The Early Years of Queen Mary I

Queen Mary I was alienated from her father, King Henry VIII, during his divorce (it was not a divorce in the modern sense, but an annulment) from her mother. As her parents' marriage was deemed null and void, Mary was then deemed illegitimate and thus deprived for a time of her status as an heir to the throne. This fueled her rage regarding her father’s break from the Roman Catholic Church, which had previously instructed him that he could not divorce from her mother. Mary felt that if her father, King Henry VIII, had obeyed the Roman Catholic Church, she would not be seen as “illegitimate, and her right to the throne would not have been questioned. This is the foundation upon which her loyalty to Rome was laid. By the time of King Henry VIII’s death, however, she had been restored as second in line to the throne, after her half-brother Edward, who was physically weak.

http://tudorhistory.org/mary/marymin.jpg