oviedo are a rarity within the ecosystem of The Spanish Princess for another reason: They are both Black. Far from being the first period piece about Henry VIII (The Tudors, The Other Boleyn Girl, and Wolf Hall, to name a few), The Spanish Princess is the first to depict Black people in the royal court—figures who were there in real life.
“When we were conceiving The Spanish Princess and first learned that Catherine's entourage was diverse and included several people of African ethnicity, we did as much research as we could into who these people were and what details of their lives were known,” creators Emma Frost and Matthew Graham tell OprahMag.com, citing the book Blackamoores: Africans in Tudor England, Their Presence, Status and Origins by Dr. Onyeka Nubia, who they consulted for the series.
The Spanish Princess builds a full-fledged character from the three details that are preserved from the real Lina de Cardonnes's life: First, that she served as Catherine's lady-in-waiting for 26 years. Second, that she married a Moorish crossbow-maker named Oviedo. And third, that she was Black.
“To be able to play a Black woman, and not just a subservient woman in the background, but a Black woman who has her place at court, is such an honor. Because I’d never seen portrayals of Black people during these time periods, I never thought we had a place and that we were a part of this part of history. It’s inspired me to learn more about my history,” Levi John, who is of Afro-Caribbean descent, says.
For Levi-John, there’s something radically powerful not only in the show’s depiction of Black people in Tudor England, but of Black love in Tudor England. Both outsiders, Lina and Oviedo's bond helps them through difficult times.
“It means a lot. When I think about the portrayal of relationships, especially Black relationships, there’s always a lot of turmoil and drama,” she says. “It was really refreshing to play a happy, healthy partnership. I think Lina is aware she’s got a good one.”
The Spanish Princess is set to conclude after two seasons. Audiences will be able to fill in Henry and Catherine’s fates with the countless books, movies, and documentaries about the subject—but will have to use their imaginations for Lina and Oviedo. Like many of history’s supporting characters, they didn’t leave a paper trail. But The Spanish Princess affirms that Lina and Oviedo existed. And not only that—they loved. Lina and Oviedo's significant inclusion and generous portrayal may be The Spanish Princess's most powerful legacy, raising the bar for all period pieces—and relationships—to come.
"I hold on to hope that there are real Oviedos out there," Levi-John says. "Please tell me there are!"
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