by Henry VIII
Clement, who would go on to refuse to give me an annulment to Catherine of Aragon, nonetheless came back with the answer that everything would be fine with God on this one. No problemo.
Though this was exactly the answer I was hoping to hear, I had been fooled by a Pope once before in this regard and I decided that rather than be blindsided by God’s tricky commands down the road, I would tuck this little Bible verse away just in case I should ever need it as an excuse for divorce.
The verse all this hangs on is located in that great stewpot of a book in the Bible, Leviticus, chapter18, verse 18. It quotes Jehovah as instructing: “Thou shall not marry a woman in addition to her sister as a rival while she is alive, to uncover her nakedness.”
I know. To the modern reader this sounds like the sort of haiku one writes after consuming a spicy eels and an opium ball.
It meant simply that the Lord “His Awesomeness” Jehovah said that since I’d repeatedly and fantastically slept with Mary Boleyn – “uncovering her nakedness” – making her sister, Anne, my wife was indeed not an option and that my marriage to her was illegitimate as well as an outright abomination.
Sorry, Jesus.
When all of this came together I jumped up and down on my bed until I was out of breath and perspiring with my heart pounding in my throat.
Thomas Cromwell, my chief minister as I have mentioned, watched this outburst of joy with his usual detachment.
“Oh TCrom, I shall need to pretend to be sad about this when I deliver the news to her,” I said. “I shall need to quiver my chin and make my eyes damp. It will be wonderful!”
“Your majesty, I wonder if …” he said and then didn’t.
“What it is?”
“Nothing your majesty.”
“Look, you can’t begin a sentence with words and then end it with ellipses and expect me to let it go,” I said.
“Well,” he said, “I just wonder if it’s enough. That’s all.”
“If what is enough?”
“Hanging the entirety of your divorce – well, your possible divorce – on a single Bible verse. Again.”
“Again? What are you saying?”
“You know how people are.”
“Spit it out man!”
“Second marriage, second daughter, second time a divorce is demanded based on a verse in Leviticus.”
“BLOODY HELL YOU’RE NOT SAYING I’M BORING!!!”
I had now descended from the bed filled with rage, feeling like a minotaur must feel all the time.
TCrom shrank back appropriately.
“Well, your majesty, you can see how it could be interpreted by some – not by me of course – but by some, peasants mostly and lady historians, as a done-that-been-there move.”
“A Tudor is never boring,” I said, calming a bit.
“Everyone knows that.”
“And this Bible verse thing, it’s solid.”
“Completely solid.”
“But obviously I would never repeat myself.”
“Obviously.”
“That was never my plan.”
“Tremendous,” he said.
“My plan was … erm … my plan …”
“A show trial and a beheading?” Cromwell suggested.
“Well …”
“Perhaps she’s had sex with quite a number of men in the court.”
“Really?”
“Including her brother.”
“How very tasteless.”
“And a musician.”
“WHAT!?”
“And she has spoken ill of your poetry. She has laughed at it.”
The room began to spin, my vision went scarlet. I think for a moment I literally exploded.
“Do what needs to be done,” I croaked from my foetal position on the floor. “Right this wrong, dear fellow.”
One does not mock my poetry.
And so Cromwell texted the Swordsman of Calais and set about with cheerful clarity of purpose to set up Anne’s trial and eventual end. Whilst he was busy with the business of beheading, I was consumed with the details of my wedding. Oh, did I not mention that I was once again in love? But indeed. The new brain the Lord had given me was quite capable of managing the end of one relationship and the magical start of another.
A Tudor multitasks, as discussed.
I have always been a great ship sailing upon the Sea of Love and always will be.
Romance is a wonderful thing.
What we have learnt in Chapter 24
- Throughout history more great solutions have been dreamt of whilst jumping up and down on a bed than most historians are willing to admit
- Don’t ask God to take away your problems, ask him to take away your hesitancy to use violence to solve them
- Beware the hapless va-jay-jay
Expand Your Relationship Vocabulary, Enlarge Your World
Monogamish:
When you are completely and entirely faithful to a spouse more or less.
Your Tudor Weekly Plan
Friday:
- Practise cruel tyrant look
- Practise storming about
- Work on booming laugh
- Practise the opposite of chastity
- A lot
- Cheese orgy
Chapter 25
In Which I Show Actual Concern About The Sorts of Choices You’re Making
Tudor Love Tip: Marriage is so often a perfectly good love affair spoiled
One thing you lot have given up on – to your detriment – is the arranged marriage. It is alarming how this concept has become the target of booing and mockery in your era. You’re on a slippery slope, modern persons. What’s next -- rescinding the Buggery Act of 1536?
The arranged marriage is an institution that faces actual bleeding facts: a man needs at least two women in his life:
A) the careworn, penny-pinching, child-rearing drab who stage-manages the household and;
B) the pretty, carefree bit of smoochy-pants who loves to touch his cheek and pinch his bum, circulate her lithe alluring bits about his purview, have a laugh, and who treats sex with him as sunlight for the soul.
