What the fuck was his problem?

No, that would be Edward IV. A handsome, athletic youth who seized the crown in battle, then whored and drank himself to death while bankrupting the country.

Yes, he wasn't a very nice man, but he certainly wasn't stupid and he knew how to deal with coin clippery. Anyone who undermined the treasury and financial system could expect to subjected to the cruellest of deaths, like public boilings and disembowelings.

His greatest legacy was dumping the Pope. We cannot serve two masters in this country and he understood that. He paved the way for independence of thinking and our scientific and industrial revolutions.

barren slags

Reminds me of robert baratheon from asoif was he the inspiration?

Somehow thought that if a woman had a daughter first, there was no point in continuing to try for a son, so he had to change wives?

no, where are you getting that from?
catherine of aragon, first wife: had daughter (future queen mary) then a series of miscarriages over years indicating she couldn't bear anymore children
ann boleyn, second wife: had a daughter (future queen elizabeth), started miscarrying, got tangled in court politics revolving around protestantism, thomas cromwell and liquidation of monasteries. got outmaneuevered by cromwell who turns VIII against her. gets kill
wife three, jane seymour: gets preggo, dies in childbirth. the child, a boy (future king edward vi) lives
wife four, anne of cleves: g*rman arranged to marry VIII by cromwell for religious and geopolitical reasons. Henry wasn't enthusiastic about the marriage and it was an unhappy one. Cromwell was falling out of favor (the marriage being one reason) and so VIII divorces her and eventually beheads cromwell
>wife five, catherine howard: part of the Catholic faction at court that was in ascendancy and rolling back protestant reformers at court like Cromwell. Unfortunately Howard was a whore and cucked VIII. VIII caught wind and executed her
wife six, catherine howard: crytoprotestant, nice woman. VIII liked her but he was morbidly obese by this time and going senile from heart disease and diabeetus. Hes thought to be impotent as well by this point and he has an open seeping infectious wound on his leg that never goes away, likely cause diabeetus. He dies at this point

>Unfortunately Howard was a whore and cucked VIII. VIII caught wind and executed her

I wouldn't really call her a whore, myself. Her "promiscuous past" so often cited in popular culture was actually "she was sexually abused as a child." She was sexually molested by a 36 year old man when she was 13--perhaps even as young as 11, as some historians think she was born earlier than previously believed. Then when she was 13-15 another adult did the same, this time afterward plying her with words and letters, convincing her that they would get married.

She was only 17-19 when she married the 50something year old Henry, an obese, middle-aged man who stunk from his ulcer and frequently had a horrible and, depending on how bad things were, violent temper. She was under extreme stress to become pregnant and produce an heir, despite the fact that her husband was... well, an obese middle-aged man who stunk from his ulcer and frequently had a horrible temper.

The early confessions from Jane Boleyn indicate Catherine tried to get Culpepper to leave her alone, implying that he was blackmailing her (this implication gives the existing letter between Catherine and Culpepper a different interpretation as well) but that eventually Catherine consented to meeting with him privately. Although even this may be dubious--Jane was gradually put under extreme duress in the Tower, and while she couldn't be tortured physically, the mental strain of what was happening would surely influence her enough to give her interrogators what she thinks they want. Whether or not they had sex, well. Catherine said no. Thomas said no, though he "had intended ill" meaning he had wanted to have sex with her. The confession of actual sex was obtained from Thomas Culpepper only under torture.

He was on an unsteady throne, as his family was still new Nobility when his father "won" the War of the Roses. He was a strong, handsome athletic king who married a pretty granddaughter of the Spanish Emperor, Catherine. After a terrible accident where he took a blow to the head, he started suffering headaches and developed a sort of bipolar attitude. Catherine started misgiving, and with only one surviving child, the future Queen Mary, Henry was on the prowl. Of course, he needed to lose Catherine. She was originally his brother's wife, and he used this to try to persuade the pope in granting him a divorce, which of course failed because he had consummated the marriage either way. He couldn't have her beheaded or assassinated in fear of an English-Spanish war, so he decided to join the protestant movement and declare himself as the head of his own church, granted himself a divorce, bastardized Mary, and married a court tart, Anne Boleyn.
Anne failed to uphold her promise of a son, and after the birth of Elizabeth, due to stress and bouts of sickness, started showing signs of misgiving as well. He decided to behead her, and on a kind note, he had it done with a sword by a Frenchman from Calais; a sweet gesture. Its worthy to note Henry was killing off court rivals, members of Nobility who had a strong claim to the throne were heavily watched.
After Boleyn was Jane Seymour, the wife who birthed him an heir, the future King Edward.
She would die in childbirth, and from then on was nearly canonized by Henry as his true wife.
Then there was Anne of Cleve's, a protestant German wife that he never really married in ceremony, only politically. He simply named her as "the King's dear sister". There is debate on if it were because of looks or not.
Somewhere around this time, he got into another jousting accident, though one more severe. He had his horse collapse on him in a fall, and all his bones in his leg broke, and would never truly heal.

