Unleash Your Inner Tudor

by Henry VIII

  3. Try to eradicate all evidence that your divorced spouse ever existed

  As my love for Anne Boleyn died, I looked about and realised that I had surrounded myself with romantic emblems of her name and mine, the entwined H and A. Over archways, on paneling, on beds, on doors. HA. Tables. HA. Chairs. HA. Everywhere I went HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA – a kind of hideous diabolical laughter no matter which way I turned deriding the very idea of love.

  In her case, and those who came after, I had their emblems chipped off all the walls and entryways and all the various places they might appear. I burnt letters, destroyed portraits, jumped up and down on their favourite hats. Do whatever it takes, sweet reader; it’s worth the effort and makes your heart feel whole again.

  4. Revenge

  I have oft heard it said that “to live well is the best revenge” but I still find that I prefer actual revenge.

  What We Have Learnt in Chapter 33

  - Never show fear in the face of movie explosions

  - Don’t stop believin’ hold on to that feelin’ … until believin’ is just kind of stupid

  - I was once rather appalled to see a rotting donkey in a tree and cleverly worked that image into the body of this book

  Chapter 34

  On Being the World’s Most Amazing Single Dad

  Tudor Parenting Tip: Raise your kids to be rude, self-centred, demanding, thoughtless, cruel little bastards and you prepare them for leadership.

  With the untimely death of my fifth wife, I found myself single again and obviously a parent struggling through the rearing of three children with only the aid of dozens of servants, councillors, footmen, ladies-in-waiting, and all the gold in the English treasury. So, I get you, single parent. I understand your struggle. When I salute my own efforts at being a totally gifted and hard-working single father, I am saluting you. Probably.

  My odyssey of single-dadness went like this. Cat of A gave birth to Mary, who from the start gave me nothing by threatening glares and rude mutterings under her breath. And she was a girl. Not the ideal heir obviously. Then came my mistress Bessie Blount who delivered unto me a boy, whom I named Henry Fitzroy, who as a bastard was also not an ideal heir but at least he had all the ingredients to fill a codpiece. So there was that. Anne Boleyn who, in her excessively insolent fashion gave me only a girl, my odd ginger daughter, Elizabeth. Then Anne died of unnatural causes and soon after so did Henry Fitzroy. FFS. Now I was back to having two girls.

  Then came the beautiful and awesome Jane Seymour who gave me Edward VI, then she croaked.

  Anne of Cleves gave me nothing but long, boner-less nights (except later as discussed). And Kathryn Howard was a VILE TART!!!!

  So these were the cards Jehovah had dealt me. And why?

  Likely it had to do with his greater glory. The Lord is all about bigging up his glory. (Praise him!) Too, they say that God never gives you more than you can bear. Which is true unless you’re being hanged, drawn, and quartered.

  Oh, and being eaten alive by crocodiles. Quite bad.

  Being impaled is, I am told, incredibly nasty.

  When you think about it, God dishes out things all the time that are more than anyone could possibly bear.

  So it was with a deep sigh and an uncharacteristic feeling of uncertainty, I pulled a sheaf of vellum out of my desk and rated my children in order of how much I liked them and therefore who would be heir to my throne. The list went like this:

  ROYAL SUCCESSION

  1. Edward VI

  2. Any other male heir(s) I might have with some other nice lady as the result of my stunning virility between now and the time of my so-called death

  3. Might insert another name here at some point in the future

  4. There could be a number four, you never know

  5. Keep options open

  6. There’s likely a male cousin I’m forgetting

  7. Perhaps one of those babies who’re born with male and female bits, but whom we’d call a boy

  8. Bloody Mary

  9. Oh, look, they’ve brought me more cake!

  10. Elizabeth

  Children like to know where they stand with you. Well, at least Eddy liked knowing where he stood with me. The other two didn’t. But girls don’t like anything. How can you please the un-please-able? You can’t. You must simply direct your energies elsewhere. (I do hope you’re taking notes.)

  The other thing I’ve learnt is that it is important for children, especially when you’re a parent with a job, to try to connect with them at bedtime. Just try to spend a few minutes really reaching across the chasm of adult and child, parent and off-spring, king and potential assassin. (Do, though, limit this time to no more than a few minutes. Any more makes you look like a try-hard.)

  To this end, I wrote a little rhyming ABC book that I could read to them each night before they nipped off to dreamland.