A man needs both.
And you do not get both of the above ladies in the same person. (My editor has insisted that I insert a paragraph here on the wondrous complexity of ladies because apparently celebrating the wondrous complexity of ladies is likely to sell more books. To ladies. And I’m supposed to say something positive about Oprah.)
If a man is monogamous and stays with just one woman he gets the second one first for a short while and then is stuck with the first one for a distressingly long time.
Your forbearers, who you like to picture as monstrous barbarians, knew of all this and created the arranged marriage. Acquiring a wife through arranged marriage was no more indebted to emotional attachment than it would be to sign a celebrated striker for a football team. It’s a deal, a business contract, a marketing strategy, the bringing together of two houses to a mutually advantageous end. Once the dowry is agreed upon, the wife impregnated, the thing is off and running like things that operate well when they have oil in them [need better metaphor here]. Then the man, having provided for the logistics of his household and career and dynasty, is free to enjoy a discreet bit on the side to keep his jingle bells a jingle-jing-jingling.
The arranged marriage is the response to the very real reality that men have binary needs throughout their lives, a dual allegiance to head and to throbbly-wobbly bits. The head is about the raising of children and the creating of a household as a profit-centre, which will pass on great benefit to his heirs. The rest is about wiener magic.
As far as I can tell, women don’t have this as they are only one person at a time. From approximately 18 to 28 years of age they are the lovely bit of fun who likes to have a drink and a dance and all manner of intemperate exuberance until dawn. And then from 28 onward they perform one of nature’s most depressing transformations, turning from butterfly to caterpillar,
yearning, burning, it seems to become the beleaguered drudge with an increasingly debilitating case of Shagging Memory Loss.
Who would choose to be the dark cloud when one could be the sunlight? It argues for the idea that it’s not a thing ladies get to decide. It’s simply how God made them, which is a disappointment. Though perhaps it’s a mercy in disguise, intended to make the inevitability of death seem more attractive.
Not that I have anything against the drudge. Every man needs a Cromwell who will keep things brisk and tidy and have things stolen for you or people who may or may not be technically guilty of anything hurled into dungeons as the occasion warrants.
Even though I know there’s no changing your minds on this one I must in the name of kindness at least mention the advantages of the arranged marriage, as my life is a towering, living testament.
Do as you will. Make your mistakes. Don’t blame this book for your suffering.
What We Have Learnt in Chapter 25
- Men have needs that are as grandly unchanging as glorious craggy cliffs, which stand as regal sentinels over the dark sea of life
- Women evolve over time like coins, going from bright and shiny to dull and bitter if you touch your tongue to them
- The wondrous complexity of ladies/Oprah
Expand Your Relationship Vocabulary, Enlarge Your World
Relationslip:
Oops, I did it again
Chapter 26
Letters from Readers
Dear King Henry VIII,
I have a lady what I want to make a baby with and she’s putting me off. And she’s a Papist. What should I do?
Warmest regards,
Average Bloke
Dear Bloke,
As a Papist you’ll need to have her sent round to Smithfield so we can have her burnt.
Majestically,
HR
My Most Majestic Liege, Lord & King,
There is a wealthy, powerful gentleman, a member of the nobility, whom I would wish to give the glories of my body and thus produce for him a male heir –
Dear Lady Whose Letter I Cannot Finish Reading,
There are limits to what the male human can withstand. Your letter is simply far too sexy. If I were to read even one word further, I would likely do a grievous injury to my person.
In some discomfort,
HR
My Most Majestic Sovereign King and Grace,
The man whom I love for his lands, money and power has slept with my sister and I think with my mum. My plan is to marry him and mock his dancing, poetry and ability to please me in bed and to have sex with loads of chavs and probably have a baby but not a boy. Oh, and I’ll be a witch.
Feeling pretty confident this will all work out just fine. What do you think?
Anne Boleyn
Dear Anne,
Don’t be a dick.
Most sincerely,
HR
Chapter 27
The Thing About Happiness Is That It Should be Called “Pre-Kicking You in The Balls”
Tudor Love Tip: Before the grim end, stage-manage a bright new beginning
By 1536 my heart had been crushed not once but twice like a banana in a large machine specifically designed to pulp non-European fruits. Although in the case of Cath of A it was the extended dance version of crushing, over the course of two decades or more, so it was less about shock and pain and more about “Sweet Christ in a donkey costume this is annoying and slow.”
With Anne Boleyn, the wounding of my heart took less time but it was hardly a blur.
Most often having your heart made into a mince meat pie does not come as a total surprise. If you’re truly honest with yourself, you can admit having seen the large grinding machine coming for you at some distance. The Unleash Your Inner Tudor romance hack I’ve always found best – take note, sweet reader – is to always be lining up your next life-changing love affair before the current one has gone tits up.
