by Henry VIII
Srsly. Who wouldn’t wipe a tear at a moment like that?
Wow.
I said, “Thank you sweet Jehovah for giving unto me, your humble servant, this ever-present source of love-substitute.”
This moment was as life changing, as life re-defining as the one when Anne Boleyn’s mum jumped me when I was 15. I knew that nothing would ever be the same. I had been baptized in the river and was born anew.
They say that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Which is weird, apparently this is how peasants travel? Why would anyone travel that far on foot? If I’m going on a journey of that length, any length really, the first step is to sit my spectacular arse in a big, gold-leafed carriage and wave at throngs of cheering subjects whose unkempt, greasy, tax-paying faces pass by my window.
Point is, so often every great undertaking begins with something modest and underrated. In this instance that cake in bed was something like the first blind date in what would turn into a loving, committed, lifelong relationship with binge eating.
The Tudor Mood-Food Matching Game
Test Your Knowledge!
When it comes to transforming a bad mood into a good one, love works and so does sex but sadly neither is ever available when you really need them. Food (and I include alcohol here) is the one thing you can count on in this world to manage your feelings. Below match the pointless feelings in mood column with the food that most effectively changes that mood into happiness.
MOODS…………………….FOODS
Apprehensive………………..Roast boar
Betrayed…………………….Tarts
Blue………………………….Boiled eels
Bored………………………...Beaver tail
Cautious……………………..Cakes
Cranky……………………….Ale
Dejected……………………..Roast beef
Depressed……………………Block of cheese
Despair………………………Meat pies
Distressed……………………Bacon
Frazzled……………………...Roast hen
Grudging…………………….Honey
Hurt………………………….Cheese pies
Ignored………………………Porpoise
Jealous……………………….Wine
Lonely……………………….Duck
Merciful……………………..Heron
Needy……………………….Cod
Panicky……………………...Breads
Provoked…………………….Biscuits
Shaggered……………………Treacle
Sorry…………………………Sweet meats
Troubled……………………..Oxtail soup
Unhappy……………………..Pheasant
Yearning……………………..Lamb
ANSWERS: Congratulations on a perfect score! The exciting news is that our Lord has made this matching business easy (and I only included this overlong list of foods and moods to pad out the page length and give my book a sexier girth). All food – except vegetables – in large amounts has the ability to transform a bad feeling into a good one. Some may work better than others for you (bacon), so experimentation is a must! Plus, in your era, you have even more options than those of us in the 16th century such as gin and Nutella.
I think we should end this chapter on a poem:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Only pies, cake, and wine
Will always love you
What We Have Learnt in Chapter 31
- Love, sex, and binge-eating are three sides of the same coin
- Sit in bed and eat cake until you’re happy again
- If God is love, and love is cheese, then God is cheese (mind blown!)
Your Tudor Weekly Plan
Saturday:
- Bacon
- Say things that sound important
- Give every appearance of thinking important thoughts
- Back up threats with violence
- Beg God for heirs but in a cool totally non-needy way
- Cake
Chapter 32
On the Wooing, Winning & Bedding of a Lady Who is As Old As You Feel on the Inside
Tudor Love Tip: When someone else’s happiness is your happiness, that’s love. Or emotional enslavement. They're very nearly the same.
There comes a time in every person’s life, during the march down the chilly, chalky staircase to the tomb, when you realise that something weird has happened. You are no longer one age but two.
Here’s what I mean.
When you are 12 years old, all of you is 12. When you are 18, your entire being is 18.
But by the time of your, say, 52nd birthday, you come to the odd discovery that somewhere back in the past something inside you split.
Your skin is indeed 52 years old.
Your hair and beard are 52.
Your ball bag is 52.
But your mind is 18.
Your heart is 18.
Your soul is 18.
And thus when it comes time to select a new spouse you find you have a choice – to woo and acquire a lady who is the age of your fallen neck or one who is the age of your brain or some other piece of your bloom-of-youth anatomy.
And let’s be honest, most people really, really, really prefer someone a lot younger than their skin. Maybe even the tiniest bit younger than their minds.
It’s how old you feel inside that counts. Am I right?
Women try to deny they possess this urge for a brain-age partner, claim they don’t have such feelings, but I happen to know this is complete bollocks. Women are people (look how enlightened I am) and people at all points in life quite like to make the Writhing Wreath of Rogerment. And they like it with someone who’s hot. Full stop.
After the debacle(s) of my first four marriages, I was ready to laugh. Relax. Enjoy my days showered by gentle affection, sweet whisperings, and the blustery-thrustery of making a male heir or two. Or five. By this point thanks to my committed and loving relationship with food I was heroically and gorgeously obese, was rocking the diabetes, rocking the gout, rocking the malaria (yes doubters we have malaria in 16th-century England) and rocking the personality disorders. Oh, and I was the owner of a suppurating leg wound that needed to be drained and repacked by a team of doctors on the daily. Oh, and I drank a lot. If you were to sum myself up in a single word it would be: fun. And confident. And sexy. Okay, that was four or five words. I cannot be contained in a single word like a nut within a shell.
