So This A**hole: Henry VIII

Vulgar History Podcast

So This A**hole: Henry VIII 

July 29, 2026

Ann: Welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women’s history comedy podcast. This season we are talking about the Tudor era. My name is Ann Foster, and I have hated Henry VIII for a really long time. You can’t talk about the Tudors… He’s kind of like, in a lot of ways, the main character of the Tudors, so even though this is a women’s history podcast, he did mess up a lot of women’s lives, so we’re just talking about him. This episode is called So This Asshole: Henry VIII, and I have a very special guest, a very appropriate guest. It’s the author of Henry Tudor Must Die, Jillian Laine. Welcome Jillian. 

Jillian: Hello! Thank you. I am here to bash Henry all day long. [laughs] 

Ann: Well, when I was thinking, it’s like, I know I have to do an episode about Henry VIII, just to give context for all the other episodes about his wives and stuff, and then I saw about your book, Henry Tudor Must Die, and I thought, “Oh, this is who I need to have on,” because I feel like you must have feelings about him. Do you have feelings about him? 

Jillian: Oh, I have very strong feelings. I mean, literally the premise of the book began that my husband and I were, like, getting ready for bed, and I’m kind of laying in bed, and I’d read an article about him or, I can’t remember, I’d watched a documentary, whatever it was. And I just said to him, and I was like, “You know, Henry Tudor did not get what was coming to him.” His end wasn’t bad enough; his life wasn’t bad enough. Nothing was bad enough for what he did. My husband, who also loves to read, write, everything, watch movies, he goes, “Well, why don’t you just Inglorious Bastards him?” And I was like, “Oh my God, of course!” So, I stay up all night plotting and planning how I’m going to basically rewrite history so that Henry does get the ending he deserves. 

Ann: Exactly. So, just tell everybody— I mean, that’s what Henry Tudor Must Die is about. But how do you describe the plot to people? I mean, I feel like that’s engaging enough, but just, how do you explain it? 

Jillian: Sure. The plot itself really has less to do with Henry than one might think. I mean, you know, there’s a goal at the end, and I will say, you won’t be unsatisfied. But the real story is about Anne Boleyn and Catherine of Aragon, or Catalina, as she was originally called, and I’m trying to restore the names of the queens as I go. Anne, it’s the eve of her execution; she is indeed a witch, but she can’t get out of the Tower of London. And Catherine of Aragon, Catalina, shows up and has this daring escape plan. She’s faked her own death, and they are about to go do crimes in the name of womanhood together. 

So, they do so, but they get pulled back into the orbit of the English court, especially when there are more women to save, and they sort of form this… It’s everybody, but Jane Seymour, no offence to Jane Seymour, but everybody except Jane Seymour bands together to take down the King. 

Ann: Exactly. I think Inglorious Bastards is a good way of describing it. It’s kind of, like, taking history and then changing it in such a way that the bad guys suffer more. 

Jillian: Yes, yes. 

Ann: So, it’s just a bit more satisfying for everybody. 

What we’re going to do today, because there’s people that they’re listening who might not know any of this; there’s people who kind of know some of this. But we’re just going to kind of go through, like, who is Henry VIII? Why do we hate him? [both chuckle] What are the terrible things he did? Just kind of, like, beginning to end, his whole gross, terrible life. [Jillian laughs] 

So, I wanted to just sort of place him in sort of like, the context of other episodes that people will have heard by now. His parents, so his father is Henry VII, who is the son of Margaret Beaufort. This is kind of like, the Wars of the Roses happened; it’s like who’s going to be king? And eventually he, with the help of his mother— And this is the thing I find so interesting about the Tudor era, there’s so many strong women. 

Jillian: Yes!

Ann: And the men are just kind of dragged along. So, this is kind of that’s his grandmother, Margaret Beaufort. His mother is Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Elizabeth Woodville. So, he’s kind of the first, well, I guess he has an older brother, Arthur, but they’re the first generation of people to be born into this new dynasty in a non-war-based situation. 

Jillian: Yeah. And it’s very tenuous, because, you know, it’s only basically, second generation, and it’s like, can you hold on to power? I think that influenced a lot of what he did for the worse. But he just was like, “Oh, I’ve got to amass more power to make this dynasty,” and it came back to bite him a couple of times. 

Ann: Exactly, exactly. And I think that’s part of what— If I’m going to give him, I’m not going to sympathize with Henry VIII, but where he’s kind of coming from is a bit, like, his family’s claim to the throne is so tenuous. 

Jillian: Yes. 

Ann: Every day they have to be kind of play acting, like, “Oh, we’re supposed to be in charge. This is the dynasty it’s supposed to be.” It could fall apart at any minute. 

Jillian: Totally.

Ann: And part of that is this culture where it’s, like, it has to pass from a father to a son. So, in his case, he is the second son. He has an older brother called Arthur, and Arthur is, like, trained up to be the next king. Henry is trained up to be, like, a church guy, right? 

Jillian: Yeah. And very like, I mean, in fairness to Henry, he had a really strong, humanist education. Like, he read a lot, he spoke multiple languages, he played a ton of instruments. He was actually kind of like, you know, a little bit less evil in the beginning, I think. Everybody’s less evil in the beginning, right? No kid comes out evil. But I think as a younger person, he had this sort of different path in front of him, and it would have been really interesting if Arthur had become king and Henry had not, and we could have seen, would he have been the evil monster that, you know, we feel like he is today? 

Ann: Well, and I wonder too, again, if we’re just kind of thinking speculatively, it’s like, he was kind of moved into a path that was not his, you know, that was not what he was raised to do. If he had been raised differently, maybe he would have behaved differently. But also, if his life’s path was really to become, like, the archbishop or whatever, he would have had a really different life. 

So, he’s the spare, right? He’s got this older brother. I did an episode a while ago about his sister, Margaret Tudor, who became the Queen of Scots. But she was a little kid at the time of her marriage, and so she was still living there with a family. And Henry, I remember reading, was really jealous of her because suddenly she started being treated like the Queen. 

Jillian: Oooh, sure!

Ann: But that’s his sister and she’s just a girl. So, I’m just like, “In retrospect, like, okay. We see who you are, Henry VIII.” But at the time, you’re like, oh, he’s just the brother, and he’s jealous that she gets this attention and whatever. 

Jillian: Yeah, totally. Yeah. And I think he was probably the type of person that once all of that praise and attention was heaped on him, it changed him, you know? The other kids grew up with it more than he did. It was sort of like, he was— I don’t even remember exactly what year old he was when Arthur died. Arthur was like 15, so Henry was a couple of years younger. It was at that puberty stage where he went from being kind of nobody to being the most important person in his country, literally, like, besides his dad. I can just imagine how that warped his mind into what… I mean, he was already a prince, you know, it’s not like he wasn’t important. But now, all of a sudden, he is the heir to the throne, and it probably just changed everything about him or enhanced the things that were there that were probably kind of problematic. 

Ann: Exactly. And it’s sort of like, he’s living his life – I’m just double-checking some of the ages and dates – but it’s kind of like, he was growing up, he’s a kid, he has these siblings, he has this mother. And then boom, boom, boom, a whole bunch of deaths happen all in a row, which also can change a person, especially when you’re really young. 

His brother, Arthur, is married to Catalina of Aragon, Catherine of Aragon, as she’s known. And it sort of legitimizes them by marrying the heir to somebody from an indisputable royal family like the Spanish royal family. She brings a lot of gravitas to the role. 

Jillian: Yes. Daughter of Isabella and Ferdinand, and yeah, all of her siblings are kings and queens of various places. I mean, Spanish royalty was about as solid as you could get at that time, besides the French, but obviously, the French and the English were not friends, so… [chuckles] 

Ann: The French and the English, it’s so hard to keep track, but they’re almost always at war. Occasionally, briefly not. So, Spain is kind of it. One of the reasons why this marriage happened was because this sort of legitimizes them. Catalina of Aragon has also descended several generations back from previous kings of England. So, it’s kind of like, this is legitimizing; this is a really powerful marriage. And then Arthur dies, age 15. 

Jillian: Yeah, and they’ve only been married a couple of months. A lot of what then comes around is, did they consummate the marriage? That becomes this whole question for everybody. But in my mind, I mean, these are like, 15-year-old kids who get very, very sick with the sweating sickness almost immediately after meeting each other. They can’t even communicate very well; their versions of Latin are very different from each other, so as they’re trying to build English-to-Spanish bridges, it’s not working as well, even though they’re both highly educated. So, it’s sort of this like, “Hi, nice to meet you. I kind of can talk to you, and now you’re dead,” was basically the experience that Catherine had. 