What you want is overlap.
Like one of those Venn Diagrams where the light blue circle is Lady Now and the light green circle is Lady Next and in that place where they lay one atop the other in the middle there you are looking with-it and well organised.
The first example of this relationship overlap stratagem was my marrying and impregnating Anne Boleyn whilst still technically married – though working on the fine print – to Catherine of Aragon.
The next and better example of this winning strategy – one that makes even me impressed with me – is the day after Anne Boleyn’s beheading, I officially announced my betrothal to Jane Seymour.
We were married eleven days later.
Like a boss.
Wait, say you who did not read Wolf Hall, who is this Jane Seymour?
Ah, Jane Seymour. She was a beautiful, voluptuous five-layer Yum Cake, one of those cakes that is nearly all frosting and very little actual cake. She was more carbs, butter, and sugar than human.
Her face shone at my approach.
The lids of her eyes fluttered at my touch.
Her mouth snarl-meowed as my lips drew near.
She was an empty canvas of thought and opinion, waiting for my thoughts and opinions to give the life of her mind a swirl of color and radiance.
She was attentive.
She was dutiful.
She was what binge-eating aspires to be.
Jane had been at court for some time, first as one of Catherine’s ladies-in-waiting and later transferring loyalties to Anne B, serving among her retinue of attendants as well. I truly hadn’t noticed Jane until toward the end of 1535 when she was in her late twenties and I was in the frame of mind for some Lady Next.
I like to think that I opened my Advent calendar that December and out popped Jane like a holiday Snickerdoodle.
The two of us had been playing an increasingly lovely game of touch-this-feel-that in various stairways and narthexes since the end of the prior year or so. And then Anne had been arrested and that had rather cleared my schedule to spend quality seductory time with Jane.
Whereas Anne had taken the motto “The Most Happy,” with its focus on her own emotional life, Jane’s was “Bound to Obey and Serve” with an unambiguous emphasis on me. Nailed it.
As I said at the beginning of this digression, we were married less than two weeks after Anne had gone off to produce bat-winged girl babies with Satan in the fiery furnaces of Hell.
Everything was perfect and we danced and enjoyed each other’s company immensely. Church bells rang out across the land at the notice of our wedding, sermons were preached on her virtue, the royalty of Europe sent word of congratulations – except the Pope obviously because he’s a big, farty, odious, glistening pile of sheep’s vom.
We feasted, we talked excitedly of our enjoined future, we knelt and thanked God for each other, and we did the booty bounce quite a lot in bed.
And then the perfect became perfecter. Jane was made pregnant. By me. As the result of things such as my sexy chat-up lines (like “Is that a male heir in your womb or are you just happy to see me?”) and hot dance moves and alluring lute playing and erotic poems and the thing you do with the penis and so forth.
And then the perfecter became perfecterer.
Like if you could multiply perfect by however many numbers there are.
In October 1537 Jane gave birth to a boy.
A boy!
A boy!
A boy!
Edward VI!!!
My brilliant overlap strategy had worked and I now had a healthy male Tudor heir at last. Only one mind you. It’s always prudent to have at least two but one is a lot more than zero.
Life was a rampage of happiness.
And it was whilst holding that little man heir in my arms that I learned happiness is nearly always the music cue for disaster to make its entrance.
And so it was, mere days after delivering from her body, the heir England had been insisting upon, Jane Seymour died.
What a shitty thing to do to me.
Did she check in with me first?
No.
Did she communicate with me on this? Like, at all?
She did not. And communication is the foundation for any good relationship. Communication and hating the same things and people, actually. Shared distain and abhorrence is a bigger deal than is commonly recognised.
Jane’s unexpected exit left me to seek empty solace with lonely widows, lusty laundresses, randy shepherdesses, ladies-in-mating and the odd foreigner who exhibited most if not all the key attributes of femaleness.
I say, empty for purposes of heightened drama, because really, is sex ever empty? There are in my experience three basic types of rumpity pumpity:
1. Really, really great sex that leaves you thinking that if there is no heaven that’s actually okay.
2. Sex that is quite lovely but does not inspire shouts of admiration or the calling upon of God and his glory or sonnets afterwards or the purchase of jewels or even the offer of a sandwich. It simply does the job and everyone is rather pleased.
3. Sex that happens, happens in silence, and feels like something’s not quite right. In these cases one finds that one has partnered with a piece of furniture, a book, or some sort of taxidermy and one is drunk. Even so, it is not without merit.
What We Have Learnt in Chapter 27
- Overlap
- Overlap
- Overlap
- Sex with books happens
Chapter 28
More Erotic Tudor Poetry
Is there anything to oil the chute toward the making of love than poetry? Only perhaps alcohol or money. Here are more original works of poetry, written by me, sure to stoke the fire of one’s loins. Transcribe each on a card and read them aloud to an intended. Naked things will come to pass.
I taste your mouth
I think you ate my bacon