Henry VIII | Something Wicked #13
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Show notes
For our "Something Wicked" series finale we're talking about perhaps England's most infamous king, Henry VIII.
We start off chatting about the context in which Henry ascended the throne - the death of his elder brother and the heir apparent Arthur Tudor, the work Henry VII had done to create peace and a functioning economy after The Wars of the Roses, and the issue of quite what to do with Arthur's teenage widow, the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon...
From there , we're off to the races, with Henry inheriting the crown, marrying Catherine, and enjoying a fair bit of success on the European stage - all of which rather climaxed at The Field of the Cloth of Gold, where he wrestled with (and lost to) the King of France.
That was very much Henry's upswing. The downwards trajectory of his life started in the mid-1520s, quickly spiralled out of control and crashed into near bankruptcy for the nation by the time of Henry's death in 1547.
From the "King's Great Matter" to the break with Rome, the subsequent destruction of almost all of England's ancient art, music and literature, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and his other five, largely unsuccessful marriages, it's a mess. Yes, he made some big changes which benefited his successors, but by golly did he do some damage as he did so!
It's a whip-cracking rollick through the highlights, and the low-lights, of the reign of "Fat Hank" in which we detail exactly which wives were beheaded, divorced, survived, and why - as well as which of them rivaled Henry in terms of total number of spouses, if not in regards to waistline...
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