DBWI: Henry VIII of England - ASB?

Of late I've been reading the second of the Tudor dynasty series of novels (buggered if I can remember the name of the author at the moment), The King's Curse. I didn't read the first of the set, A Winter King, and I'm guessing I'm glad I didn't. Either way, if you didn't know, the Tudors were a "noble" family from Wales who came to the royal court, Owen married Dowager Queen Catherine de Valois, and had a couple kids. Their eldest son, Edward?/Edmund? marries Lady Margaret Beaufort - cousin to Henry VI, and their son was earl of Richmond. In this set of books, Tudor somehow winds up as king of England, and goes on to establish a new dynasty.

But back to the novel.

Henry VIII of England here is an absolute monster. I mean the guy can't get a son, so he basically tears the world apart. He marries his older brother's virginal widow, Katherine of Aragon (yeah, the OTL duchesse d'Orléans and later queen of France) shortly after coming to the throne in 1509, and things go well for the next decade or so. However, in the mid-1520s a young lady by the name of Anne Bolwyn comes on the scene. Henry doesn't have a son with Katherine. He asks the pope for a dispensation to divorce Katherine. Katherine's nephew (OTL Charles of Burgundy), the Holy Roman Emperor (who's also the king of Spain - though they never say how he got that title) prevents this. Henry then flicks the bird at the pope and starts his own church, divorces Katherine, and marries Anne. But Anne only gives birth to a daughter.

Now here's the part that I really find hard to swallow. I mean, it's not as though there haven't been royal mistresses who aim for the crown. Following a couple miscarriages and the arrival on the scene of a new lady at court, Jane Seymour, Anne's out and Jane's in. Anne gets divorced, accused of sleeping with her own brother - and what must be half the male population of the court - and her head gets chopped off. Henry then marries Jane. Jane gives him a son. Happiness. But then Jane dies, and Henry goes on the lookout for a new wife. Of course, no girl's exactly jumping at the chance to wed him, but he finds a German princess who's up to the task. Said princess arrives in England and she's barely wed to Henry before Kitty Howard makes her appearance on the scene. The German princess is divorced, and Henry marries Kitty Howard. Then, surprise, Kitty Howard's ex-lovers (and husband) come crawling out of the woodwork, and the king divorces Kitty, has her, her husband and her lover's heads chopped off. And Henry marries again, to Kate Neville. Who gets accused of being in favour of the reformed religion, so what does Henry do? You guessed it, the proof is barely in hand when he's calling for Kate Neville's head on a spike. Then, Henry weds again (some serious issues this bloke has, I'm just saying) - at nearly sixty, to the dowager duchess of Suffolk (whose husband - not a de la Pole - was Henry's BFF). He dies leaving an underage son, two daughters (both called bastards) and a young wife (who ironically, is much like Kate Neville in her favouring of the reformed religion).

Now, after this, I was just thinking that I sure am glad that King Edward V succeeded without a problem that we ended up with a period of Plantagenet stability during the time that the events in the novel are going on. Yeah, things weren't always rosy: there were wars with France and then a union with Scotland, and a war with Scotland when the union broke. But in comparison with what was going on in France and the Empire, England's transition to Protestantism was a lot more peaceful than what it's made out in the novel. I mean, it was only after the union with Scotland fractured in the 1580s that King Henry VII came out as Protestant.
 
I'm just happy that they don't have him to have a son from his sixth marriage - the Rurikid House descendants would likely sue the author to hell and back. Especially with succession - Dmitry I with his "bastard" accusations - yes, reigning in the period of famine is difficult, especially with the corrupt chancellor like Boris Godunov... but that's offtopic. When one sees 6 wives in XVI century, everybody remembers Ivan IV the Dreaded. Did somebody decide to transplant him to England complete with "get rid of her" antics?
Does the thing have a sequel? I'd like to see if the shameful plagiarizing of Russian history into English setting continue. Oh wait... the bastard one is a girl. Now if she gets to rule AND gets to be the successful and one of the most popular rulers of the country, I'll break my face with facepalming.
No friggin' originality.

Do they do the Katherine of Aragon character justice? She was the "only man in House of Valois" OTL, after all.
 
To correct the above, all the Kings of England since Henry VII have been Catholic, its just that Protestants have been legally tolerated and given equal status to Catholics. With most of the population nominally Protestant, the royal family downplays its Catholicism and most people just assume they are Protestant like their subjects.

There have been timelines here where the English monarchs remained Protestant.

I do remember those strange novels trying to make English history like Russian history. It got really embarrassing when they had "Henry VIII" set up a state sponsored church that was an obvious ripoff of the Russian Orthodox church.

Though its little known today, there really was a civil war in England in the 1460s around the conflicting claims to the throne of two Plantagenet branches. But the books have to have Edward V drop dead when Edward V is still a child, for no apparent reason, and then turn Edward IV's brother into a monster. Its technically possible, but really a literary device to get the story going.
 