And then, she gets stuck waiting for Henry because the law of that time, especially because there were dowries involved, they’d already paid half the dowry from Spain, but Ferdinand refused to release the other half because he was like, “Well, I still want my daughter to marry a king. I still want this alliance and this power.” So, Catherine just has to wait years for Henry to come of age and marry him. So, she’s just trapped in England, like, stuck there as men take over and control everything that she can do, and everyone she can be with, and anything she can do with her life. She came out strong as diamonds from that, and I so admire her. But man, I pity her as well. That would be a terrible situation to be in. 

Ann: Well, it’s such an awkward situation because the marriage negotiation happened. It’s like, “Oh, this is so great. We have this alliance, Spain, England.” And then Arthur dies, and it’s kind of like, “Eugh! We did all this work with this negotiation.” So then, like, in a sequence of events as well, Elizabeth of York gets pregnant again, potentially she’s like, “Oh, let’s try to have another son,” or something, but then she dies as a result of that pregnancy and childbirth situation. So, Henry’s mother is dead, his brother is dead. For a minute, what I read is that Henry, his dad, was maybe going to marry Catherine of Aragon, like, just trying to figure out “What do we do with this Spanish princess who’s kind of stranded here?” 

Jillian: Yeah. Yeah! I just, I can’t imagine being in a time period where you could just be married off to whoever just because it was a convenience for power, you know? And that was, of course, what happened. But yeah, it was like, “Oh, I guess I’ll just marry you.” Like, what kind of world is that? It’s horrible. So yeah, poor Catherine. Augh! 

Ann: Well, and this is part of, like, one, maybe the only thing that Henry VIII did that I sort of appreciate is that when his father died and he became king, one of the first things he did was he’s like, “I’m going to marry Catherine of Aragon.” Because his father wouldn’t agree to let him do that while he was still alive. And so, Henry, I just appreciate, like, clearly he liked her; they had some sort of rapport, they had some sort of friendship that had developed as teenagers in this series of tragedies kind of stranded together. So, I appreciate that he was like, “You know what I’m going to do? Marry her as soon as I can,” and he does. 

Jillian: Yeah, yeah! And they’re married for 23, 25 years, something. It’s a very long time, and I think that’s what people forget too. I can’t speak to, I mean, how much real romance there was, you know, and love between them. I think it was a very up-and-down experience, at least I know more about Catherine’s side of it as she went through all of these losses of children and miscarriages and Henry sleeping around and doing all this stuff. But you know, they had a very long marriage, especially by any Tudor standards, you know, or any standards of that time. I mean, most people died in their forties at that time. It was like, they lived from their teens into their late thirties together, and I think that gets forgotten often, that she was around for a really long time. 

Ann: Yeah. Well, I think when people talk about, like, the six wives of Henry VIII, you kind of imagine each one of them was married to him for, like, one year or something. 

Jillian: Totally. Yeah, yeah. And some of them were.

Ann: But not her. 

Jillian: Not her. 

Ann: And so, this is the thing. They were married, and she was beloved by the country. Everybody loved… I think like what happens often in history when there’s a very elderly king, and then a new younger person inherits, everyone’s like, “Oh! Youthful energy. How wonderful!” So, people are excited to have this young couple. And as you mentioned, she does conceive… She’s unlucky in pregnancies, so she has various stillbirths, like, miscarriages. 

Jillian: Yeah. And Henry, what is it? The Duke of Cornwall, their first child, lived about 50 days, you know, when they really thought they had an heir. And that was, of course, as we were talking about, you know, the tenuousness of this dynasty is that the thing that they need to do instantly, because there are no spares left. There’s nobody. I mean, other than we’ve got cousins, but, you know, they need to create an heir, and they want a boy, even though obviously we know that the girls go on to do just fine. That sets the tone for what Henry does for the next two decades of his life there with seeking an heir. 

But yeah, I mean, they got off to a pretty good start. Catherine, especially, I mean, she was raised in a political family, so she knew what to do, she knew how to talk to people, she knew how to make connections; she was making stronger connections with Europe. And I think she was really kind of credited as the first female ambassador, too. So, she’s doing all of this work. And Henry’s doing stuff… He likes to joust, he likes to hunt. He’s impressive. At that time, he’s young, he’s fit, he’s very athletic, and he’s still, you know, like we talked about, his education was good, so he’s impressing people as well. And so, they were this kind of power couple at a very early age, and then, as the question of children and heirs started to happen, that’s where it really fell apart. 

Ann: Have you heard the theory about Henry VIII and the Kell positive gene? 

Jillian: Yes. Oh, totally! I mean, he had six wives, three children that survived out of, I don’t… I think it’s something like… The number that’s thrown around is multiple dozens of lost children between the wives and the mistresses. So, it’s definitely not the women; I can say that with certainty, even though it was obviously a hard time to, you know, survive in infancy at all. But yeah, I subscribe to that theory completely. 

Ann: So, the theory… Kell positive is just, like, a thing that people have genetically. If you have this, what it means is that maybe if your partner is not also Kell positive, then maybe the first child survives, but subsequent children don’t. That tends to be the pattern with the women that he has children with; they have a successful pregnancy, and then all the other ones fail. So, it seems like he’s bringing some genetic material into this that is just… 

Jillian: Yes, totally. And I mean, who knows with all of the connections even between all of those people, you know, everybody is somebody’s cousin, basically, however many times removed. I think it was probably a recipe for disaster in a lot of ways. But at least, you know, we did we got our girls out of it, and Edward’s okay, I guess. [laughs] 

Ann: It’s also interesting, too… I know just from, I’ve had conversations with a friend of mine who’s an OB/GYN, and she has said, like, it’s a fact that girl babies tend to survive harder circumstances better than boy babies do. 

Jillian: Wow! That’s amazing. 

Ann: Like, if you look at really poverty-stricken areas, the children who survive tend to be girls. So, of all the kids that could have survived, like, of course, it was Elizabeth and Mary, because girls just tend to be a bit heartier. 

Jillian: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, they proved it in their reigns. They were, for better or for worse, very hardy. [laughs]

Ann: I mean… Can we talk about Henry VIII? So, you know, he’s kind of this jock, like, high school football. He’s like, tall and big, and as a young man, I will even say, considered good-looking and stuff. Not a lot of people were tall; he was tall. He looked really big and imposing and athletic. And then, he tried to do some war stuff… Didn’t go well. 

Jillian: No. 

Ann: He went to France, didn’t go well. 

Jillian: No. I think this was another… Like we were saying, France and England, so much bad blood. He often was claiming himself to be King of France because of all these connections from the past, and it never worked. They made all of these treaties over and over again. “Okay, we’ve lost all this money, we’ve lost all these people. We’re not going to do it again.” And then Henry would go kind of inevitably and do it again. That actually became a large problem for when his children inherited because he spent— Well, he spent a lot of money on a lot of things. This man knew how to spend. He even dissolved all the monasteries and stole all their money, and he still spent it all. It’s wild! But he spent so much on war, failed war, and it meant that his children inherited a very challenging, kind of, debt-stricken country and had to rebuild it, and that’s not an easy thing to do. 

So, yeah, Henry and war… He should have just stayed on the jousting pitch, done his thing there, he was fine. But yes, not a very successful man across the pond, or the Rough Wooing of Scotland. I mean, he just, everywhere he went, he was trying to expand his territory, make his mark, solidify that dynasty – I think that was in every single move he makes, and I laugh a little because he failed a lot at it. [chuckles]

Ann: Well, and the whole thing is, like, in retrospect, the person that solidified the dynasty was his daughter, Elizabeth, who he… Anyway, we’ll get into that. 

So, let’s talk marriages. He meets Anne Boleyn. But it’s not just like, as is portrayed often – and I understand why, like, in narrative – it’s like, oh, my god, he falls in love with her and he will throw aside everything to be with her. But in fact, he was already just kind of like, Catherine of Aragon, she’s clearly not going to have a successful pregnancy. She’s had so many failed pregnancies, she’s getting older, which makes it even more risky, and he really wants this son. So, how would you describe the sequence of events? 

Jillian: Well, it’s fascinating because, you know, Anne comes from not as powerful a family by any stretch of the imagination. The Boleyns are, you know, people like them, they’re okay, but they’re not the super rich and powerful royalty-adjacent types of people. But Anne is, I mean, in every historical document I’ve ever read, described as this incredibly intelligent, sharp-witted, clever, fascinating woman. She is probably, at that point, kind of the pinnacle of education in England. So, I think he meets a person that is really interesting and like nobody else that he’s met. I could see based on the descriptions I read about her that she, you know, didn’t take shit from him. Like, he probably was… Everybody fawns over him. And I’m sure she was, you know, you have to be nice to the King, or he’s literally going to behead you. But, you know, I think he probably met somebody unlike anyone he’d ever met. But their courtship was seven years long. And I wish that we had Anne’s letters because Henry wrote all of these letters to her, and they are love letters. But when you read them – and you should, they’re free on the internet – they are so interesting because you can tell he’s really trying to coerce her into this situation. 