Part 1

>ck2 references

Veeky Forums as fuck tbqh

Part 2

These were the beginnings of Henry's last days.
The wound never healed after months of terrible pain, the the ulcers never closed, giving off foul odors and leaked puss. Its written that everyone always knew when Henry was coming, as you could smell him a few rooms away.
He married Catherine Howard next, though to be honest, I've done very little research on her. From what I am to understand, due to her young nature she was frivolous and was in love with a cousin, and due to her affair, the King had her executed.
This user: seems to know a bit more.
Its worthy here to talk about how depressed and angry Henry was. Imagine how awful his lot of life must have been. He was bled and leeched once a day by his physicians, and had to have his bandaging changed every two or three hours.
He married his last wife, Catherine Parr. She was more like a nurse and confidante than a Queen. Its really because of her that the line of succession was even established officially. She tried to get the shattered family on better terms, as Mary was pissed at her heretic father and abusive, once stepmother Anne Boleyn, as well as being displaced by Elizabeth and being ostracized at court for being a devout Catholic. Elizabeth was sort of thrown in the middle as she was Henry's favorite and Edward's closest family member, and of course mistrusted by Mary. Then there was Edward, the young, sickly and somewhat apathetic future King of England.
And that's the king of England Henry left, personified through his children. Divided, confused, and surrounded by scandal and intrigue.

I apologize for that second part being so scattered, I was afraid of the thread 404ing, and the pressure was on. Anyways, here is my correction post.
On Anne of Cleve's, I want to make it clear that they were married, but they had married while she was still in Germany. When he actually met her however, he was quite pissed at Cromwell, who had arranged the marriage has she had the face of a horse, as he apparently stated.
He divorced her while leaving her alimony, and the title of "The King's Dear Sister".
Catherine Parr was also the guardian for Elizabeth, who may have been sexually abused by Parr's husband after Henry, whose brother was also Edward's minister.
(Thomas Rawley or Seymour? Too many names!)
And to that last sentence,
" And that's the kind of England Henry left, personified by his children."

Nope. I thought so too, but he's actually based on Edward IV. Then again, for all his faults, Baratheon was never cruel or tyrannical like Ol' Henry

He could have stayed with the holy mother church and prayed for a miracle with Catherine: Problem solved!

>Its worthy here to talk about how depressed and angry Henry was

I think his vehemence towards Catherine Howard was because her "downfall" was a blow to his last gasp of youth and vitality. Jane Seymour had died in childbirth, his next wife was a disappointment, he was getting older, fatter, uglier, and the sore in his leg hurt terribly and was said to stink. Some of his friends and family had died by this point, he had just executed his once beloved Cromwell, and he was getting more paranoid about everyone conspiring against him. A midlife crisis of kingly proportions.

So he became enamored with this pretty teenage girl young enough to be his child. She brought life back into the court and he enjoyed showing her off to everyone as his happy, dancing, slip of a wife. He could pretend, even if for a moment, that he was that young king Henry again, the beloved Henry that every man and woman in court was enamored with. He put her up on a pedestal as an innocent rose, his "rose without a thorn" as he said.

Then he finds out that, well, perhaps she wasn't "innocent" after all. It didn't matter that her sexual past was, as it's been said, a pre-teen girl being molested by an adult man. And her second 'affair' was again as a young teen with an older man, who promised her that he would legitimize their relationship but disappeared, only to reappear once she had the power of a queen. All that mattered was that she wasn't this unsullied virgin that Henry had built her up to be in his mind. At this point, it's said that Henry actually cried at finding out that Catherine hadn't been this perfect example of innocence and youth that he'd built up in his mind.

Then it turns out she might have had an affair with the younger and attractive Culpepper, whom the king considered a companion. Despair turns to rage, and Henry spends months--months!--working so he can change the laws and have Catherine and even the now insane Jane Boleyn executed.

And don't forget, Anne of Cleves unintentionally snubbed Henry when they first met. He disguised himself as a servant and went to meet her with a gift from "the king," a very common gallant prince trope at the time, thinking that she would recognize him immediately and it'd be this swept off her feet romantic moment. Instead she had no idea who he was and treated him blandly like a servant. I'm sure it left a very bad first impression.

His armor had giant codpieces because he had syphillis. His swollen dick could only fit into the armor with its own separate section.