  The Glorious Henry VIII Nighttime ABCs Book For His Various Children

  A is Annulment, I awarded myself

  B is Boleyn whose head’s on my shelf

  C is for Cromwell who’s no longer healthy

  D’s dissolution, which made me quite

  wealthy

  E is Elizabeth my odd second daughter

  F is my Fame that gets hotter and hotter

  G is for Greensleeves, I wrote to get tail

  H is for Heir (see also “Male”)

  I is a pronoun of glory and grace

  J is the Joust where a lance smashed my face

  K is for Katherine, a name I wed thrice

  K's also for King and that’s me and that’s

  nice

  L is for Love, which left my heart bleeding

  M's for Male, which my dynasty’s needing

  (& why I go on piously breeding)

  N is for Nonsuch, a palace I built

  O is Obesity for I eat at full tilt

  P is for Popes those wrinkly old pricks

  Q is for Queen, I’ve had five or six

  R is for Rex, that’s Latin for King

  S is for Spain, a great ugly thing

  T’s Tudorlicious, a word I just quilled

  T’s also for Tower where traitors are killed

  U is the Union ‘twixt a man & his wives

  V’s Vile Tarts who ruin our lives

  W is Wolsey, a scoundrel & rapist

  X crosses itself (and is probably Papist)

  Y is the Ypocras I drink with my meat

  Z is for Zebra, which I’d quite like to eat

  So, the Unleash Your Inner Tudor childrearing hack – while I did show each child some kindness and gave them loads of sparkly royal things, the thing you must remember is that true leaders are so often motivated my miserable childhoods. Don’t rob your children of their potential for greatness by making them happy. I raised three of England’s greatest monarchs – how can I be wrong? I can’t. No need to answer. Or if you must truly respond perhaps you could spend three years writing your own book called Unleash Your Inner Unimportant Person.

  What we have learnt in Chapter 34

  - Being an amazing parent means being there for the children who obviously like you

  - Happy kids become happy adults who accomplish NOTHING in the tyranny department

  - Cheerful bedtime poetry

  Chapter 35

  The 16th Century – a fantastic time to be a woman!

  Tudor Lady Tip: I encourage all my wives to live every day like it's their last.

  Although all I know of your era is what I read on Twitter, it is obvious that in my era women are far better off. Much of this is because there are so many fewer demands on them.

  In the 16th century a woman is, first, the possession of her father and later the possession of her husband. And when I say possession, I don’t mean like in some poorly acted-out S&M game that lurches on for 40 minutes on a Friday night with black vinyl, a tennis ball, and a strap. I mean something you own – like a plough. Or an ox. Or a box of turnips.


  As such it is a vastly simplified life. There is order and duty and civility. In my century one does not see news stories such as, “Can Women Really Have It All?”

  No.

  They can’t.

  Sorted.

  Nor are there books such as Owning Your Orgasm.

  Women are forbidden from owning anything unless they have a husband or male relative as a co-signer. Not bloody likely.

  Nor are there any magazines with names such as Take a Break as “taking a break” doesn’t exist (unless you mean a break from Rome) or Real Simple as things could not be simpler.

  We could possibly have magazines with names such as Woman’s Own (except they can’t own anything) Real Honouring Your Husband or House Dutiful. Likewise there might an audience for a book called Our Bodies, Our Smells – but again, women aren’t taught to read so where’s the point?

  Why do I say my era is better?

  Is it just because I’m blinded by being a man and therefore superior?

  No. Okay, perhaps, but no.

  Is it because I think women are inferior to men?

  They are, but no.

  It’s because women tell me all the time how wonderful and terrific and brilliant it is to be my wife and/or mistress and/or nice lady I happen to be in a bed with, on a cart, or near a sheep pen.

  There are vastly important reasons that God gave men the job of running everything. Take warfare as a good example. What amazingly useful weapons do we use to fight and win wars? The sword, the arrow, the lance, the mace, the gun, and the cannon. Big reveal: these implements of conquest are all shaped like penises. And in the case of newer weapons – rifles and canons and such – they not only look like a dong, they actually mimic the workings of one, spewing a violent orgasm of victory. Now what kind of world would this be if all of our weaponry were vagina inspired? Imagine trying to kill a Spaniard with a mossy box or invading France armed with tacos.

  Warfare is but one example of many – how about the arts and letters. Picture the great Michaelangelo trying to paint his Sistine Chapel with a clam? Or the noblemen of 13th century England trying to write the Magna Carta with an orchid?

  I could go on.

  What We Have Learnt in Chapter 35:

  - Simpler ladies = happier ladies

  - Things with wiener shapes win wars

  - Crap-ton should be a unit of measurement

  Chapter 36

  On Wooing a Lady Who Puts Up the Hilarious Pretence of Perhaps Not Wishing to Be Yours

  Tudor Love Tip: Make her feel special. Yes she may be your 5th or 6th wife but make her feel like she's your 2nd or 3rd.

  In matters of love and loss, one must look upon the beheading of a once-adored teenage wife not as a problem but as an opportunity. In this instance I had the chance to take up the role of merry widower (once more), a part I played with glee. At court we threw countless masques, disguisings, feasts, pageants, and dances. It’s never too late to be happy, single, and beautiful.

  But England was ever in need of more boys who sprang from my splendid loins. Thanks to Jane Seymour’s womb – and my glory – the nation now had young Edward VI to look to for future leadership and awesomeness. But in the Tudor family the need for a second, if not third in line, should be beyond obvious.

  Both Parliament and my Privy Council were huffing and spittling themselves over the issue of my issue. The realm would be more secure, they pestered night and day, if there were more little Henrys running about the palace, ready to fight each other for the throne.

  “No pressure, good sir!” I would shout at my codpiece.

