ESTJ 1w2 Characters

Maria Doyle Kennedy’s Catherine of Aragon, as portrayed in The Tudors, exemplifies the dignity and resilience of an ESTJ 1w2 personality type. Steadfast in her principles, Catherine embodies duty, tradition, and deep moral conviction, never wavering in her loyalty to Henry VIII or the Catholic faith. As an Enneagram 1 with a 2 wing, she combines righteousness with compassion, balancing her strict sense of justice with genuine care for others. Both a political strategist and a sorrowful queen, Catherine’s unwavering devotion makes her one of the most moving and admirable figures in the series.

Extraverted Thinking

Catherine is highly proactive in political affairs, pushing her husband to build an alliance with Spain through a marriage between their daughter and her nephew, Emperor Charles. Henry becomes angry with her in the first episode, for being too “heavy handed” and trying to tell him how to run his kingdom (she smiles and says, “I am my father’s daughter,” referring to political tactics she learned from Ferdinand of Spain). She later makes remarks about Henry and Wolsey underestimating her due to her being a “poor woman,” inferring mockery for their assumption of her weakness. She bluntly tells her husband what she thinks, right down to her annoyance over his “beard… and what it represents.” She never chastises Henry for his affairs, or his love for Anne; she takes him on as an opponent. Catherine finds allies and creates barriers to block his attempts to annul their marriage. She tells him that for every scholar that votes in favor for his case, she could find a favor who would vote for her instead. Catherine wrongly assumes that if she simply tells the truth, and articulates the facts of the situation, that Henry will have no choice but to surrender to her perspective (that if she assures him she was a virgin when they married, this will all go away; she is shocked to learn that the facts do not matter to him, because “that’s not the point!”).

Introverted Sensing

She has been a loyal, devoted, and patient wife to a husband who compulsively cheats on, neglects, and humiliates her by being romantic toward other women in her presence. This shows her respect for “proper queenly behavior,” and a certain amount of acceptance, even if it hurts her, of “how things are” as a pragmatist. As the first season progresses, we see her determination to cling to and remain in the past – her belief that Henry will treat Anne Boleyn no different from his other used and discarded mistresses (and her shock when this is not the case), her demands they live as they used to, her expectation that he will treat her with kindness, and her refusal to back down from her position as queen or change her circumstances (she takes the suggestion she step aside and abdicate into a nunnery as an insult). She wants to form alliances with people she trusts, and her own native country of Spain, and constantly battles Wolsey over his preference for the French. Catherine also clings to her Spanish Catholic upbringing, and relies heavily on her faith to reinforce all of her decisions (including her refusal to use force against Henry, because “it would be a sin, against God and against my conscience”).

Extraverted Intuition

Her biggest mistake is her complete misreading of who is responsible for her current miseries – she places all the blame on Cardinal Wolsey as an instigator, rather than accurately perceiving her husband being the driving force behind it, and this miscalculation worsens her situation. Part of this is her inability to find fault in her husband, but the rest is a lack of strong intuition. The further proceedings go, the more she self-doubts and questions her former perceptions; and the more fearful she becomes of her uncertain future. Catherine also idealistically hopes for a long time that Henry will lose interest in Anne, that her winning the case will bring him back to her, and that she can somehow repair the damage to their relationship and carry on as before, which shows that she can also be naïve.

Introverted Feeling

At first, she puts on politeness, appealing to her husband using a subservient attitude and tenderness, but the more he pressures her for a divorce, the more her facade slips. She tells off Anne for her ambitions, she reprimands the Cardinal for his immorality, and the more others pressure her to give in, the more she becomes increasingly disinterested in compromise. Catherine walks out of her trial and refuses to return; she insists on being called the queen and in mending her husband’s shirts. When Chapuys councils her to not give in, she assures him she will NEVER back down, but also makes decisions based on pure principles (her refusal to encourage her nephew to invade England on her behalf). Catherine largely suffers in silence.

The Enneagram 1

Catherine cannot comprehend Henry’s motives in the divorce, because she would never do such things – tell lies about someone she loved in court to obtain a divorce, break away from the Catholic Church, or mistreat her and her daughter as he has done. She holds herself to a much higher standard, though also operates a great deal out of anger and resentment. She judges Wolsey for his mistress and three children, because that’s not what he is “supposed” to do as a man of the church, and scorns his ambitions. Catherine often urges her husband to do the right thing, but when this fails, she operates operates on a sense of righteousness, believing herself to be in the right. And when she fears the emperor may invade England on her behalf, Catherine tells him not to – “it would be a sin, against God and my conscience.” When Brandon tries to pressure her into giving in, she says she will answer only to God and her conscience. When Sir Thomas More visits her, alone and near the end of her life, Catherine says she would rather suffer and remember God’s presence than forget him in a life of happiness.

The 2 Wing

Catherine is a loving, generous, and benevolent queen who hands out alms to the poor and speaks to them with tenderness when they gather to greet her. She guides her ladies-in-waiting and wants them to make advantageous marriages. She loves Henry deeply and is incredulous that he throws that all in her face and wants to pretend their love, their marriage, and their daughter, is all a lie. Catherine often gives him unsolicited advice and tries to sway him politically, which angers him, but she does not back down, because she thinks she is in the moral right, she sees service as her duty, and she wants to behave as a queen should. She is also incapable of analyzing her own thoughts, feelings, her marriage, or knowing that it has reached its conclusion, because she is unable to be objective about any of it. Her 2 pride gets in the way of her admitting that it’s over and that she needs to back down, which she cannot do, because it’s become a matter of moral principles (1 core).

The Sorrowful Queen

Maria Doyle Kennedy’s tragic, empathetic, and emotional Catherine of Aragon is what turned me from an Anne Boleyn fangirl into a Catherine of Aragon devotee. I had never given her much thought until The Tudors portrayed her with such sympathy and compassion, but also showed her deep anger and resentment at being cast aside for a younger woman. She is far too tall, dark haired (the real Catherine had red hair), and stately for the real historical figure, but she won over my heart and I still cry buckets when she passes away in season two. The series suffers greatly in her absence.