Whilst theoretically still married to Anne of Cleves my loving eye fell upon a sweet English lass named Kathryn Howard, who was about 15 or 16, thereabouts, and whom I called my “rose without a thorn”. Which meant of course that I expected this latest romantic overlap would be all beauty and no pain. Hilarious. Anyway. The moment her eyes met mine you could feel a high wattage hum – and this was centuries before wattage was invented so you know it was serious.
There she was in a window seat at Hampton Court doing needlework. Head bent, intent on her design, sunlight setting the back of her glossy white neck aglow.
“My lady,” I said to her.
She rose awkwardly and gave me a quick kneel. With both knees bent as is my preference. Nailed it.
“Your Great and Glorious Majesty,” she responded in a voice of utter “whatever you’re looking for, it’s all right here, baby.”
I took her hand and watched a visible shiver of pleasure pass through her.
Pretty sure it was pleasure. To be fair it may’ve been pleasure mixed with something else. Like anticipation or. Elation, probably.
I turned to the gaggle of noblemen, diplomats, clergy, musicians, clerks, and servants who had been trailing me down the gallery and announced, “Gentlemen we have here my next mistake of historical proportions!”
This was followed by warm applause, cries of “Hear, hear” an
d a jubilant round of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”.
Kathryn did not make eye contact with me, for she wasn’t allowed to just yet, but I saw that she raised her face to the assemblage and gave a wan smile.
In retrospect she was being pretty seductive in a sort of laconic, not-laying-it-on sort of way.
Later that night I had her called to my chamber where I had to insist that she actually look at me. She played at reluctance like any good subject would but she eventually gave in.
When our eyes locked, wow. Just wow. No words. Well, wow is a word. But other than wow no other noun, adjective, intensifier, or interjection would do.
I took her small hand and that same sort of twitchy reaction of elation went through her like a seizure. She clamped her other hand to her mouth as though to stop her lips from actually crying out. In joy.
“You are so very beautiful,” said I.
“Thank you, Your Majesty.”
Her eyes glazed. No, sorry. Scratch that. Her eyes blazed.
I wanted her. I had to have her. But the clock of mortality was still ticking and whilst I wished to be gentlemanly and to woo properly, I also needed to get down to business.
I leaned close and said quietly, “You’re of course a virgin.”
Her eyes had a pleading look. How she wanted me.
“Ah, well on that point, Your Gloriousness,” she began, “Technically –“
“I knew you were,” I said, a smile spreading across my face. “I’m king. I know things, my sweet lady.”
“But –“
I placed a finger gently to her lips.
“Shhhhhh. We don’t need words. You and I only need our hearts.”
“Wait. Just our hearts? That’s it?”
“We are in love, are we not?”
Kathryn was so moved at this she placed her hand to her mouth again and spun away from me.
Is there any joy greater than that of bringing joy to others?
Do I need to answer that? I was being rhetorical. OK. There literally might be a joy greater than that but I can’t think of it at the moment.
Wait. I’ve just thought of one but it’s a bit random and will spoil the flow in this part of the book. So. Whatever.
Kathryn Howard.
Though today, I know –
So it was eating a pie with your hands and you’re in France and you’re drinking wine and you get the news that your army back home, under your wife’s command, has totally destroyed the Scots at Flodden and their king is dead and you’re just about to have sex with a French lady you found in a village. That is the greater joy I was thinking of.
OK. Back to Kathryn Howard.
Though today I know you have a lovely Castle Howard where you film iconic images of English nobility, Kathryn hailed from a lesser, darker, more cobwebby side of the family, her father being a second or third son who, through the magic of single-mindedness and alcoholism, sired something like 20 children. So perhaps not the dewiest of English flowers but fair and pretty and pleasing to the eye and to my nibbly bits that like to go rawr. The fact that she was Anne Boleyn’s cousin should have come with a lot of loud cellos doing screechy foreshadowing music, I suppose, but somehow it did not.
Kathryn tried to keep me in the friend zone as a lady was supposed to do in that era but eventually of course there came the night when I called her unto my bedchamber.
There I was twice her height, three times her width. She climbed into the vast kingly bed for the first time and I took her litheness in my arms and there was a brief awkward/romantic moment when her head got caught under that large, wiggly flap of flesh I have under my armpit. She pretended she couldn’t breathe and that’s when I gave her the pet name of Suffo-Kate.
I was again made happy.
Because I had not yet truly learnt that the happiness of a relationship is the first chapter in a book titled “What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting Catastrophe”.
The thing that has been bringing you such joy will rather suddenly stab you violently in the heart whilst simultaneously attacking your balls with a chair.
Somewhere in my soul, from the moment I saw her doing needlework I knew that Kathryn Howard was A VILE TART!!!! Yes, all-caps with four exclamation marks; I’m not simply being dramatic. I do so strive for accuracy. Is that what secretly attracted me to her? Of course not. That would make me a perv. How dare that sentence even appear in this book. It’s an outrage.
