Short answers, pulled from the story.
Catherine of Aragon was Queen of England as the first wife of Henry VIII from 1509 to 1533 and the youngest daughter of Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon. Her refusal to accept an annulment of her marriage set off a chain of events that led to England's break from the Catholic Church. Thomas Cromwell, her adversary, said of her: "If not for her sex, she could have defied all the heroes of History."
Catherine of Aragon was born in the early hours of the 16th of December 1485 at the Archbishop's Palace of Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid, in Spain. She was the youngest surviving child of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile.
By 1525, Henry VIII was infatuated with Anne Boleyn and dissatisfied that his marriage to Catherine had produced no surviving male heir. He interpreted a biblical passage as divine condemnation of marrying a brother's widow and sought an annulment on the grounds that the papal dispensation allowing the marriage had been obtained by false pretenses. His inability to secure this annulment from Pope Clement VII, who was at the time a prisoner of Catherine's nephew Emperor Charles V, led Henry to break with the Catholic Church.
On the 11th of June 1513, Henry VIII appointed Catherine regent with the titles "Governor of the Realm and Captain General" while he campaigned in France. During that time, she organised England's military response to a Scottish invasion, rode north in full armour while heavily pregnant to address the troops, and sent Henry a piece of the bloodied coat of King James IV of Scotland, who died at the Battle of Flodden Field.
Catherine of Aragon died at Kimbolton Castle in Cambridgeshire on the 7th of January 1536. Modern medical experts agree the cause was cancer, though rumours of poisoning circulated at the time after a black growth was discovered on her heart during embalming.
Catherine commissioned Juan Luis Vives to write The Education of a Christian Woman, a controversial book arguing that women have the right to an education, which Vives dedicated to her in 1523. Education among women became fashionable in England partly because of her influence, and she donated large sums of money to several colleges.