So, she was a maid of honour of Catherine of Aragon; that’s how they met. She’s at court, and obviously, her sister, Mary, is involved, and there’s an affair that happens with Mary. And so, there’s this very complicated situation of like, “You’re a married man. You’ve slept with my sister, and now you’re trying to pursue me.” The letters that he writes are very like, “Oh, everything’s okay. I can tell from your last letter that you’re feeling kind of nervous about this, but it’s fine. I’m King, and I love you so, so much.” So, it’s this very coercive, very “I’m the most powerful person in the world,” basically taking advantage of a younger employee, so like, where have we seen that before? 

Ann: She can’t say no, like, she has no recourse. 

Jillian: She can’t, no!

Ann: It’s not romantic, necessarily, so much as just kind of like, he is relentlessly – actually, although I do find it funny, some of the things he sent her to try to win her over. At one point, he sent her a monkey. She sent it back. 

Jillian: Yeah. 

Ann: She’s just like, “What are you doing? Why did you send me a monkey? Stop bothering me, old man!” 

Jillian: [laughs] And she did. She left court multiple times, and it was like, you know, is she playing hard to get? No. I think she was literally just like, “Oh, my God, I have to get away from this,” because she knew. She knew that it’s either, like, say yes and blow up this whole situation that is happening with Catherine, or say no and probably either die or have her family’s fortunes vastly changed for the worse. So, it’s a very sticky situation to be in, especially knowing that he’s had mistresses. She said no to being a mistress, which is like, wild. She probably… It was like a pig’s fly situation. She’s like, “Oh yeah, I’ll sleep with you when we’re married. Lol. Like, that’s never going to happen.” And then, it does. 

Ann: So, you mentioned before about his education and stuff; he was a scholar. Sometimes I forget, like, I think about him as just this kind of like, jock guy, but he also was being trained for church jobs. So, he comes to believe, or makes himself believe, that the reason why he hasn’t had a son with Catherine is because she was married to Arthur before. And it says in the Bible, like, “Don’t marry your brother’s wife.” Although I think the Bible does say, like, actually…

Jillian: It also says if your wife, “If your brother’s wife dies, you must marry her.” It says both of those things. So, he just chose the one that worked best for him. 

Ann: But he was just like… He took, or at least he claimed to take this really seriously, he’s like, “Oh, my God, I’ve like betrayed God,” whatever. So, it’s kind of like, coincidentally, that he’s like, “Actually, turns out my marriage, J.K., that was not a real marriage. That’s why we didn’t have a son. God doesn’t approve of it. And also, I met this cool girl, Anne Boleyn, and I’m really intrigued by her.” So, first he tries to do this in, I don’t know, a more straightforward way. He’s like, “Hey, Pope, can I get my marriage dissolved? Can we just do that?” And the Pope, who is related to Catherine, is like, “No.” 

Jillian: Yeah. Like, definitely not. 

Ann: “No! Like, you’ve been married for decades, you have children. Like, no, I’m not going to annul your marriage.” So, this is where he has to like… This is a very famous thing that lots of people have written books about; neither you or I have gotten into this minutiae. But basically, a bunch of men sat down with a bunch of legal documents and tried to figure out how to do this. Ultimately, what it meant is, like, England starts its own religion that is not pope-based, so he can do whatever he wants. 

Jillian: Yeah. I mean, it’s honestly insane when you look at it, because it’s like, “Okay. I don’t want to be married to this person anymore. Divorce doesn’t exist. I want to be married to this person.” And he’s already had, like, at this point, he’s had mistresses that have had children. At this point, he has Henry Fitzroy, who is a couple of years old. So, when he’s all like, and he does, he’s always like, “Oh, I’m so pious, I’m so good.” I’m like, excuse me! There’s living proof of your infidelity right there, and you’re going to be like, “Oh, I’m the chosen one of God.” 

But he puts out this, I think it’s called, like, the Act of Supremacy, that’s basically like, he, Henry, is the most important being on this planet Earth in England, and it’s just him straight to God. Bye-bye, church, don’t need Pope. And they start calling the Pope, you know, like foreign devils. It’s really this sort of propaganda campaign of a religion that they have been part of for centuries, that they choose on the whims of a man wanting to marry somebody else. And you know, it’s the time of the English Reformation, when they’re switching from sort of this strict Latin Catholicism to sort of this more, I guess, accessible to people. You know, the idea with the Reformation was that people could read the Bible and they could learn things about…

Ann: Themselves. 

Jillian: Exactly, in English. Instead of, if they didn’t know Latin, they only could go to church and hear what the, you know, the preacher there was saying to them. So, it’s this kind of wild, radical time, and it’s not like Henry was pro that. He still remained kind of pretty much Catholic his entire life. He didn’t give up his religion; he just made himself the head of a new one and was like, “Euh, Pope’s out, Catherine’s out, Anne and Henry are in.” It’s probably the most dramatic time of his entire life and, obviously, the thing that we most think about. I think that’s part of the reason why the Anne Boleyn story is the one told more than any of the other wives is it all kind of coalesces together at the same time, and it’s wild. It would be crazy to be in England that time and basically be like, “Don’t worship this anymore, exactly. Do this. Here’s your new queen. I’m making all these new rules.” Also, he dissolves the monasteries. 

Ann: Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to say, like, this is the same time… This is potentially another, like, simultaneous aim where he realizes, like, “Oh, if we stop being a pope-based country, then all these monasteries don’t need to be there, and I can claim those lands and take all their treasures.” And so, it’s kind of, “Oh, and this can help fund wars and debts! Isn’t that interesting?” That happens too. 

Jillian: Yes. In that time, because, you know, they didn’t have nonprofits, basically, the church was – you know, however imperfectly or perfectly, they did it – they were who helped the poor, the widows, the orphans, everybody in their towns and their villages. And so, Henry comes and sucks up all this money, and all of a sudden, it doesn’t work the same way. If you’re not part of the Catholic Church, you don’t have to tithe, you’re not having to give the same amount of money or do the same things. 

What was very interesting was that one of the things that Anne Boleyn tried to do was to make sure as much of that money as possible went back to the people the way it was supposed to and not to Henry’s wars, and jousting tournaments, and fancy jewels, and velvet clothes. Even though she did get fancy jewels and velvet clothes, her own self. So, you know, whatever. But still, she really tried to do some good with that money, and that was actually a sticking point with her and Henry, and one of my least favourite people, Cromwell, who was Henry’s right-hand man in dissolving the marriage, dissolving the monasteries. He just was a little power-hungry jerk, and he also gets what he deserves at his time in Henry Tudor Must Die. 

Ann: Yeah. So, it’s a messy end because Catherine never accepts that the marriage was annulled. She just gets removed, she’s sent away, and they’re like, “We’re going to call you the Dowager Princess of Wales because of her marriage to Arthur,” and she will not respond to that. Like, she never accepts it. And the country loved her; she was a really popular queen. So, nobody is happy about the Anne Boleyn situation. Like, they have a huge coronation process, and people are, like, booing her. It’s not… You know, Henry is like, “I’m in charge of everything,” but it’s like, you’re not in charge of everybody’s feelings, and nobody wants this. 

Jillian: Yeah. And we should not overlook that he also basically takes Mary’s birthright away. So, she had been the heir apparent, and at that same time that Catherine gets demoted, so does Mary, to basically being a bastard, like any of Henry’s other children with mistresses. So, suddenly, you’ve lost both your queen and your princess, who were… Mary was also very well liked. She was very smart. 

Ann: Beloved! She was like, everybody’s number one girl. She’s like, our niece, you know? Everyone loves her, and then suddenly it’s like, “We’re supposed to not care about her anymore.” So, he’s treating them both horribly… 

Jillian: And separates them for the rest of… 

Ann: From each other, yeah. 

Jillian: Catherine’s life, which is heartbreaking. [sighs] Henry. Anyway. 

Ann: Well, Henry Tudor must die. 

