by Henry VIII
There was kindness and calmness in her voice. There was something about her that held the promise of the age of Henry VIII passing away and a new era for England, one that was less gingery and tyrannical. And it made me sad and weary.
It was the year 1547. I could feel something within me slipping away … away … away …
Christ, this was not cool.
She leaned close and now I could see the crease between her boobs. See how easy seduction is for ladies!! And I could no longer hear the actual individual words coming out of her throat but just the sane, bland, gracious, tedium of her voice. Lulling me toward the sweet arms of death.
Just then the captain of my guard showed up with his men to take Catherine Parr away and she looked at me with a look of such sorrow, as though she felt sorry for me and I shouted at the captain to leave my sight. I had no idea what he was talking about.
In that moment I knew I was done for. Here she was killing me with her goodness and I was defending her. Defending the creature that was sliding a benevolent and humane knife between my ribs and giving it a soft, womanly twist.
I simply crawled off to die.
Catherine came to my bedside and sobbed at the prospect of losing me. Anyone would. I could barely speak or move so incapacitate was I from the effects of the monotony with which her modesty, goodness and virtue had filled me to putrefying effect.
Little did I realise what was to follow.
What We Have Learnt in Chapter 36
- She wants you, of course she wants you, she’s just being funny about it
- Eliminate your competition via the magic of death and/or Belgium
- The lady everyone says is so right for you, who will set you on the proper path, the one with whom you are a “cute couple”, is the one who will probably kill you
Chapter 37
When Your Death is a Twitter Hoax
Tudor Death Tip: Prepare for the Ladies In Your Afterlife to Be Just as Confounding and Full of Complication As Ever
On January 27, 1547, I was going downhill like a toboggan loaded with jolly, diabetic Norwegians. My doctors kept bleeding me to get my humours in alignment. My Master of the Stool had rinsed me with unguents and ointments and scented oils until my bum bits were like a garden of May flowers. Nothing worked. Laughter, which they say is the best medicine is not, I can say definitively. I was dying. I signed my will, entrusted my soul to Hippie Jesus, and uttered my final words, which have been reported as “Monks, Monks, Monks …” Which is only partially correct as I was actually working on a rap song that went “Monks, Monks, Monks, I take your junks, junks, junks away in trunks, trunks, trunks.” It wasn’t perfect, alright? Did I say it was finished?
Anyhow, the end was nigh. I could feel the icy fingers of death clutching me in places where cold fingers do not belong. My kingdom – entire communities, churches, counties, and coastlines – filled with weeping supplicants raising their hands skyward begging the Lord in his Mercy to spare their king, this they beseeched with tears running down their faces, torsos, and legs. Lying in my vast and iron-reinforced bed, with noblemen who I had not yet executed and clergymen who owed me their lives and livelihoods, surrounding me with appropriately grim and sad expressions, I felt myself drift. ‘Adieu,’ I thought. ‘Good-bye wonderful Earth. I had such an amazing time thrusting my greatness upon you. I leave a fantastic legacy. I am a sexy 350 pounds (those last five are the hardest to gain, but I did it!), I look amazing on horseback, I’ve got smokin’ hot dance moves, and no one looks better wearing only a crown.’
To everyone’s amazement the following morning, I woke up feeling not bad at all and within just a few hours I had gotten to my feet and had deposited a blessed and monarchical poo in my velvet-and-tassel-covered chamber pot. By the next day I was feeling like sunlight on the sea – sparkly and beautiful. I went hawking with Brandon and on a dare ate the hawk, burped a feather and we fist-bumped. The king was back.
I had the Duke of Kent stuffed inside a goat skin and fired from a cannon – just to make a statement.
People on Twitter often ask (with undisguised snark!) how it is that I am alive and tweeting. The best explanation I can offer is this: when enough peasants shout “Good Save the King!” with the right sort of enthusiasm and actual feeling, God eventually listens.
So as you read this, my 16th Century lives on.
It’s enormous fun. I win jousts and archery contests. I delight ladies where ere I go. I send rude letters to the Pope along with bottles of my urine (labeled “Tudor Chardonnay”).
The only irritating bit is that as time goes on time itself gets wobbly-bobbly. Next thing I know Wolsey is trotting in with a treaty to sign. And he’s not dead from the effects of financial ruin and exploding arse disease. Or worse, he and Cromwell burst in simultaneously with death warrants for me to sign for each other. The Duke of Kent who I shot from a cannon? He showed up again a decade or so later, no memory of being goat-stuffed and blown through the sky. Or I wake up in the wee hours beside Anne Boleyn – with her head attached, mostly – snuggling up next to me, jabbing my soft bits with her pointy bits begging to be the vessel for my male heir. Crikey.
Of late, just to stay in the game, I have taken up Mary Boleyn again. It was she who honoured one of my birthdays by giving me my Magic Twitter Box. Christ knows what warlock or scary witch person she got it from (I suppose I shall need to have her burnt). It is a small machine that I can hold in my hand. It is encrusted with jewels and has a lovely HRM at the top of it in filigreed gold. Upon the main body of the thing are big buttons (for big fingers) imprinted with letters and numbers. Images and words appear in a little window at the top. With it I have learnt all I know of your era and bits of what happened since my “death”, which is obviously fake news.
But even Mary is capable of doing that lady-thing of throwing shade where shade is hardly required.
“You know, you’ve only got about 500 or 600 years to figure this out, don’t you,” Mary said to me recently, as she was stretched out in my bed. Warm afternoon sunlight scintillated through a window of my bedchamber. I was across the room wearing only gold underpants and a cape striking sexy poses, getting her in the mood.
“Oh do stop being opaque. You know I have people disembowelled for lesser things,” I said.
