by Henry VIII
C) Put on a show of alarming sexiness. And I do mean alarming – taking her to the brink where she doesn’t know if you’re going to gloriously trombone her in the antechamber or maim her with a spade. And for a moment, maybe you don’t either. All that matters is the dance – the sizzling, barbaric sensation that is detonating in your trousers.
Finally you’ll need palaces, land, servants, plate, jewels, beds that are free of lice (mostly), a title, and a private army. All of these are, for your intended, the outward signs of the sort of man you are.
If you have none of the above, you may simply need to invite her over, uncork a couple bottles of wine, take off your shirt, strike sexy poses, and hope for the best.
What We’ve Learnt in Chapter 9:
- Make your codpiece work for you – one that says ‘I’m all man in the head and all Centaur in the undercrackers’
- Erotic poetry oils the chute to pumping your party bits together
- Sexy dance moves. Need I say more? I probably do but we’ll move on.
Your Tudor Weekly Plan
Monday:
- lie-in
- create reality in which it is not Monday and I am crowned King of France
- shout irrational thoughts
- nap
Chapter 10
On Wooing a Gentleman
Tudor Love Tip: The man of your dreams is only one crazy-hot act of seduction away even if you’re on a train or buying groceries
Ladies, you, of course, have an unfair advantage in the wooing business. Your mysterious ways, your indefinable radiances, your hotness, your allure. It’s almost too easy.
Here’s an example of just how simple it is for you. Once whilst hunting in a royal forest I dismounted and stopped to water an alder when a lovely shepherdess emerged from a hedge nearby and called out cheerfully, “Fancy a shag, your highness?” To which a man’s answer WILL ALWAYS BE YES. Even if he is coughing up bile on his deathbed with a lance sticking straight through his face he will take you up on this fantastic offer.
But I understand well that ladies wish to be more intriguing and needlessly complicated about it. They wish to dress exquisitely and have some music on, with a few candles to set the stage. I can offer you guidance here as well of course.
Imagine you’re at a dance at a great hall, we’ll say it’s Greenwich Palace. Firelight plays amongst the huge oaken beams and illumines the vast tapestries of mythological and biblical imagery. There are the sounds of harp, fife, lute, and drum set to the music of the rustle of dresses of silk and damask and cloth of gold. Tables are laden with meats and delicate cheeses and hearty wines, festooning the air with the incense of savoury and sweet.
You are dancing a galliard with a gentleman whom you quite fancy. But you do not simply dance. No, no. You do not simply make coltish advances with your eyes. If you are serious about this gentleman, you pull him aside, into a half-lit alcove, and you take his hand in yours. You lock eyes and you slide his hand inside the upper rim of your bodice across the smooth, rounded, hot, thick gorgeousness of one of your lady montañas. I must insist that you confine this move to one breast. (Write this down!) If you are indecisive, thinking, “No, this one. Wait, no really this is the better one. No, no back to the one before,” whisking his hand quickly back and forth, back and forth, between the two, it spoils the mood a bit, moving into Punch-and-Judy territory. Likewise if you take both of his hands and slide them palm-facing into the upper reach of your dress, there’s a great deal of physical awkwardness especially if you are determined to keep his palms on your upsurge of ladiness, thus running the risk of breaking his elbows. I’ve seen this go badly.
My point is – you, darling – taking the initiative in this startling manner, whilst maintaining cool eye contact, lips parted, your moist tongue, like a damp candy just at the gateway of your youthful mouth – ow, crikey! My codpiece is suddenly much too tight. Oh bugger. Oooff that stings. [Edit this bit out later.]
He’s yours. In that instant. Yours. No matter how loudly his wife may be shrieking at him. The only person in the world at that moment is you.
That’s really, truly and completely all it requires.
Why more ladies don’t do this is a puzzle. Perhaps they’re looking for something more dramatic, more in the realm of gamesmanship or statecraft. Such a pointless waste of time.
Later we will discuss the definitive ways to keep your man once you’ve sunk your love-talons into him.
What We’ve Learnt in Chapter 10:
- Wooing for men = codpiece, sexy dance moves, poetry, land, money, private army, castles, title
- Wooing for ladies = boobs
Chapter 11
When One Has the Misfortune to Receive Crap Lessons in Leadership from One’s Own Dad
Tudor Leadership Tip: The true leader re-writes history the way a hammer re-writes a stained-glass window.
We’ll get to the practical application of wooing in the next chapter but for now we delve into the secrets of leadership – though, keep in mind, here too there are lots of sexy bits so prepare to be made frightfully aroused. Loose clothing, I should think. A comfortable chair. Send the children out of the room. Have a servant fan you with ostrich feathers.
We are backing up a bit to the glorious year 1501, when I first beheld the woman who one day would be my first wife, Catherine of Aragon. In typical romcom style, I met her at a wedding – hers, as it turns out. She was becoming married to my older brother, Arthur. And, Sweet Christ on a unicorn, I knew I must have her. I knew I must be the summer wind in her wheat, the moonlight glittering upon her ocean, the thoughts of folly in her wine.
