Putting aside his six wives, what's the final verdict?

Most Tudors did shit that would make them be called horrible tyrants even a century after them.

Yet only Bloody Mary gets any flack for it.

He’s probably made up for it with all the tv show and publicity he generates ovr the last couple centuries

>gets cheated on
>executes her
>proceeds to write song about how bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks

is he /ourguy/?

He always was.
Henry VIII is unironically the most fun European king. Definitely not the best, but he's such a character

None of his wives actually cheated on him.

Anne possibly did. But even then it wasn’t nearly as bad as they portrayed it as. Perhaps with only one man did she actually cheat.

What about his fifth wife?

Catherine Howard definitely did

MORE WIVES

!!!!!MMOOORRREEE WWWWIIIIVVVVEEESSS!!!!!1

The only evidence that she had sex with Culpepper after she and Henry were married was Culpepper's confession, which was extracted after days of torture. Before the torture, he admitted that he had admitted that he wanted to have "do ill" with her, but they hadn't committed the physical act.

Katherine and her lady-in-waiting both admitted that she had met Culpepper in secret, but that Katherine had resisted meeting him until he implied that he knew private things about her (blackmail) and even after agreeing, she insisted that her lady-in-waiting remain with her as a chaperone at all times. Her lady-in-waiting eventually said that she and Culpepper met in private once, but this was only after she had a mental breakdown after countless interrogations and was declared insane.

MMMMMOOOOOOOOOOORRRREEEEE WWWIIIIIIIIIIVVVVVEESSS

wut

Why were Catholics kingdoms like Asturias, Leon Aragon and Castile allowed to have female rulers but England wasn’t? Wouldn’t it have just been easier to change the laws of the realm?

As far as I’m aware there weren’t any set laws forbidding female rulers (e.g. Empress Matilda briefly ruled during the Anarchy in the 12th century), but there was basically no historical precedence for it, and the English are big on historical precedence even to this day (which is why they have no formal constitution).

What did Edward VI or Elizabeth do that could be considered tyrannical?

They continued to brutally persecute religious dissidents/heretics.

Hmmm but wasn’t Mary I only disliked because she was Catholic and persecuted Protestants? After her it seems like having a queen as a ruler was accepted by the English

Louis XIV made sure the Habsburgs didn’t continue to dominate Europe, and he raised the Bourbons to a position of European dominance they previously did not have. He also completed the transition to highly centralised, absolutist government that his father started.

Also, Henry VIII breaking away from Rome was a pretty huge thing, since it inadvertently led to Protestantism being embraced.

Edward VI never reigned, the Kingdom was ruled by regents for the entirety of his reign.

Elizabeth I attempted a more peaceful settlement with the Catholics but this ended after the Spanish armada.

My history teacher in HS (USA, sorry) told me that it was Henry's fault that he never had any sons because male sperm dictates the sex of the child, and that he was killing these women for their bearing daughters. Come to find out 15 years later that he had a BUNCH of sons (but they all died.)

I can't say that I'd have acted much differently than him - going to war with the French was a national virtue back then

The English people were not bothered by it (many of whom loved Queen Katherine and supported her and her daughter Mary when Henry fucked them over). It was the royals and some of the nobility, who saw a female heir as basically a precursor to civil war and chaos. Keep in mind that a lot of Plantagenets (the dynasty the Tudors overthrew) still lived and held positions in England, and the threat of further civil war still loomed over both Henry VII and Henry VIII. They wanted a male heir that would have the support of the nobility, support which likely would not have been given to a female heir because she would be deemed weak.

super CHAD
check that armor cod piece

Anne Boleyn must have been some mighty fine piece of ass if she was worth crashing the Catholic church at the height of its Renaissance powers for.

Apparently she even seduced Henry by “other means” than regular sex, that don’t result in pregnancy. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out that implies sucking his dick and possibly anal. She did spend a lot of time in France, after all, where women go to train to be a whore.

It wasn't so much about Anne Boleyn herself in the beginning, but Henry knowing that Katherine was extremely unlikely to bear any more children (she was experiencing signs of early menopause) and he did not have a legitimate male heir. His only chance for one was to get a divorce and marry someone else. Once the process went on far long than Henry ever thought possible, he had become infatuated with the idea of finally having Anne.

Cool Chad, loved God, loved his country, was really shitty at being a good Christian tho

She'd wank him off but not let him cum as to do that would be sinful.

