Bittersweet Infamy - #137 - Divorced, Beheaded, Died...

Episode Date: February 1, 2026

Season six premiere! Taylor tells Josie about the temperamental Tudor King of England, Henry VIII, and his six ill-fated wives: Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Parr.

Welcome to Bitter Sweet Influence. I'm Taylor Basso. And I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we share the stories that live on and in me. The strange and the familiar. The tragic and the comic. The bitter. And the sweet.

Welcome to season six of Bitter Sweet Infamy. Season six, that is a little bit wild. We're getting into the alliteration now. We've got this year and next year, of just season six, season seven, season six. Let's focus on the present. Or if you prefer in true 2026 style, 6-7, 6-7. Oh, oh, whoa.

See, do you know, Josie, do you know 6-7? Does anybody truly know 6-7? Fair enough, fair enough. I just thought that because last year I had to tell you about Labooos, and I wondered if maybe this year I had to tell you about 6-7. Is that the story you're bringing me today? The story that I'm bringing you today is, Six, seven. Six, seven. Yeah, yeah. No, I have actually, a friend of the podcast, Amanda Ortiz,

uh, she teaches middle school these days and, uh, that must be fun. Not only because of six, seven, but also you have to explain like, listen, kids, I know that the grownups voted for Donald Trump to steal Greenland, but here's why that's bad. Yeah, exactly. Oh, good Lord. Josie, how has your, how has your, uh, 2026 been for you so far? You know, it's a, it's a, it's, It's a new year and a new set of challenges, and we're going to embrace them and love them dearly as best we can, learn what we can. Yeah. How about you? How is 2026 treating you?

Oh, dude. 2025, I barely stayed alive, and I expect 26 to hit me like some bricks. Honestly, honestly, I called my mom on New Year, and she was like, oh, happy New Year. And I was like, dude, this is going to suck. Yeah. It's a rare omen to go into so forthrightly a new year with that sort of energy. But like, I study the evidence. I reflect on the numbers.

I go over my spreadsheets. I look at every now and then a guy or a gal or someone from the lab will come in with like a long lab coat and hand me a stack of papers with a very concerned face. And I'll look over them and will be like, yeah, this year's going to suck balls. You're right. Flip through the charts. Mm-hmm. Clipboard, throw it to the side.

I don't know. Honestly, I like to start these new years, new seasons on a really positive note, but I'm very trepidacious about the way of the world right now, honestly. It's true. I'm looking forward, nonetheless, to bringing in some positive cheer, some interesting stories. Yeah. Cool themes, all that, that stuff that we typically do. You know, excited to dive back in over at Film Club.

We're going to be switching to video podcasts for Film Club. So if you join us, why not? Why not? That's what we said. Why not? Why not? And so if you join us over at K-O-HifinFi.com slash bittersweet infamy, hopefully by the end of the month when this episode is posted, we're going to have also our first film club episode of the season on Working Girl, suggested by our subscriber Terry McCann. And if you want to become a subscriber, thank you, Terry. And if you want to become a subscriber

like Terry and a working girl like we are, you can join us at K-O-hyphen-Fi.com slash bittersweet infamy. And you can also see our free, our free Mitch-Miss special, which was what we did for Christmas. It's available to everyone and we had a lot of fun doing it. Lots of really, really interesting stories. And we played some fun games. We did Christmas crackers. We chatted about our French boyfriend hats, which I'm wearing at this very moment. So good. And we test piloted the video format and it worked pretty well. Who knew? Apparently technology gets better after five years. I think when we first started, I remember we had the YouTube video to upload and it just like, it was like this would be uploaded and

In 25 fucking days. By the time this will upload, Trump will be back in, you know? That kind of shit. How are you doing on that note down in America? Because it's a lot. It is a lot. It's a lot. On the personal note, I've been sleeping a lot.

I've been clocking the hours. I've been sleeping on it. That's what I've been doing. For better, for worse. You've been getting that sleep in line so that you can start the revolution with a good REM cycle. Yes, exactly. Understood. No, it's a tricky one because you got to be in it for the long haul.

Really is you can't lose your energy with it because I could already feel that happening a little bit a year into T2 as I just made up. That's good. We are all in the process of holding that chain link fence and getting obliterated by a fireball and turning into ash and skeletons for sure. That I definitely get. Yeah. So you need to rest up for that, for sure. How are you doing? How in the face of, you know, utter disaster?

How's things? I'm angry every day. Thank you for asking. I am, you know, frequently stressed out, you know, as a person with any kind of empathy, obviously that gets like brutally taxed by like, you know, the situation in Palestine, the starvation and civil war situation in Sudan. The shit that's going on with Greenland, that makes me really angry. Leave Greenland alone.