There were, however, more barriers to this goal than were ever faced by Hobbits tossing jewelry into volcanoes. Beginning with the fact that I was not next in line to the throne and therefore, naturally, less interesting to her. As first-born male baby person in our family, Arthur was to be king. It was he who trotted about with Dad learning how one extracts money from the nobility, how to sit on a horse and gaze gravely and serenely across a field while the breeze moves gently through your hair and men await your command, and how to look magnificent on a throne that may or may not be legitimately yours. It was he who was secretly and carefully schooled in the arts of leadership.
Meanwhile I frolicked meaninglessly at Greenwich Palace with my mum and my sisters, Margaret and Mary, and was intended to grow up and do a lot of jousting, fornicating, feasting, dancing, winning of poetry contests, and being generally incredible. I was the understudy no one ever expected to need.
Not a bad life but not the elevated position that I saw for myself.
What I’m trying to convey is that you gotta have a dream. When you give up your dream, you die. For those of you keeping track, I said that 500 years before it was in Flashdance.
But like it or not, Arthur was the heir. I, the spare.
He was the one who would go down in the history books, lead men into battle, sit on the glittery throne of England and sire the next king. He was the one BBC2 would lather on about. Meanwhile, I’d be offered some poncey church job where my highest aspiration in life would be to go about in a floppy red Cardinal’s hat from sodding Rome.
Not enough glory to dip your balls in.
No one writes history books about the boy who comes in second. Or if they do they become the sort that ends up on that pitiful wheeled cart that sits on the street just outside the bookshop with a “70% discount” sign getting rained upon. Poor Dan Snow is left to try to wheeze some life into them on his history podcast.
Late one summer afternoon when I was about five or six years old I tracked the movements of my father, the king, until I spied him seated in the garden at Whitehall plotting ways of fattening the treasury with his revolting, doddery old friends Edmund Dudley and Sir Richard Empson. After his cronies hurried off to do their various oily deeds, I found the courage to approach. Dad did not often encounter people my size and seemed surprised when I greeted him, as though I were a tal
king goat.
“Your Grace,” I said with a bow.
“Greetings, miniscule person,” he said, a bit unclear on whom I was or why I was there before him.
“It is I, your son,” I said in a clarifying sort of way.
He chuckled. “You’re not Arthur.”
“I’m Henry,” I said.
“Oh yes, Henry. That’s right. Henry, yes, yes. Quite.”
I put my question to him. “I should like to know, father, the secrets of being a great leader.”
“Ah that,” he said. “Well, I’m sure you’re not plotting against me just yet are you?”
“Of course not,” I replied. “I have only the greatest love for you, father.”
“Good.”
“I should like to learn from you the secrets of being a majestic and wise ruler.”
“You do realise that you’re not going to become a ruler, my child,” said Henry VII. “Your job as the second son will be to become a leading light in the church and to never be with a lady or have children, while at the same time not being a homosexual, but instead to be fully devoted to goodly and Godly things. You’ll get a very nice hat. Has anyone mentioned that?”
“Yes,” I answered. “But I have an interest in the qualities of a great leader. Surely even men of the church require such knowledge.”
Zing! I’d got him there.
“I see. Well,” he said, with an over-dramatic sigh. “It’s complicated, obviously. It’s, erm, that is, there are countless, you know, important things, kingly things which – Christ it’s hot enough out here to boil the tits off a camel. You know, one of those great, hairy, humped beasts, they have in –“
“I know what a camel is. Unless of course by humped beast you meant Richard III?” I said, with a wry smile.
“No I meant a camel,” he said with no trace of humour. “Oh, look, there’s Arthur!”
And so it was. Speaking of galumphing creatures here was Arthur interrupting my colloquy with father, appearing through the hydrangeas dressed in a light summer robe with a garland of flowers in his long, silly hair.
“Arthur!” father called out rapturously. “Give him a bow, erm, boy,” Dad said with a glance at me. “Might as well get in the habit.”
I bowed and muttered, “Die foul ooze.”
The two of them went off taking great and important joy in each other’s company and I was left to the buzzing of bees and the sound of hedgehogs rutting in the roses.
The knife was given a very painful twist and wiggle when a few years later Arthur got to marry Catherine of Aragon, who was a SMOKING HOT piece of girlhood who I thought was from somewhere like France or Germany. Maybe Brazil. I wasn’t sure at the time, I simply knew she was foreign. She was a bosomy, buxomy bit of yum with a little lisp and a lovely neck and various places on her body that were clearly made BY GOD HIMSELF for my kisses and caresses. And the flesh of my flesh and the bone of my bone. So it was difficult to watch that tattered dishcloth, my older brother, stand at St. Paul’s and promise the entire kingdom that he would mercilessly hammer this lovely flower with his wangy-parts until she could withstand no more. Which was not bloody likely. Arthur was such a twat he could barely manage a Christmas-time wank. If you can’t knock one out for Jesus on his birthday then you’re not much arsing good in my book. Which you are fortunate to be reading.
After Arthur spent his first matrimonial eve with Catherine, he lustily announced that he’d “spent all night in Spain”. Get it? She was from Spain. He was “in” Spain. FFS. Well, apparently foreign travel didn’t agree with him because a mere four weeks later Arthur was dead.