She was the catalyst though. He was mad about her, I don't think it would have happened that way without her.

That comes from Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador who loathed Anne with a passion. I don't know that I'd take it as truth. He never stopped referring to her as a whore, concubine, the great whore, etc.

They almost certainly did have premarital sex--her pregnancy matches up with them having sex before they were secretly married--but there's no evidence she was promiscuous (in the "French way" or otherwise) outside of what her enemies said about her.

>be 50 year old man
>marry 17 year old hot flirty chick
>find out from a third party she got molested by her music teacher when she was 12
>burst into uncontrollable tears and cry constantly for weeks and refuse to ever see her again
Manchild

>I don't think it would have happened that way without her.

It wouldn't have happened that exact way, no, but Henry had already considered annulment from Katherine years before he met Anne. There's evidence of Henry seeking annulment as early as 1514, about 6 years before he met Anne, and after 3 of Katherine's stillbirths. Then again in 1518 after another--and what would be the last--stillbirth, and 2 years after the birth of Mary, a healthy child but sadly a daughter.

>She'd wank him off but not let him cum as to do that would be sinful.

Can you provide a source for this? Because... this is from The Tudors.

>Can you provide a source for this? Because... this is from The Tudors.
Never seen the Tudors, but I may have taken it from Hilary Mantel.

FRENCH WHORES ON AN OPEN FIELD

I did this at uni, but the point my lecturer at the time made about this was that there is evidence from Renaissance courts regarding annulments that a marriage could be considered unconsumated if he never got her off, The point of sex was the orgasm rather than the hole in Renaissance Europe.

Ah okay, well, Mantel is a novelist, it's best not to take what she writes as non-fiction. She's especially good for adding in lurid details about Anne Boleyn because her books were from Cromwell's POV.

GODS, I WAS STRONG THEN

>There is evidence from Renaissance courts regarding annulments that a marriage could be considered unconsumated if he never got her off, The point of sex was the orgasm rather than the hole in Renaissance Europe.

Hm, I'm not sure what your lecturer was talking about. Consummation was related to the act of having sex itself, and had nothing to do with an orgasm. The church in general, with some outliers, frowned upon having sex with your wife solely out of pleasure and considered it akin to making her a whore. It would have been shocking for the law and church to even bring up a woman's sexual pleasure and orgasm, much less consider it the focal point of consummation.

Not that women's sexual pleasure was never considered--just not in a legal capacity. I like this one sex guide from that era which recommended men attend to their women's lower parts to get the 'heat rising' until she began to talk "as if she were babbling."

A woman could divorce a man if he left their marriage unconsummated. There are trial records where women bring up their husband's impotence and thus lack of ability to penetrate or their unwillingness to consummate--either once or regularly, as consummation was considered an entitlement--as a reason for annulment. Likewise, men could do the same, and some men in records claimed that their wives vaginas were too tight or were somehow 'blocked' thus making it impossible to consummate.

But nothing about orgasms. Anyone have any info about this?

>But nothing about orgasms. Anyone have any info about this?
some semirelated sauce

...

...

Interesting! But not related to consummation being considered when a woman had an orgasm.

Without him we wouldn't have Rick Wakeman second best album

He had some pretty awesome armour sets

well i suppose if conception cannot happen without an orgasm, according to the medieval theory, then if a marriage is consummated but the wife doesn't orgasm, it's as if the consummation in itself had no purpose because it didn't lead to pregnancy. If a husband wasn't fulfilling a wife, the wife could use her lack of pregnancies as proof. its all hypothetical though but a court case like that happened i bet

More wives, your grace?

>male sons

>its all hypothetical though but a court case like that happened i bet

You're confusing the legal concept of consummation with then-contemporary widely spread beliefs about conception.

Consummation was the physical act of having sex for the first time. That's all. Legally, consummation was something that a husband or wife was entitled to from their partner in the eyes of the law, and if a marriage went unconsummated, then a man or woman could obtain a legal annulment of the marriage.

Conception was the act of conceiving a child. Beliefs about conception were not set in stone (for instance, not everyone believed in the existence of female sperm, nor believed that women had to 'release their seed' to become pregnant) nor were those beliefs used in a court of law in relation to consummation.

You're creating a hypothetical that did not exist and is contrary to what we know from trial records, court records, and other contemporary texts.