“None of this will continue,” she said, gesturing about, “unless –“
“Unless what!” I responded, approaching the bed. I believe her gesture took in more than our friends-with-benefits relationship, more than the palace, more than my kingdom itself, but in fact was meant to indicate the entirety of my after-life.
“It all vanishes unless you find love.”
“Are you threatening me in some vague and irritatingly womanish way?!”
“I’m just saying that unless you find love, all of this goes away.”
“BOLLOCKS!”
I seized my bedside broadsword and sliced off her head in a single, authoritative stroke.
Mary calmly reached for it and twisted it back on her neck.
“Not bollocks, Henny Penny. Law of the Universe,” she said.
“Well that’s it then, I’m not marrying you!” I boomed. “You’ll not be wife number seven.”
“Another dream crushed,” she said mildly.
I paced about the room in an absolute turmoil. “How can you say, imply, or infer such a ridiculous idea! I have found love countless times! In countless ways! We are enjoying love at this moment!”
“Are we?” She smiled her beguiling smile.
“Of course!”
“Is this love?”
OMG, women. Even after-life women. With their bloody riddles and their pointless bloody complication. Never a moment’s ease. I know all there is to know on all topics and especially on love! Love: what can I possibly NOT know about it?
Recall that I felt the inability to breathe, briefly, with Catherine of Aragon and went on being married to her long after I stopped wanting to be. I waited for six yea
rs to have sex with Anne Boleyn at tremendous cost to my mental health. I wept actual tears when Jane Seymour died without asking me if she could. I married Anne of Cleves when I didn’t want to and I didn’t have her beheaded when I it was clearly my prerogative. I had serious codpiece feelings for Kathryn Howard until I didn’t. And Catherine Parr – I gave her the space she needed to bore me to death.
HOW IS THAT NOT LOVE!?
I’ve even felt sparkly, fizzily feelings for a few mistresses and even a lady I met once outside a water mill. Also, love. Obviously!!
And then there are the other sorts of love. I am the father of three children – who adore me. Well, except the girls, naturally, but that can’t be helped.
And then there was the love I felt for my realm. You aren’t the monarch every bloody hour of every bloody day of beloved England, Ireland, Wales and France – YES I SAID FRANCE! – without having some kind of feels about it.
And then there’s food. Surely the emotions that take place in my mouth with meats, cheeses, pies, cakes and so forth can ONLY be described as the most sacred kind of love there is. Mouth-feelings are pretty bloody sacred!
So Mary B is talking complete pish-posh, twiddle-twaddle BALLS!!
I mean look what I have accomplished here. I have written this book to demonstrate the encyclopaedic nature of my knowledge of love – and a mindful and healthy lifestyle – in all its forms and disguises. While I’m at it – because of my love for you sweet reader whom I haven’t met, haven’t spoken to, haven’t even seen naked – I have shared my amazing and completely useful tips on parenting, diet, leadership, and much more.
How is that not love?
However, there’s a good deal that I don’t know about the after-life just yet. Mary is completely wrong, obviously. But just in case, I get the feeling that if you, by reading this book, taking my invaluable advice to heart, and actually getting off your arse and finding love and perfecting your very nature, that will weigh very much in my favour – it will shut my critics and one or two unwelcome feelings in my heart up for all eternity!
Off you go.
No, wait. Take the bloody quiz first.
What We Have Learnt in Chapter 37:
- Death is not the end of fornication. Or love. Which apparently you’re not supposed to use interchangeably.
- After-death mistresses: not the simple pleasures we’d like them to be
- During your soul-crushing search for love remember that it’s apparently meant to be difficult and disappointing but there’s no need to be emo about it.
Final Quiz
Have you learnt to Unleash Your Inner Tudor? Take my royal and flawless quiz to find out.
1. If you’re going to make mistakes, then at the very least do what whilst making them?
A. Burn bits of Scotland
B. Look amazing in your undercrackers
C. Eat a mallard
2. If you’re a lady who is serious about wooing a gentleman, which of these is your most effective manoeuvre?
A. Place one of his hands on one of your sexy bits
B. Correct his grammar
C. Fart a little bit then blame an animal
3. If you’re a man hoping to woo a lady, your move of ultimate hotness would be?
A. Become the tyrant of your own kingdom, wielding the power of life and death over your subjects and/or start your own church
B. Become a vegan
C. Have her mother over and serve soup
4. If the spouse who used to be hot becomes decidedly not, then your best recourse is?
A. Have “Not Hot” executed/ Find someone else to marry
B. Hurls Spaniards from the Tower
C. Turnips
5. The following is an example of what:
I want to be your overlord
And your under-lord.
Get it?
I want to have sex with you in more than one position.
Heat!
A. A passage from Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer
B. Tudor erotic poetry
C. Something that got scrawled on your face that time you got drunk and fell asleep on the train.
6. Henry VIII is:
A. The greatest monarch, father, warrior-poet, builder of navies, dancer, hunter, writer and mammal who has ever, or will ever, live on earth, breath air, occupy space and sit on the throne of any kingdom in the known or unknown universe
B. I want to be hunted down and killed
ANSWERS:
You probably got most of them wrong. Go purchase a second copy of the book and read it again. Repeat until you are the monarch of your own glorious island nation.
Epilogue
And now for the inspirational bit
Follow your heart, sweet reader. Even if it means six marriages, a couple of beheadings and starting your own major religion. Really. Focus on you.
***
One last erotic poem to make you feel squishy in your squishy bits:
You are my boiled swan,
My cheese,
My eel pie,
My succulent roast beef,
You – sweet, sweet lady – are
my bacon
with boobs.