Wives of Agency

Wives of Agency: The Video Game is an interactive game-based learning experience that teaches students and players about Tudor History from a social, feminist, and religious perspective. It also helps students and players hone critical thinking skills, such as historical thinking, critical reading of primary text sources, and resource management strategy.

The students and players will be given the perspective of Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first wife, as she helps him rule the country while maintaining her reputation with her English subjects, Henry’s affection, and her own morale. Players will be given context for events that affected Catherine, and will make decisions for her. Each choice comes with either stat increases or stat decreases, which will affect how major turning-point events occur. If Catherine’s stats are too low, it’s game over. You cannot rule a country without a good reputation, affection from the king, or the will to power through your strife.  

Your choices can lead you to 10 different endings. 

This game was developed as a final project for a digital pedagogy class I took while studying for my Masters in History.   

Note: While playing, I am aware of a few bugs that only occur in this online version, the first being music doesn't play unless you go into system options when it changes tracks, the second is the default dialogue play speed is very slow which you can change in the system options as well.