I'm just happy that they don't have him to have a son from his sixth marriage - the Rurikid House descendants would likely sue the author to hell and back. Especially with succession - Dmitry I with his "bastard" accusations - yes, reigning in the period of famine is difficult, especially with the corrupt chancellor like Boris Godunov... but that's offtopic. When one sees 6 wives in XVI century, everybody remembers Ivan IV the Dreaded. Did somebody decide to transplant him to England complete with "get rid of her" antics?
Does the thing have a sequel? I'd like to see if the shameful plagiarizing of Russian history into English setting continue. Oh wait... the bastard one is a girl. Now if she gets to rule AND gets to be the successful and one of the most popular rulers of the country, I'll break my face with facepalming.
No friggin' originality.

Do they do the Katherine of Aragon character justice? She was the "only man in House of Valois" OTL, after all.

Its book 2 of 6 - the remaining four cover the rest of the 16th century:
The King of Winter (prequel: 1480s to Henry's reign)
The King's Curse (1511-1547)
Now Blooms the Tudor Rose (1547-1553 (must've been a short blooming rose) about Henry VIII's son, Edward VI)
Queen for a Day (about Henry's niece, Jane, who ends up as queen briefly after Ed. The author should really go research how the English crown passes from father>son. But typical American probably thinks its a military sponsored popularity contest like there).
Mary, Quite Contrary (about Henry's elder daughter who stays Catholic but becomes queen after Jane.
The Queen's Justice (about Henry's younger daughter named Elizabeth (I mean, Edward V's mother/sister had that name, but it only comes up in the 18th century again. The English preferred Isabella (like Edward's wife) who DOES become queen as a sort of vindication of her murdered slandered mother).

As to Catherine of Aragon - the author makes her this pitiable character. Besides her leading an army into battle against the Scots and beheading the Scots king (which let's face it, is nearly a blow-by-blow copy and paste of her OTL actions when the English invaded in the mid-1510s, and her husband the king was away in Italy and her son was underage in Paris. Yes, she never personally beheaded someone, but that treaty afterwards was a masterstroke of French diplomacy (even though most of the army was away in Italy). She does get a kickass moment in court when Henry's trying to divorce her. Which I feel is the author admitting he can't hide what a bad-ass she was.
Henry says she wasn't a virgin when they married. Well, doh, if she was previously married to your teenage brother, of course she wasn't (if your brother was like you, shagging anything in a skirt). I mean, there's a scene where Henry gets caught by the duke of Buckingham (who later gets the chop - a seriously overused plot device, cause there's a whole slew of characters that get beheaded (I had to make a list to keep it all straigbt)) with Buckingham's sister. Buckinvham's sister ends up in a convent to keep her oùt of the king's bed. But he calls the king "a miserable son of a whore" - I mean sheesh, do we have no respect for royalty? No wonder he got made a head shorter. Then again, the duke of Suffolk (a nobody) gets to wed Henry's sister after she marries and survives Louis XII (who is implied to have died during sex). All in all, more like a cheap bodice-ripper with all the sex scenes.
 
I need to read The Queen's Justice - I must have this good LOL from "successful bastard" trope. Especially if the reign is remembered as "a masterpiece lifiting the country from economic ruin, by person whose youth was ruined by bastard accusation". Edward VI and the princesses seem just like copy/paste of Feodor I and Dmitry I thingy. Extra claimant thrown in for "diversity".

No, really, if the author has hard-on on Russian history, THAT's not the most interesting thing to transplant to English setting. I'd like to see them to transplant the situation of OTL XVIII century, when the Rurikid dynasty ended in male line, and the only male heir agreeing to convert into Orthodoxy was a princeling of small Northern German principality (with more claims to Swedish throne than to Russian to boot), the rest being women or the die-hard Catholic children of the Queen of Hungary. It seems Spain also went through this TTL, as OTL Karl was what? Sixth or seventh in line?

Also, Catherine is Catherine. It seems that the prime badass woman of 1520ies is going to be the same in any timeline, even the weird one like this.
 
What do we all think about the fact that he goes "off with her head" for three of his wives, and his religious flip-flopping - I mean, he breaks with Rome, then marries a Catholic (Jane Seymour), marries a Protestant (the German - at least I assume she's Protestant, since the marriage is described as being beneficial to England's "new" religious interests), then who knows what Kitty is (besides a slut), Kate is reformed, and his last wife is also fond of the reformed religion. Saying at one point, when told of Stephen Gardiner's return to court "it was merry with the lambs when the wolf was shut up", and naming her pet dog "Gardiner"?
 
Making Catherine of Aragon mother to a single daughter who had no children and is villanised as "Bloody Mary" is insulting to the real Catherine who had 8 living children with Louis XII and is considered the mother of the most illustrious generation of princes and princesses ever in France. I mean her three oldest daughters, Isabelle, Marie and Anne became queens of Portugal, Hungary and Scotland, her oldest son married a english princess after she defeated the english in 1514 and her youngest daughter Catherine became queen and regent of Sweden.
 
Last edited:
Top