Catherine Howard

Catherine Howard arrives at court as a teenager, a cousin of the Boleyns pushed forward by an ambitious family eager to use her charm to their advantage. Pretty, playful and largely unschooled in the dangers around her, she catches the aging King's eye and finds herself swept toward a position she barely understands.

Tamzin Merchant plays her as genuinely girlish rather than knowingly seductive, which makes her elevation feel less like triumph than exposure. The writing lets her innocence read as real rather than performed, so her eagerness to please becomes quietly unsettling — you watch someone too young for the room she's been put in.