Which is the all the proof needed that God likes me best.
But I wasn’t king, not yet. No, Dad was still doing his gloomy, hollow-cheeked, morose impersonation of kinghood, raising people’s taxes, not financing Christopher Columbus’s New World expedition (not joking about this), sloping around the castle all pink and watery like an under-boiled chicken.
In fact, the morning of Arthur’s funeral, Dad appeared in my room and handed me a letter, which would shape the remainder of my life – all my relationships and philosophy of leadership. It began:
My dearest first born Arthur Henry,
As you approach the august date of your coronation, which will surely take place in the not-distant future, here is the list of things you must do for England:
1. Male heirs (more than one, VERY important!!! Must, Must, MUST!!!)
2. Keep England from civil war
3. Get/stay rich
4. Invade/conquer France (that throne is ours!!)
5. Tell Spain to piss actually off
6. Traumatise/destabilise Parliament & nobility on reg basis
7. Male heirs
8. Male heirs
9. Male heirs
10. Male bloody heirs
11. #StayInspired
After giving this list a glance, I said it looked fine. No problem. Consider it done. Sorted.
Dad seemed put off by my nonchalance – cheeks went a bit red.
“Ah youth,” he said in a passive-aggressive sort of way.
“What?!” I demanded.
“Boy, you have so much to learn about leadership,” he growled.
“My name is Henry.”
“Whoever you are. You don’t know even the basics of being a ruler. And you seem to resist all I have to teach you.”
“You’ve never tried to teach me anything,” I responded icily, landing what I considered to be a stunning blow.
I waited for these words to take their effect.
I had been very icy.
I imagined him crumpling to the floor, looking up at me, his very soul impaled by the sharp truth of my words, his eyes large, damp, and frightened.
But he did none of those things.
He simply drew in a breath and his eyes took on that fire they always did when he was about to say something of supreme importance.
“Fake it until you make it,” he intoned solemnly.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Anything else?”
“Being King is the Thing,” he added.
“OK.”
He eyed me sternly. “Find a way to make them pay.”
“Does all your leadership advice rhyme?” I asked.
“It’s a mnemonic device. Helps you remember it.”
“Oh my God, Dad, it’s the 16th Century. You do know we have quills, ink, and vellum? These days we can write shit down.”
He raised his voice, “Let the nobles grab you not by the globbels!”
“That’s not even a word!”
It was at that point he gave me an evil yet righteous glare and marched from the room. What a numpty – but truly, how hard could any of this stuff be?
Make a male heir? Pfft. Any peasant could do that. A dog can accomplish that
one.
There were more immediate matters. I was a kid with the hots for my dead brother’s fit, lovely, and newly single wife.
What We Have Learnt in Chapter 11
- Future leader, let your dreams soar like a great bird that reaches the highest heights and shits on whomever it pleases
- Your to-do list may be the tiniest bit harder than you suspect
- Think twice before rhyming advice
Your Tudor Weekly Plan
Tuesday:
- Eat
- Drink
- Shag
- Repeat
Chapter 12
The Practical Application of Wooing with Catherine of Aragon
Tudor Love Tip: Don't simply think of her as someone you'd like to shag. Think of her as – wait. Actually do think of her simply as someone you’d like to shag, it could well be the only happiness you’ll ever get.
From leadership back to wooing. Keep up.
I begged Holbein to produce a painting of what Catherine of Aragon might look like emerging from a mythological bathing pool on a cold morning. Nearly naked!
; And not too cold, mind, but cold enough. RAWR!
Holbein agreed to produce something on a smaller scale, a miniature of one of her duckies. Which he did (from his imagination? From real life? I’d never thought about it until just now) and I had it framed in lovely gilt edged with emeralds. I smuggled this image about in my gowns, sneaking bawdy glances and nearly weeping in ecstasy.
This is how things go in royal households. No one gets to tell us what to do, so there’s loads of rude painting and unseemly prancing about between bedrooms, the writing of terrible erotic verse and poisoning and the purchasing of expensive capes; there’s screaming and scheming for power and nipple slapping and ball tickling and what have you.
Keep in mind the Romans were far worse than we and the Merovingians were so shockingly deranged and depraved they made the Roman nobility look like sugar-dusted chipmunks in a magical land of pudding fairies.
But back to me gazing with intense longing at boob-portraits of Cat.
I was 11 when Arthur floated off to be with Jesus. Catalina (as she was sexily known in her native land) was 16. This is an age when five years can make a difference. Whilst I was now in line to become the king (and thus more intriguing than ever to girls and ladies and their scheming noble families everywhere), I was not yet old enough to consummate a marriage – or so it was popularly believed though I’m certain, given my prodigious gifts, I could have resplendently and successfully plundered Spain and sired any number of heirs on the spot.
My father, in true form, dithered over setting up a marriage contract with Catherine’s father, the somebody-somebody of some minor caliphate in Spain. Dad wanted more money, the Spaniard dad in Spain arsed about in response. And Catherine, whilst kind and good and going about like sunlight, clearly saw me as a child and not yet as her future lord and master.
I knew that if The Little Princess of All-That was to be mine, I needed a plan.