It would be a good time right now, dear reader, to thank Jehovah himself that you have this book in your possession and that you can learn lessons of great importance from the abuse that I endured.
5 STEPS TO VILE TART SPOTTING
1. They are often suspiciously comely and young and manage to be where your eye is.
2. They are overtly attractive and have all of their teeth. Now their poison is in you!
3. Prior to meeting you, they perform unspeakable acts with someone who is not you! In my case it was some git named Francis Dereham and when I say unspeakable I mean they had sex. Probably more than once! Partially to not-partially clothed! In a bed!
4. Before your marriage you believe them to be pure and virginal and are almost completely certain that they told you so even if you can’t quite remember on which occasion this false assertion was made. But it was probably in moonlight when they were talking and you couldn’t quite hear them because you were eating a duck.
5. They say they love you, they say you are their one and only; they marry you, and then tart off with some other fellow. Kathryn violated our marriage vows by playing sucky face and sucky wiener and squishity-slappity-suckity-knicker-bits with a servant in my court named Thomas Culpepper.
What To Do With A Vile Tart When She Is Your Wife – And You’re Me
When you’re my wife, you’re married to England. It is England who bejewels and bespangles you, England who caresses your cheek and calls you its mouse, England who makes sweet, sweet love to you (or maybe at you, or in your general direction), and England who willingly sleeps in the wet spot. And England was not even microscopically amused by Kathryn’s dalliances with Francis Dereham or Thomas Culpepper. The Privy Council was outraged. Parliament was livid. I was traumatised – for about three seconds. And then I knew instantly what to do. I almost sent for the Swordsman of Calais, as I had with Anne Boleyn, but let me tell you something that Cromwell got right. You don’t want to repeat yourself – you want to stay fresh, #stayinspired – so after considering having her burnt (always an option) or crushed under a great boulder or torn apart by bears or hurled from a high tower whilst on fire and then torn apart by bears on the way down, I decided for the more traditional English woodsman-y approach.
What To Do With A Vile Tart When She Is Your Wife – And You’re You
Let’s say that, hypothetically, you find yourself wedded to a VILE TART and you are not Henry VIII and do not hold sway over Parliament nor have the Tower of London at your disposal nor any henchmen. Not even one. Not even a dodgy Hungarian mercenary with syphilis. In that case … bugger, well there’s always drinking your troubles away, and eating platter of assorted meats and cheeses is nice (see earlier chapter on food-mood connexion) and of course paying your taxes is an excellent way to change your focus, but really beyond that ...
OMG being a peasant is so bloody uncinematic.
To finish. Kathryn was led away to have her head rendered free of her person on Tower Green and I think there are two points worth making. Today if you visit this place, someone has erected a memorial to those executed there. It is a frosted glass atrocity, which apparently passes for art in your era. Ghastly. Far more ghastly than actually witnessing a beheading unless of course it’s the beheading of the tit who commissioned the piece in the first place.
The second bit has to do with that television show called The Tudors. Seen it? You know the part where Kathryn is about to be beheaded and she gives a moving speech about her abiding love for Culpepper? That didn’t happen. HA! I WIN!
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br /> What We Have Learnt in Chapter 32
- VILE TARTS are out there, people, looking youthful and glorious, on the prowl for new victims all the time – be on your guard!
- What you do about the VILE TART in your life is likely subject to the laws in your region and/or principality and may also depend on your willingness to break those laws
- Showtime makes shit up
Chapter 33
Four Tudor Rules Governing Divorce (or in my case ANNULMENT)
So yes, there is that savagely ridiculous song about my wives that goes, “Divorced, beheaded, and died, divorced, beheaded, survived.” People love to post that verse on my Twitter account all the time and it makes me bite into the nearest tapestry. The accurate version would of course be, “Annulled, annulled and beheaded, and died, annulled, beheaded (and forgot to annul – bugger!), survived.” It requires a more complex rhythm scheme and music but being simple is not my superpower.
However, you must pick your battles in life and I doubt you lot will be won over by reason, so I now present my Unleash Your Inner Tudor divorce hacks (though be aware that when I write divorce with my pen, in my mind I am thinking annulment in my head).
1. When you think it’s over, it’s truly bloody over
The basic truth about marriage is this: remember the rule about fairies? The one that says the moment you stop believing in them they die? Your marriage is like that – a gleaming castle of delusion constructed upon an island of sparkly unicorn bollocks. The moment you think it’s false and a chimera and a mirage and a hocus-pocus, it is all of those.
To my everlasting credit, what I took from that first nuptial experience, I applied to the others.
2. When it’s over, never speak of it again
Nothing is more appalling than yammering on and on about your former marriage and your ex marriage partner. NOTHING IS WORSE – not even the sight of a donkey rotting in a tree or finding the beak of a chicken in your lover’s underpants or accidentally watching a One Direction video. Nothing. Besides, not talking about it will make you look cool, like in a movie when Dwayne The Rock Johnson strides manfully away from an exploding medical supply warehouse (that’s actually the secret global headquarters of a cabal of evil botanists) and he doesn’t flinch or turn around.