  I was in my 50s, going a bit grey in the beard, a bit thin of hair on the top. My ulcerated leg that would not heal continued to not heal and so I was whisked about my palaces in a wheeled cart.

  The Lord God “Noted Monarchist” Jehovah had seen fit to hold my lethal levels of sexiness in check with gout, diabetes, leg pain, headaches, and various mental disorders – probably wise. I was now wearing spectacles to read the tedious letters and threats and promises of false friendship from this or that king or ambassador. It was said that I was so huge that three big men could fit inside one of my shirts. I was a legend in my own time, the icon of my age, more myth than man. And my catchphrase was “Hey nonny nonny, bitches.”

  I remember gazing out the window of a coach one afternoon in Surrey and seeing two peasants shagging in a field. And being in a wistful frame of mind (an emotion I try to avoid) I lifted up my thoughts unto God and said, “Why, oh Lord, is it so easy for them? They’re just bloody poor people.”

  And God replied unto me, “Oh, shut it, H! I do one nice thing for a couple of prols – get off my tits!”

  He means well.

  I now re-dedicated myself to the twin causes of ruling my kingdom with an iron fist and being an absolute delight to the ladies. I feasted the women of my court. Wrote songs for them. Dreamt up hot new dance moves. Flew out at them from alcoves when they least expected it. Fun.

  I knew of course that my eye would eventually fall upon the lucky next Mrs. H. Tudor but realised I’d shoved myself into something of a jam jar. In order to have Kathryn Howard properly executed I’d smashed a bill through Parliament that said in essence, “If you, dear lady who are on the verge of marrying good King Henry (that’s me), have done ANYTHING he should know about prior to your wedding – anything at all and especially those things involving a gentlemen manhandling your sacred bits – you must needs confess in full or your head shall be unfollowed by your body.”

  The ladies of my court were many things but virtuous was not one of them. So I’d managed to narrow the field rather perilously – to such a degree that as far as my councillors and I could tell the only candidates came down to Lady Catherine Parr and a 17-year-old girl with a withered hand and a pulpy eye living in Finland.

  After picking my way through five marriages that involved disaster and death, it was best, I’d learnt, not to be led by your heart or with your codpiece, but to use a calm, reasoned, frontal-lobe sort of approach.

  Catherine Parr was graceful, intelligent, and a good dancer. I enjoyed our banter together, our flirtations, and the thought of placing myself on top of her. Her only fault was that she happened to be married. Her husband, Lord Latimer, was, however, doing the nation the huge favour of dying just then, albeit at a pace that I found slow to the point of being unpatriotic.

  As she sat at the bedside of her dying hubby, Catherine began to receive tokens of my affection and interest – gems, rings, poems, and pricey goblets with images of she and I frolicking naked in a forest with friendly dragons and monkeys. She let it be widely known that she was utterly dismayed at my amorous intent, which most people took seriously – because most people are too ignorant to realise there’s this thing called satire. Pillocks.

  Catherine was sophisticated and quick-witted and of course I knew instantly that she was pretending to be panicked and the very picture of consternation as a spoof on the popular idea that all I did for merriment was to have my wives executed.

  Here’s a poem I sent to her during this period:

  That awkward moment when I’m falling for you

  Whilst your husband is turning from pink to blue.

  No one gets your humour like I do

  Taylor Swift will steal that line someday – doo be doo be doo

  Another month or two passed, Lord Latimer at long last died as we all hoped he would do and we mourned his pegging out in the most gracious ways possible. I was ready to swoop in like an eagle and collect my cute, furry lady-rodent.

  Ah, but no. Now, I was told by my councillors that I needed to wait before putting my moves of hotness on Catherine Parr to ensure that I didn’t look like a complete pig at the wench trough. In the meantime, it came to my attention that Thomas Seymour, brother of my lovely, dead Janey, was already hot on the prowl for Catherine. When you take the lid off the honey, how the insects drop in. So I had Seymour named to an ambassadorship in the Low Countries to
keep him from sniffing around.

  See how I did that?

  - Husband – dead

  - Competition - moved to Belgium

  - Boom

  Not long afterward, Catherine and I did indeed wed and things took an unexpectedly dangerous turn.

  She was a wise, kind, generous, thoughtful, and age-appropriate bride – she was 31 and I was 53. It was all so without drama and scream fests and acrimony, she spoke to be gently and sweetly, that slowly I began to succumb to the venomous effects of boredom.

  This is where the rational approach to love will get you.

  It’s horrible.

  Of course I rallied. This is what a Tudor does. We fight!

  Once I realised that I was being poisoned by Catherine’s inherent decency, I instructed the captain of my guard to have her arrested and taken away to the Tower on some charge or other. I needed her out of my sight before she lured me to a ruinous end. He dashed off to get his men.

  There I was sitting in the garden feeling in charge again, feeling flooded again with derring-do, manliness, and purpose, when who appeared at my side but Catherine herself. OMG. And she was so very pretty and charming and she used her soft, soothing, smart, boring lady voice on me and she wore her dress so nicely.