Jillian: Henry Tudor must die. [laughs]

Ann: So, he marries Anne Boleyn, and it’s like this… Okay, and then I mean, she’s pregnant almost right away, and has a daughter, and it’s kind of like, “Oh, no!” Because the whole thing is he was just like, “Well, this is the marriage God wants.” Although he had to get a dispensation because he had slept with her sister before. [Jillian laughs] So, it’s like, “Sir! You ended your first marriage because Catherine of Aragon had, like, married your brother, and now you’re marrying a woman who you slept with his sister and maybe had a child with?” Mmm. 

Jillian: Yeah, yeah. Maybe even two children with. Yeah, it’s very… He’s the king of “It’s not me. It’s you.” Whatever the rules are, don’t apply to him. He makes them up as he goes. 

Ann: Exactly. So, that marriage to Anne Boleyn, like, they courted for, you said, seven years. But the marriage was really short-lived. 

Jillian: Yeah, yeah. Three years. And, you know, I think there was all this excitement from his side, obviously, as we were talking about, not from the people. But it’s this huge time; he’s suddenly got a new girl, he’s got all these riches coming in, like, there’s all this stuff that’s happening and changing for him. But the thing that isn’t happening and changing for him is getting a boy, and apparently, that’s what matters most. We also, you know, we, Anne Boleyn lovers, speculate that once he’s married to Anne and the chase is over, this was a man who loved to hunt, remember, like a man who loves games. He has gotten his prize, and his prize does not immediately do exactly what he wants, and probably didn’t do exactly what he wanted in a lot of ways, you know? Like we were just saying, she was trying to give her money away as well and do good things, like a person should do. 

Ann: And like you said, he was perhaps drawn to her because she didn’t put up with his shit, like, she did talk back. But then when he married her, he’s like, “Wait. Why is she not taking my shit?” It’s like, but that’s what you liked about her before. Like, you thought she was just going to change and be submissive? Which she was not, like, famously. She was always herself, and I appreciate that about Anne Boleyn. 

Jillian: Totally. 

Ann: But it just all kind of… It’s the relationship, but also just the people scheming behind the scenes, different families and factions. Ultimately, he’s like, it’s too messy. Like, people are thinking Elizabeth is maybe illegitimate because some people don’t recognize their marriage, and it just seems like he needs to– He, I don’t think he needs to. He thinks he needs to get rid of her, and the only way he can do that— Well, the quickest way, because he saw how hard it was to get rid of Catherine, so he’s like, I’m just going to execute her, so he just makes up a bunch of charges. 

Jillian: Exactly, yeah. He’s already learned that it takes seven years to get rid of a wife. He doesn’t have that much time. I mean, he’s not that old at that point, but he’s getting older. He’s probably late thirties, early forties at that point. So, yeah, he accuses Anne of incest with her brother, of sleeping with all these men, of treason, of plotting to kill Henry with one of her lovers, all of this stuff that has, like, almost zero foundation at all. Like, yeah, some boys talk to her sometimes, but it’s just all the speculation, and she has this sham of a trial, overseen by her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, who also… 

Ann: Who is the worst. 

Jillian: The literal worst, like, maybe worse than Henry, which is saying a lot. And yeah, then it’s off to the Tower with Anne. So, it’s like, the great love of his life, supposedly, he’s just ready to off with her head. And he brings in a swordsman, and he’s like, “Oh, I’m so magnanimous and so kind so you don’t get your head chopped off with an axe,” which sometimes, obviously, didn’t go super well. There were people that had multiple attempts, and it wasn’t great. But like, you’re still executing your wife. You know, we’re splitting hairs here on what’s nice and what’s evil. So, yeah. Augh, Anne. 

Ann: Well, and one of the things is, as per usual, he’s not just going to execute her and then find a new wife; he’s got somebody waiting in the wings. Because he’s met Jane Seymour and they get married, what is it, like, six days later? 

Jillian: I think ten days later. They announced their engagement the day after. And again, this is another one of Anne’s ladies, maid of honour, so the unmarried ladies-in-waiting. 

Ann: So, his whole dating pool is just kind of like, the women who are around his current wife. 

Jillian: Exactly. A hundred percent. 

Ann: That’s his dating pool. 

Jillian: Yeah, exactly. So, Anne dies, I think it’s May 19, 1536. And then, yeah, ten days later, he’s on to Jane Seymour. She is a hundred percent different from Anne; she’s very meek, her education is not very strong. Her family is powerful, her brothers suck, but she is sort of the polar opposite and is known… I can’t remember exactly what she has as her… Because each wife adopted, like, a motto. 

Ann: Her thing was to obey or something. To serve and obey. 

Jillian: Exactly, to serve, yeah. And I was like, “Eugh, gross.” 

Ann: Because Anne Boleyn was the most happy, iconic. And then, Jane Seymour’s just like, “I will obey.” She’s like, trad wife vibes. 

Jillian: Yes. And she may— I mean, this is another woman probably in an impossible situation, right? Like, she Henry plucks her out, and what is she going to… She’s seen what happens; she’s watching Anne’s downfall. She can’t say no. 

Ann: You know what? Exactly. It’s like for me, sometimes I feel like, “Oh, Jane Seymour, she’s the boring one.” It’s like, you know what? That’s strategic. 

Jillian: Totally. 

Ann: It’s like, you saw Anne Boleyn’s strong personality and what happened to her, so it’s like, yeah, “I’m just going to be subservient and meek and do what I’m told,” in a sort of like, kidnap victim way. 

Jillian: A hundred percent. You’re literally just trying to survive. 

Ann: It’s like, “I’m going to make him happy.”

Jillian: Yeah, yeah. You’re with an abusive person, and you’re just trying to survive. So, yeah. And I mean, their marriage is short…

Ann: What, nine months? Right?

Jillian: Yeah. 

Afa: Because she gets pregnant, has a son, dies. 

Jillian: Yeah, basically. I think she dies like, the next November. I think it’s like, a year and some change. And yeah, the next November, Edward is born and she, within two weeks, has died. 

Ann: I’m just checking out. So, they were married in late May, and then she died the subsequent October. So, she dies, and I do want to just mention, again, because I mentioned my bestie OB/GYN, but this is yet another situation of, like, people didn’t know about washing hands. 

Jillian: Right. 

Ann: So, it’s like, “I’m just going to do an autopsy on this person, then I’m going to just deliver this baby.” And that’s like, of course. It’s called puerperal fever, where it’s just, like, you have a baby and then you die, and it’s like, yeah, because your doctor didn’t wash his damn hands. 

Jillian: Yes, yeah. Or sterilize anything. 

Ann: We could Inglorious bastards this, just like, bring some doctors in.

Jillian: Oh, my gosh, right? Well, and what was fascinating at this time for these women was that this was like sort of the turning point of you used to have midwives and women that had this, like, long history of understanding childbirth. And again, they didn’t have all the sanitary practices we do; it’s not like they were that ahead of their times, but they were much more ahead of their times, and they understood a woman’s body. And this is around the time where they’re starting to put male doctors into the birthing rooms, which was never a place for men before. But especially for, like, a royal family, you would have, probably, a male doctor as part of this, and they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. So, I think we lost a lot of women as the men started to enter this field, not knowing anything, dismissing the women that knew, had all these generations of knowledge, and had given birth themselves. All of a sudden, you’ve got men being like, “Oh yeah, just lay down. That’ll be fine.” That’s a whole other thing. 

But yeah, poor Jane. I do agree, I sometimes think she’s the boring one, which is why in Henry Tudor Must Die, she kind of lives her life the way it was lived, because I couldn’t see the angle of how she, like, really broke out of that and changed. But I think, you know, again, she didn’t have a choice in this; she did the best she could with what she was given. And if you want a really good Jane Seymour, Holly Race’s books, so she’s got the Six Wild Crowns and Six Savage Thrones, and that takes also the sort of the Tudors and the Boleyn-Seymour situation and really turns it on its head even more. So, would highly recommend. She did a great job with Jane Seymour. 

Ann: Fantastic. So, we’ve got Jane Seymour. She has this son. This is where— Wait. We didn’t mention this, but I will just double back to during the Anne Boleyn marriage, Henry had this jousting accident…

Jillian: Oh, yeah! Yeah. 

Ann: … where he almost died. Some people say that his personality changed a lot after this from maybe a head injury. I don’t know if that’s a direct correlation, but like, he does become more paranoid, more… I don’t know. He was already on this trajectory, so it might have just sped up this trajectory, but like, what are your thoughts about the jousting accident? 

Jillian: Yeah. So, yeah, he falls, and he is unconscious for two hours, which is never a good thing, after this fall. 

Ann: Like, today or in olden times. 