To use Henry VIII's life as an example. One of the arguments he made in court in favor of annulling his marriage to Katherine of Aragon was that he claimed Katherine and his brother, Arthur, had consummated their marriage. After Arthur's death, Katherine had claimed the marriage had never been consummated, and thus her marriage to Arthur was annulled, making it much easier for Henry to obtain papal dispensation for marrying her. Katherine said, when brought to court, that she was a maid when Henry married her, not that she or Arthur hadn't released their seed. Because consummation is the first act of sexual intercourse, not sexual intercourse where a woman or man orgasms.

I AM THE SENATE

GODS HE WAS STRONG

You heard the Lord Chancellor, the king's too hung for his armor! Go find the cod piece stretcher! NOW!

he was a big guy

CAREFUL NOW CLEMENT VII CAREFUL NOW, YOU MIGHT BE THE POPE BUT YOU ARE STILL SPEAKING TO THE KING

More wives, your grace?

THE WHOOOOORE IS PREGNANT

Now that I got my answer and the thread spiralled to bobby posting, let's discuss the wives of Henry VIII. Did Anne of Cleves actually was "ugly" or was it just a smear campaign?

Probably a bit of both. Didn't Henry stay on fairly good terms with her afterwards?

ANGLICAN CHURCH ON AN OPEN FIELD, NED

GODS I WAS RIGHT WITH GOD THEN

Because /int/ is for lefty soy bois

King Henry dindu 'nuffin. He was a righteous King surrounded by bad council.

More wives, your grace?

Because then you could get inherited, and remember England has just fought several wars to form a dual monarchy

More like a good guy who then got brain damage and then was converted by heretics and devils

t. Clement

For you

MORE WIVES,YOUR GRACE!!!!

I don't think she was actually ugly. The French and Spanish ambassadors and pretty much everyone but Henry described her as pretty. It's almost funny how she's gone down as "the ugly one" when it was just literally one (almost 50 year old, morbidly obese, smelly) guy who thought so.

I think it was his bruised ego more than any qualms he had about her appearance. His failed attempt at knightly courtship, which Anne did not understand because it was an English tradition and because she had no idea at this point what he really looked like (twice her age, morbidly obese and stinking from his pus filled wound), led to him being completely humiliated. It was right after this meeting that he declared he wanted to cancel the marriage.

It also didn't help that Anne didn't speak much English and was not well-educated compared to his previous wives. Henry preferred quiet, submissive women (which Anne was) but he also wanted to be able to converse with them. They did enjoy a friendship later on and she was welcomed back at court. She was apparently very well treated by Katherine Howard, whom the ambassadors remarked as having behaved graciously and kind to avoid Anne being embarrassed during her return.

And Anne, in her turn, behaved graciously to Katherine. The Spanish ambassador described Anne as approaching Katherine with so much reverence and speaking to her on her knees, as if Anne had just been a lowly person and not once queen of England, which no doubt dissipated Katherine's anxiety about Anne coming to court.

Like that he introduced the Greenwich armouries some cool pieces

More wives your grace?

GODS I WAS STRONG BACK THEN

More wives, your grace?

Kek

I spoke to a nurse who is well read in history as a hobby. She identified his changes in personality as damage to some part of the brain which I can't remember

>The worst was when a horse fell on him
How did that come about?

Where did the false information of him not having sons come from?
A lot of teachers teach that he didn't have any sons, and a lot of people believe he didn't have any sons.

He was clearly trying to eat it whole

they cheated him by not giving him better offspring

so /ourguy/ then

gods?

go to sleep, arthur (die.)

I know right? I have no fucking clue, I believed my whole life he had no sons. I think ignoring it increases Henry's meme status (normies saying: what? he married all those wives for nothing?)

my bane...
>“[Arthur’s] limbs were so weak that he had never seen a man whose legs and other bits of his body were so small.”
>[Arthur suffered from] the most pitiful disease and sickness that with so sore and great violence had battled and driven in the singular parts of him inward; that cruel and fervent enemy of nature, the deadly corruption, did utterly vanquish and overcome the pure and friendful blood, without all manner of physical help and remedy.

More wives, your Grace?

>Scottish armor

Anglicanism is the biggest meme in all Christendom.

No it's not.

Didn't he boot the Catholics out of the British Isles or something?

>t. Catholcuck