Jillian: Oh, yeah. In olden times it’s even worse. He’s sustained this leg injury; he’s had this head injury. It’s all like really, really bad. He’s very injured. And I think to me, I mean, I can definitely buy into that having a head injury of that type and probably with no care could influence how your personality develops. I also think he went from being this super duper athletic, talented guy, very handsome, to when he no longer could joust because of these injuries, and he couldn’t hunt, so he loses this whole part of him. He starts to gain all the weight. His leg is basically ulcered and kind of, like, infected and problematic for the rest of his life.

Ann: Yeah, he develops basically a chronic pain situation. So, like, he puts on weight, like an athlete or somebody who just suddenly is not able to… And maybe the sports were a way to moderate his, you know, emotions, and he doesn’t have that anymore. And then, his body is uncomfortable all the time. So, yeah, his personality changes, but I don’t know if it’s like a CTE thing or whatever. But this is one of the things that a lot of people point to as like, “Oh, this is where he changed.” Where it’s like, okay, well, he did. But also, this is kind of the trajectory he was already going. 

Jillian: Yes. By that point, he’d already had, like, very close advisors that he had executed over tiny things. You know, it wasn’t like this was a perfect gentleman, kind guy before and he turned into a monster. 

Ann: No, he didn’t suddenly pivot. 

Jillian: It’s not a Jekyll-Hyde situation. But yeah, I do think both the emotional toll of that and the physical toll of that probably made him into a worse version of himself, as it would perhaps with any of us. But it does then influence, yeah, the rest of his life and how he even just gets around and what he can do. 

Ann: What do you say… Because I saw this hot take recently and I was like, “Oh, that’s a hot take!” Somebody said, like, to criticize Henry VIII is ableist because he was a man living with chronic illness. 

Jillian: Oh, well, I mean, perhaps after 1936, you know, there’s a shade of that. But you could criticize him way up until— What did I say? 1536. You could criticize him plenty up until 1536. So, I mean, I do think I push back against – and I had to do this when writing – because he is, in his later years, described in most textbooks and histories as being, you know, ugly and obese and has all these, like, boils and he has this leg injury. So, he’s got a lot going on, and there is this point, and it’s through Catherine Howard, his fifth wife’s eyes, where I learned all this. “The doctor told me what to expect when I saw him naked for the first time.” And she was like, “I honestly pitied him because I was like, that would be so hard to be like that, and I would hate that.” And then, what she realizes is that all does exist, but it doesn’t change what’s in his soul. and what he does, and the choices that he makes. So, two things can be true at once and two things can exist at once. 

So, I didn’t ever want to make him into this caricature based on some of these things that I do think could be ableist, or could be fat phobic, or could be whatever it could be. It does not erase what he did from his own brain. And we see that— I mean, we’ve got modern politicians where we can do the exact same thing, right? So, I think it is an interesting take.

Ann: Criticizing actions…

Jillian: Correct.

Ann: But when I saw that, I was just like, oh, okay. But, you know, people with chronic illness and disabilities can also be terrible people. 

Jillian: Oh, yeah, totally. It does not absolve you of being a bad person. Like, I was in a conversation with somebody this week and they were like, “Well, you know, if you had all this stuff that messed you up as a kid, it’s not necessarily your job to fix it.” And I’m like, it’s one hundred percent your job to fix it; you have to go out into the world and be among other people. You can work through that and it’s hard and blame it on other people. But like, you can’t just put your pain on everybody else. And I think that’s what Henry did, is he just put his pain on everybody else. He probably had no idea how to manage it otherwise, and then we see that play out for the rest of his life as just who he hurts over and over and over again. 

Ann: Well, and also this kind of dichotomy of what he looks like, versus how hot he was, and how he thinks he still is. This really leads us beautifully into the Anne of Cleves scenario. 

Jillian: Yes. Oh, my god, augh! 

Ann: She’s my girl. Anne of Cleaves is my girl. She’s my favourite. I think she’s a lot of people’s favourites at this point. Som what happens is Henry VIII is just like, “Okay, Jane Seymour’s dead, I need another wife. There’s not a lady-in-waiting who I like at the time.” But also, I think his counselors around him are like, “How about not marrying a lady-in-waiting? How about marrying a royal or noble person to make an alliance for political reasons?” 

Jillian: Totally.

Ann: So, he’s sent various portraits of people, and he sees the portrait of Anne of Cleves and he’s like, “Okay, yeah. She looks fine. Great.” 

Jillian: Yeah. “Send her over.”

Ann: And this is the thing. In olden times, and it’s not dissimilar to now sending somebody a really flattering photograph of yourself, and then you meet the person and you’re like, “Oh! Well, that’s kind of not quite what you look like.” So, she has, again, no say in it, Anne of Cleves. She’s sent over, and then describe the first meeting. 

Jillian: So, at this point, Henry is, I need to look at what his age… Forties. She is about 25 years old, speaks totally different language. 

Ann: He’s 49. 

Jillian: 49. Yeah, so there we go, and yeah, she’s 25. She’s come over, basically been sent by her dad from what is sort of Germany over to our good friends in England. Again, this is another situation where we’ve got this big language barrier, and Henry is expecting this woman from the portrait. What’s interesting is he sort of meets her in secret and is like, “Oooh, hi!” And then he overhears, and this is, you know, all supposedly. 

Ann: I want to say, sorry, are you talking about the disguise, or is this something else? Because I want to clarify how he meets her because there’s this, like… 

Jillian: Yeah, go ahead. Yes. 

Ann: So, there’s this, like, courtly tradition, this whimsical thing that people— And his dad did this. I forget if his dad… One of his ancestors did this and it also went badly. So, it’s like, “Guys, stop doing this.” It’s like, you’re the king, and you show up just as, like, a pageboy or something, and then you go to meet your wife and you’re just like, and then they’re supposed to recognize your kingly wonderfulness, even within the costume, and they’re like, “Oh, I know it’s you.” But he came in, and he’s this 49-year-old man with an ulcerated leg and, like, various things that are not like… 

Jillian: Instantly kingly, yeah. 

Ann: Yeah, exactly. So, he comes in, and then he speaks to her in this familiar way, and she’s just like, “Who’s this page? This is creepy.” And so, she does not respond to him amorously, and then he’s just like, “Well, fuck this.” Where it’s like, “Sir…” 

Jillian: You basically tricked her. You pulled like a Parent Trap without a twin on her. 

Ann: And nobody told her to expect this. German customs are different from English customs; this is like a whimsical fun thing that they do in English history, and she didn’t know about it. So, she behaved as anyone would if, like, a strange pageboy came in and started acting weird!

Jillian: Yeah, she’s supposed to be marrying a king, so if she thinks some guy is coming on to her, that’s a stranger, and she knows what happens if the King thinks that his wife has slept around, so she’s probably scared, confused, and he’s all like, “Hi, hi!” He also overhears at one point a couple of his – I don’t know exactly who it was – his fellow nobles being like, “Oh, well, she’s definitely not as pretty as we thought she was going to be.” 

So, he starts to develop this very twisted opinion of her based on this weird experience, the opinions of others, and he’s just instantly just like, “No, I couldn’t possibly even sleep with her. We can’t get married.” And like, again, this is a man who does not— Like, if we’re just talking looks for a minute, this is a man who no longer looks remotely good, and we’ve got Anne, who I mean, I think her portrait’s beautiful. Even if it’s a little bit embellished, she still probably was a perfectly normal-looking human being. Like, there’s no way she was this hideous beast that couldn’t even be tempted into the King’s bed. It’s wild. 

Ann: But in this case, he’s like, “I want to annul this marriage.” So, they don’t consummate the marriage. He just tries to be like, “Let’s be straightforward about this.” Oh, we didn’t mention, when Anne Boleyn was executed, then their child Elizabeth was also named basically, like, Elizabeth too. 

Jillian: We’ve got Edward from Jane, and he’s at that point just a couple of years old. It’s a few years between Jane and Anne of Cleves, but he’s a couple of years old. But again, that’s why it’s always they say an heir and a spare. Instantly, Henry knows if he’s like, “Okay, Anne of Cleves is not the one. I need to move on pretty quickly.” And so, he does. 

Ann: And guess what he finds? Lady-in-waiting. [laughs]

Jillian: I think he and Anne, they annul, I mean, it’s something like six months. It’s incredibly short. That makes up for the long Catherine marriage and how quickly this is… And she gets titled, it’s something like the King’s Favourite Sister or something like that. 

Ann: She gets the title, like, the King’s Sister. He’s like, “We’re going to annul this marriage,” and she’s like, “Yes, great.” He’s like, “Well, I’m going to call you the King’s Sister,” and she says “That’s fine,” and then he gives her all this land and property. This is part of why I think a lot of people are like, she’s the one who got out of this the best because he basically paid her off to go away and not complain, and she didn’t, and she got to live this cool life of, like, independence and land ownership. 

Jillian: Yeah, yeah. And for the most part, I mean, I think had the best ending of any of his queens. 

Ann: Oh, undoubtedly, yeah. But the person who he sets his sight on is her 17-year-old lady-in-waiting, who is also a niece of evil, evil Duke of Norfolk. 

Jillian: Yes, Anne Boleyn’s cousin.

Ann: Anne Boleyn’s cousin, Catherine Howard. 

Jillian: Augh, baby girl. 

Ann: Because he was 49 when he married… So, he’s like 49, 50, she’s 17. It’s just kind of like, potentially, this is just a real like, “I need someone who’s fertile and let’s get the son. Let’s find the youngest possible person I can marry,” is maybe part of it. 

Jillian: Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, she is very different, again. I think he’s also, you know, cycling through different types of women. She is young, she’s not very interested in politics. She’s a great musician, she’s very beautiful, she kind of is just this ray of sunshine. You know, you can just think of her as being this really vibrant, young person, a 17-year-old girl. And he sees, and he’s like, “Yes, this is it. I haven’t had something like this before. I’ve had my strict Catholic queen. I’ve had my too-sharp Anne Boleyn. I’ve had my obedient Jane. And then I had Anne of Cleves for a second, and I was like ‘Nnhh, no, no, no.’” And so, now it’s like, “Ahh, yes, I need…” And it’s sort of like, maybe he wants to feel young again. There’s like, probably so much wrapped into this. 

But Catherine had this really weird upbringing. Her dad basically spent all their money; she got sent off to live with her grandmother and grew up in this household that was very… loose. You know, there weren’t a lot of rules, and there were a lot of men trying to take advantage of her at that time. She had a music teacher, she had another suitor, both of who were twice her age. And so, she has this weird past that she’s kind of like clawed her way out of a little bit by getting this maid-of-honour job, but she also hasn’t maybe had all of the etiquette rules and education of that time that would have prepared her to enter Henry’s court and be safe and secure in that. So, she comes in at a disadvantage. 

Ann: Well, and a lot of these people are sort of questionable as well. Like, some of the people who know about kind of how weird her childhood was start sending her letters and basically blackmailing her. 

Jillian: Totally, yeah. 

Ann: Because I think Henry saw her as this, like, rose without a thorn, this beautiful, untouched… Where it’s just like, that’s not her story, but she has to pretend she is, and all these people are like, “We’re going to tell about your past if you don’t give us this job.” So, she keeps giving people these jobs, and they keep kind of blackmailing her. So, it’s a super stressful situation for this teenage child. 

Jillian: Yes, and it does not end well. 

Ann: No. 

Jillian: I don’t know. I mean, in my version of events, I do have her actually have a love story with a nice young man who is not Henry because I wanted her to have that. But that is basically the implication that comes out. I think they’re married for, you know, a year and a half, two years. 

Ann: I’m just looking, it’s like July 1540 to February… She’s beheaded February 1542. 

Jillian: I think, yeah, around Christmas, you know, she gets sent to the Tower that year. But yeah, she gets accused not only of having an affair with somebody in the present day, but also having already slept with somebody before she married the King, which they make an entire law about that. 

Ann: I was going to say, yeah. 

Jillian: I mean, there were a lot of people that slept with people before they slept with the King and the king slept with a lot of people! Like, this was an insane law to make. But yeah, to basically, they had not had any children, who knows what Henry was even capable of doing at that point. There are no children that have come from this union, and he is probably worried he’s being cuckolded. He’s probably worried everybody’s talking about them. This is a very, like, dramatic, another big drama time for him. 

Ann: It feels like Anne Boleyn like, but fast forward, like, the whole sequence of events and the fact that she’s the relative. But it’s kind of like, “So we’re going to make up some charges that she maybe had affairs, that she’s currently having affairs.”

Jillian: Yes. 

Ann: And she does, she said like, “No, I was like forced into these relationships with this person. I was never cheating on you on purpose,” which is heartbreaking. So, the people she’s accused of having the affairs with are executed, and then so is she. 

Jillian: Yeah. And at that point, I mean, so she’s Howard, but the Howards and Boleyns are family, and at this point, I mean, pretty much all the Boleyns are dead. I think Mary might still be alive, but she dies, you know, shortly thereafter, but he’s already killed… Well, he’s not killed Elizabeth, but he’s killed Anne, he’s killed George. Anne’s parents both die, you know, a couple of years after their kids are killed. Mary’s out there, his one-time mistress, and then he’s going through the Howards. So, this family basically, like, besides the Duke of Norfolk, but they all kind of scuttle away for a little while. But even the Duke was in a little bit of hot water because of course he’s the one that put forth another Boleyn/Howard girl, and Henry is like, “How could you have?!” You know, he basically kind of blames him for this marriage having gone sideways. But yeah, the Duke does end up in the Tower himself, but survives in real life by, like, one day, because Henry dies, like, the day before he’s supposed to be executed, which is very annoying to me. 

But anyway, yeah, so yeah, we lose Catherine. I mean, she was probably 19 or 20, we don’t even know her birthday. That’s the interesting thing. Some of these women, we don’t know their birth dates. Like, Anne Boleyn, people don’t know if she was born in 1501 or 1507. It’s like, wild stuff that Henry gets… I mean, I know we’re talking about him right now, but mostly meanly. But he gets all these stories told about him, and these women, we don’t even know when they were born. 

Ann: Well, and that’s part of the thing too. So, like, with Anne Boleyn, you know, her name was carved into all these buildings and stuff, and he had like… This is why there’s still the question today of like, “What did she look like?” Because he had, like, all the portraits destroyed, he scratched out her initials from the building. So, we don’t know a lot about her, and Catherine Howard was around for even shorter period. Like, there’s one portrait that people often look at as being her, but is it her? We don’t know. 

Jillian: Yeah, we don’t know. 

Ann: Because it’s just kind of like, “Let’s just kind of scratch her off and pretend like that was never a thing.” 

Jillian: Yeah. The erasure in real time was wild. And like, as an English citizen, imagine like, you’re just supposed to be like, “Oh, okay. I guess it’s…” You don’t even speak about those women. 

Ann: “Let’s pretend like that never happened.”

Jillian: Yeah. They did try at one point, there was a nice little uprising after Anne Boleyn was executed where people were still mad. They were like, “Put Catherine back on the throne,” there was this whole thing. It failed; Henry killed like 500 people or something in executions during that time. But the people were basically just like at the whims of their mad king and the random women that he was bringing home. Like, it was crazy. 

Ann: So, his final, sixth wife is Catherine Parr. And I just want to, side note, yourself and anyone who’s written a book about these women are faced with the challenge of having three different Catherines. And I like that you just call… Parr just goes by Parr in your book because she’s like, “There’s too many people called Catherine. Just call me Parr.” And I’m like, “Respect.” 

Jillian: Yes, yeah. And yeah, we’ll just call her Parr for… At least I will because that’s how I think of her in my little brain. But yeah, she’s so interesting because she’s been married twice by the time she gets to the King. So, talk about sleeping with other people, granted, in marriages, but still. Both of her husbands had died. That gave me the idea in Henry Tudor Must Die, she’s sort of a black widow poisoner because it’s like, what happened? Like, one of the men that she married was very young; they were contemporaries. Another man she married was very old – not very old, but much older – and got them into a great deal of hot water, politically. But she’s never had any children during this time. So, there’s no evidence that marrying this, like, sort of multi-married, a little bit older woman who has had no children is going to further any of the, you know, ideas that Henry has been circling his whole life around by this point. So, that’s where she sort of, I think, gets the nurse sort of moniker put upon her. 

Ann: That’s what I was thinking. It’s just kind of like, yeah, an older man with health concerns who marries a younger woman. It’s just to sort of take care of him. 

Jillian: Have a companion. Yeah. But at that time, like, I mean, Parr wanted to marry someone else. She was in the early stages of getting betrothed to someone else and Henry swoops in and is like, “Nope. Mine!” And so, I mean, she definitely knows after seeing five women go, she knows like, “Yep, okay. Going to say yes.” And I mean, all of these women, of course, have their flaws and complications, but what she did was she brought Mary and Elizabeth back into the line of succession, which was critical. Like, if she had not been the person that facilitated that, after Edward dies, you know, Henry dies, and then…

Ann: It would have just been another War of the Roses. 

Jillian: Yeah, England would have maybe torn itself to shreds. Yeah, so she really, I think the legacy that she leaves is not only of those two women, but of basically keeping England from falling into chaos again. So, this is a woman that, you know, did a lot of good in a short time with a husband who, at certain points in their marriage, wasn’t even really there anymore, you know? He couldn’t rule very well; he was getting sicker and sicker during the time that they were married, and so she did a lot. She was smart, she was calm, she just kind of got things done. She, to me, feels a lot more like a Catherine of Aragon type of person than some of the other women that have come through his life. And so, yeah, way to go, Parr. I mean, again, making lemonade out of lemons. 

Ann: Can we talk about the part where she was almost arrested, but then talked her way out of it? 

Jillian: Yes! Oh gosh. I mean, because this is Henry, right? He’s just like, “Are my girls talking to other boys?” And of course, I think at this point, he knows who he is – he knows his own flaws, what he looks like, what’s going on – and I think he’s worried about his wives cheating on him, he’s worried about losing the political and religious power that he’s amassed. And anytime he sees anything happening that might align with one of those, he goes running for the Tower and like, come on. And so, yeah, Parr goes through a version of that as well. Augh! But she’s so smart! She really does, she talks her way out of it. 

Ann: It’s wonderful. Like, the sequence of events is something like (as I recall), the people kind of came to arrest her and she’s like, “Oh wait, no. I was just kidding. I was just trying to distract him from his leg pain by saying some silly things, but I didn’t mean those things. So, don’t worry about it.” And then Henry’s like, “Oh, that’s so nice of you to distract me from my leg pain. Never mind.” So, she literally talked her way out of potentially being executed. 

Jillian: Yeah, she was very, very smart. I mean, even the husband that she was married to before Henry, I can’t remember exactly how it all shook out, but he was really wrapped up in a lot of these revolutions against Henry, and that had to do, you know, with the changes of guard and the religion piece. And she was basically kidnapped and ransomed with her stepchildren for, like, months and kept locked up. They kept trying to you know, come and kill her or do bad things to her, and she would talk her way out of it every time. 

So, I mean, this is a woman who dealt with a lot of trauma that had nothing to do with her, like, nothing that she brought upon herself, but she really rose to the occasion, and I think also protected the children. There’s a whole other thing with Elizabeth later, but we won’t get into that right now where I don’t think she does a good job of protecting children. But I think she was a clever woman and did a lot of good and a lot of… I wouldn’t say it’s underhanded, but she worked around the King, you know, and did things that he might not have let her do if he were fully there and paying attention and for the better. 

Ann: What I think about, yeah, if we’re talking about the wives and how each of them fares, like, Anne of Cleves, I think for sure gets off the easiest. Catherine Parr survived, as the rhyme goes, but also, I think so much happened in her life, like, being married to Henry VIII was the sixth most interesting thing to happen to her. Like, it wasn’t her one defining life experience. 

Jillian: And yeah, she goes on to marry again and does, I think, die after a failed childbirth situation, but in my version of events, she does not. 

Ann: Exactly. Your version of events is so much better. [Jillian laughs] 

So, Henry himself, like he has these various health concerns and also, it’s olden times. Well, he has this open wound that never heals. 

Jillian: Literally. Yeah, it’s gross. 

Ann: Yeah, and it’s just kind of a time before antibiotics and whatever. I do want to mention in terms of his size and his various health problems, like, he did innovate… The people around him innovated some sort of, like, rope pulley systems, some early accessibility things, which is really interesting. 

Jillian: Yeah. Because I mean, he struggled to even get out of bed between the pain and the weight. And so, yeah, they had systems to get him out of bed. They had systems to get him around the palace. It was a very different type of, I think, ruler at that point, because people had not seen somebody that was maybe so mobility challenged be their ruler. And so, that was interesting that he stuck with it and built all these things that got him around to where he needed to go until he did, eventually, sort of succumb and die. But I mean, he lived… How old was he when he died? 

Ann: 55. 

Jillian: 55. So, for the time period and for how sick he was, I mean, honestly impressive. He could have died, you know, ten times over from the various things that he did and the illnesses and ailments that he had. So, he hung in there a pretty long time. I don’t know exactly… I remember once I did look up what the average age in the 1500s was for life expectancy, and obviously, he’s a king, so he has access to everything, but he outlived that even despite everything else. 

Ann: Yeah, living with these various issues. So, you know, good riddance, frankly. And then, I’m going to get into this all in later episodes of this Tudor series, but like, he has a son, so I think he would have died, like, feeling secure in the fact that the succession, to him, is secure. Like, it’s going to his son, and he presumes like, “Okay, the Tudors, this is happening. The dynasty is okay.” Would have liked to have had a second son, didn’t,” but he would have died probably thinking like, “Okay, I left this in good hands.” 

Jillian: Yes. And it does… I mean, he’s got Edward, and then now that we’ve got— Then it goes to Mary, and then it goes to Elizabeth. And so, there is a whole plan. Obviously, that plan gets disrupted as time goes on. But yeah, I think what he put his whole life into was that son, and he got that son. And he also, you know, the Church of England, that has started to take hold a little bit more. Obviously, once Mary takes the throne, there’s some push and pull there, but it really does then, I mean, from his reign on, you know, that’s where everybody is today, albeit, you know, 500 years later, and many different things. But yeah. So, he has some very lasting legacies. And he’s obviously the person, you know, when we think about the Tudors, usually Henry VIII is the first person you think about, kind of with a grimace, but yeah. He survived the test of time, for better or for worse. 

Ann: He’s sort of like, he’s a figure who, to me… Because like, the War of the Roses and stuff feels medieval to me. He’s the one who kind of yanks England into sort of the Renaissance period, and part of that is because he was sort of this Renaissance Prince; he had this education, he tried to be well-rounded. So, he sort of like moves from this older way of being to this newer way. I’m not giving him any credit. I’m just saying, to me personally, his lifetime of 55 years, it goes from this kind of really medieval, even just the quality of art, and then it starts getting more realistic-looking. So, somehow during his life, it’s like, there’s something about that Tudor period that feels like the first sort of modern era somehow, and maybe it’s just the artwork. 

Jillian: No, but I do think, I mean, he was a competitive man, right? And so, he’s looking over at François in France, he’s looking at these other princes and kings, and these are men of, you know, great enlightenment, basically. They are smart; they’re doing new and interesting things in their countries. They also have lots of problems, but he’s looking at all of these young men about his age when he becomes King, and he’s probably like, “Okay, I want England to be said in the same sentence as Spain or France or the Holy Roman Empire. So, I need to kind of push us forward,” and he does. 

And I do think the art, the music, a lot of that changes. Education even changes, you know, but I credit that far more to the girls; our girl Catherine of Aragon wrote a whole pamphlet, or had it commissioned, that was something like “The Case for the Education of Christian Women,” something like that, saying that women deserve education just as much as men do. And so, it really was this big turning point across the world at that time, and especially in Europe, but he… [hesitantly] did not do only bad things. [laughs]

Ann: Much as it pains me to say. 

Jillian: It does, it does. 

Ann: But yeah, because he was king for 38 years. And so, I think part of just, like, the fact that he gave that consistency after a period of time of just, like, kings being deposed and dying young, just to have that period of time of one person being there, like, just any person being there for 38 years would have provided a sort of sense of stability. 

Jillian: Totally, yeah. And I think, you know, especially coming off of his dad, Henry VII is the first of his name, seventh of his name, but you know, first of the Tudors. And then, Henry’s around for a long time. And then between his three children/Jane Grey, but you get, I mean, gosh, probably another 60, 70 years of rule that comes after that. So, the Tudor dynasty goes from being this itsy-bitsy thing to lasting more than a hundred years, which, in that time period, was indeed quite impressive. 

Ann: Yeah. So, I do appreciate your book for just… Because, well, first of all, Henry Tudor Must Die is a great read. But every time, like, in researching the episodes for this season, you know, I read through the story of Anne Boleyn or whatever, and every time I read it, I’m just like, “Maybe it’s going to work out this time.” Just so many stories you’re just like, “Oh, maybe…” Like, it starts off promising, and then it’s, “Augh, again,” you have to read about the execution. There’s so many things that have to happen for the Tudor dynasty to unroll the way that it did. So, I appreciate books like yours that are like, “But what if it didn’t happen? What if it was something different?” 

Jillian: Yeah. And I mean, that was what was so fun, right? Because it’s interesting, and the more I think about it, you know, it’s been years since I even started writing it; I started it in 2020, 2021. But the more I think about it, these were real people. Like to me, in my book, you know, they’re characters. That’s not exactly how they would act or speak; it’s very modern, it’s intentionally very feminist. It’s not meant to be like, you know, we’re sitting around and praying and stuff like that, which is what they would actually be doing, and doing their knitting, or not their knitting, probably their embroidery. They don’t do embroidery, I don’t think, at all. No shade on embroidery; I would love to do that right now. That sounds actually really lovely. 

Ann: They’re busier doing blood magic in your book, frankly. Yeah, they have other things to do. 

Jillian: Exactly, yeah. We’re doing crimes. But yeah, I think it’s hard for us to look back at these real-life people and see that they endured so much pain and so many things that, if we had control now, or if they lived in our time now, would never have happened to them. And so, that’s sort of the lens that I took is, you know, there’s no way that the events of my book probably would have occurred, but I like to think that they would have worked together, these Queens. 

That’s the part that I really wanted to turn on its head is that we always sort of list these wives as competitors, you know? They’re pitted against each other, and I hate that. I think, yes, they were because of Henry, and yes, they were because of the time period where you basically had to get married to survive, especially when it’s the King. But these women, I mean, a lot of them worked together, right? We had a lot of these maids-of-honour, and ladies-in-waiting. So, they spent time together, they probably had things in common; they were probably friendly until Henry started, you know, playing his games. And they were smart, and they were interesting. And I just wanted to have a world where they appreciated all of that about each other, and they used that for good instead of letting Henry come between them. 

Ann: I do want to just point out that your book has not a lot of Henry VIII in it. It has the minimum required Henry VIII to make the story work, which I appreciate. 

Jillian: He doesn’t even show up on the page until, like, page 250 or something like that. You know, you’ve got flashbacks, you hear about him and stuff. But I was like, he’s not going to be the star of this show. 

Ann: No, not this time. 

Jillian: No, no. We’ve got other stars, and they shine. So, yeah.

Ann: So, Henry Tudor Must Die is your book. At the time this episode comes out, it is available everywhere. And how can people… I’m presuming you have various events and things you’re doing. What’s the best way for people to keep up with you and attend those if possible? 

Jillian: Yeah. So, JillianLaine.com and it’s Laine, L-A-I-N-E. These were the two names that my mother gave me. I was like, I have a lovely husband and a lovely dad, but I was like, I’m not going to use any of the names that they gave me; these are my girl names for my girls. So, JillianLaine.com, that has all the info about the book, upcoming events. I’ll be linking to the podcast, all the good stuff. That’s also, I think social media is @JillianLaineAuthor. Yes, @JillianLaineAuthor. There we go, that’s what it is. 

So yeah, it’s kind of wild. It’s been such a long time coming. Like I said, I started working on this six years ago, and now it’s here, and it’s happening, and it doesn’t quite feel real yet, but dreams literally come true. Five-year-old Jillian wanted to be an author when she grew up, and so five-year-old Jillian is screaming somewhere inside me right now, so happy. 

Ann: That’s so exciting. I have just one more question because I’m just curious. How old were you when you first became interested in the Tudors? 

Jillian: Oh! Well, we went to England when I was probably like, nine or ten years old. Maybe too early to take a kid on the tour of the Tower of London, but not for me. That was the moment that I first started to be like, “This is a fascinating story.” And I didn’t care at all about Henry. I was like, “These women…” like instantly I was like, these women! 

So, you know, I’m not a historian. I’m just an enthusiast and an admirer of their lives and their stories, but it sort of just stuck with me for a long time. I was always curious about it. I’ve always been curious about the women of history that don’t get their full stories told, and they were the ones that really rose to the fore when I started, you know, writing very seriously and hoping to make their story come true. So yeah, way to go, parents, who are not museum people, I should say. Like, the fact that they took me there and did this was, like… I mean, they were probably interested that they’re not like, “Let’s go do history tours forever,” whereas like, that’s what I would do on a vacation of any sort. So, the fact that they took me there and kind of planted that seed, they get a lot of credit for that. 

Ann: Yeah. Well, you know, I’m a fellow Tudor aficionado, so I’m always just excited that other people are excited about them, and that these, these six women are still in the conversation. And I love books like yours that kind of give them a happier ending, most of them. 

Jillian: Yes. And this is, I mean, for anybody that likes this era, I feel like this year is the year, this year and next, there are so many great Tudor books coming out, and they are all, at least the ones that I’ve read, coming from this great feminist revisionist lens, and I love it. So yeah, you’ve got The Beheading Games. I just… Oh, what was the name of the book I just saw that sold? I think it’s coming out next year. But the Holly Race books that I mentioned earlier. There’s just a lot happening around these women. And it’s almost 500 years, I mean, 500 years for Catherine of Aragon, but about 490 since Anne died, and so, I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s some sort of, you know, cyclical time thing that’s coming, but they are back in our minds and back in the conversation, but it’s really exciting to see it. 

Ann: Well, I’m glad you’re part of it. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. 

Jillian: Thank you. 

—————

So, Jillian’s book is called Henry Tudor Must Die, and I feel like this is one of those books that if you’re a fan of this podcast, if you’re a fan of Tudor history, you fucking hate Henry VIII, like, this is required reading, and it’s available! You should go and get it. The book is out there; there’s also a really good audiobook of it. Enjoy this book, love this book. It’s such a good book. 

And I want to let you know also, if you’re thinking about ways to engage with me and this podcast, so I have a Patreon and that’s sort of, like, it’s kind of like a fan club. If you pay $1 a month there, then, well, first of all, where does the money go? It goes to help me pay for my editor, and for my social media person, and for the person who does my transcripts, and it just helps support this podcast. And what do you get for $1 a month? You get ad-free versions of this podcast. And if you’re like, “Well, I don’t want to have to go to Patreon.com to listen to the podcast.” You don’t. You can get, like, the RSS feed, and you can put that into wherever you want to get your podcasts, wherever you’re listening to right now, you can still listen to it there, but just there’ll be no ads at the beginning, middle, and end. 

If you want to get a little bit more, support this podcast a little bit more and get a little bit more. If you pay $6 a month, then you also get access to our Discord, which is like a community where fans of this podcast can hang out and just talk shit about Henry VIII or whatever. Just have a nice time. We talk about books, and our cats, and lots of things on our Discord. It’s just a big group chat. And also, for people at that $6 a month level, you get access to bonus episodes. When I’m talking about bonus episodes, that means sometimes I go and talk to some of our guests off the main feed; we want to get into some more salacious discussions. That’s all there. But also, I do a bonus series called So This Asshole. Like, we just did Henry VIII today, there’s some other episodes about some other shitty men who I hate from history. There’s also Vulgarpiece Theatre, which is where I talk about costume dramas, movies set in the past with my friends Allison Epstein and Lana Wood Johnson. You get access to all of those. We just just posted a new episode of Vulgarpiece Theatre. We usually talk about movies, but we’ve lately been talking about literature. What we talked about this time is very Tudor-adjacent because we’re talking about the William Shakespeare play Titus Andronicus, which is my favourite play. And you know what? If you like Jillian’s book, if you like the idea of vengeance and murder, like, Titus Andronicus, it might just be the play for you, or maybe you just want to hear the discussion. 

Anyway, if you want to join my Patreon, now is the time, because until the end of July – that is this month you’re listening to this probably – you can use code TUDOR to get 30% off your Patreon membership. So, that’s 30% off your annual membership, or 30% off your first month of a monthly membership. Oh yeah, and something else that I do there is I recently did a Live, and the people, all the paid Patreons, are able to watch that – watch it in person, or watch it after the fact – and I’m hoping to do more of those later on. So anyway, if you’re thinking of joining the Patreon, this is a great time. Use code TUDOR to get 30% off your membership. 

And I wrote a book; it’s called Rebel of the Regency, and it’s available to buy wherever you get your books. You can go to RebelOfTheRegency.com for all the links to buy a copy. 

We’re in it y’all. We’re talking about the Tudors we just got into Henry VIII, and next week, we’re going to start talking about one of his many queens. So, stay tuned for that. It’ll be a good time. This is all very cathartic for me, honestly, just… Anyway, it’s a good time. I’m happy you’re here with me. And until next time, everybody, keep your pants on and your tits out. 

Vulgar History is researched, scripted, and hosted by Ann Foster. Editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. Vulgar History artwork by Karyn Moynihan. Social media videos by Magdalena Denson. Transcripts of this podcast are available at VulgarHistory.com by Aveline Malek. You can get early, ad-free episodes of Vulgar History by becoming a paid member of our Patreon at Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter. Vulgar History merchandise is available at VulgarHistory.com/Store for Americans and for everyone else at VulgarHistory.Redbubble.com. Follow us on social media @VulgarHistoryPod. Get in touch with me via email at VulgarHistoryPod@gmail.com.

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