We all know that I have my sympathies. Leave Canada alone. Yeah, no, Canada by extension, very much implicated in that, right? For that reason and for separate reasons, right? Donald Trump seems to want resources and he wants to seem to distract people from the Peta files, aka the Epstein files and, you know, all that. Fucking not so good stuff, right? Yeah.

And it sucks because, like, I don't want to, you know, I want to be talking on my podcast to you about like, I saw an eagrits today or, you know, something nice. But I haven't seen any eagrits in ages. They're all hiding from Trump. T2, baby. The eagrots don't call that on T2. Yes, the eagrits need better than the rest of us. So, yeah, I think it's just like going into season six,

knowing that, you know, there are all these kind of serious and important and urgent and life-threatening issues for many, many people. The protests in Iran, my God, I didn't even mention those, right? I know. I didn't even go out of my little sphere. Of course, the American is just like, in America, it's hard. In America, we are sleeping more often. But there's some positive things. Name them.

Start name and names. I got a new nose ring. Hey, let me see that. Lean in nice and close to the camera. Oh, shiny. Rose gold. And, yeah, no, no. Rhoes ring? How about you? What do you got? I had to get the barbell in my eyebrow piercing replaced, so that's newish. Okay. That's fun. I've been doing a lot of ice skating.

Ooh, okay. I've been doing a lot of marker art. Rui got me the 320 pack of the Oh, Who Who Alcohol Markers, so I go walk around. I've got every Oh Who Who marker you. I got a Ohoohoo's, no Lubuos, but Oahu is just as pleasing for me to say. So it's a, and I get to make art. So it's a wash. No, it's a wash. It's better than a wash. It's a power watch.

Luxury premium wash. Sorry, what are they called again? They're called hoo-hoo's? Oh, who-hoo. It's the brand of alcohol marker. It's like, basically there was this one brand of alcohol marker called Copics, and they were the biggest, most popular one. And then the oh-hoo-hoo's, probably around like, COVID, I would say.

The oh-hoo-hoo-hous came out with these gigantic packages of markers for much, much, much, much, much cheaper. And all the art YouTubers were like, well, these can't. possibly be as good. And then when you use them, they're basically just as good. Amazing. So it was a real, it was a real disruptive market technology, the O'Hoohoo. And now I've got this giant, like, it's like a bocce ball set. And it weighs about just as much. Yeah, it's like as big as your bed. Yeah, it's like, it's like walking around with like a, like a computer modem or something. It's fabulous. I love it. And it also sounds like you're telling me like a Dr.

Seuss story. I like this. A hoo-hoo. The O'Hoohooos and the Kopex in them. The ProPix. Yeah, I've also got Artex. I got a lot of Artex alcohol markers from my mom, which was really nice. I've been making a lot of really cool drawings. Aw. It's been a lot of fun. And so my New Year's resolutions, talking to New Year's resolutions, I want to do an original concept drawing for each of the suspects from the board game clue. Ooh. That's fun, right? That's very fun.

Yes. I thought that might spark joy in joyless times, in these joyless times where the world economy is going down the shitter and are. Our top ally is threatening to NXS, and I live right near the border, so that'll be good. Bum-pa-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-bh. Yay. But I got the O-hoo-hoo's. You American bastards can pry my 320 O'Hoo-Hoo-Hus out of my cold dead Canuck hands. Tell you that. My New Year's resolution was less of, like, a succinct goal and more kind of like a vibe, a vibe-vib for 2026.

And mine is to be more decisive. Okay. And you did that with like a non-specific vibes based goal, huh? Yes. I thought it would equal out. I thought it would like smooth sailing right down the middle. What is a way? How will you, I guess, let's make that a smart goal.

What? Did you ever have, did you ever do smart goals? No. Specific measurable, attainable, relevant time bound. But we can only do, we'll maybe do only like one of those things. for time reasons, we're time bound. Exactly. What is a way that you can measure your decisiveness?

Like, what is a thing you can do to actually prove whether or not this was effective? Well, I think the root of trying to be more decisive also has to do with worry. And it's about worrying less over decisions that don't matter as much. So red toothbrush or green toothbrush kind of thing? Yeah. Should I wake up at six? or should I wake up at seven? Like, you know, and that kind of, like, should I finish this work?

PM, she's been sleeping. Right, yeah. So it's tied to worry. And in that way, maybe the smart goal approach is, I don't know, like, just keeping track of stress and journaling, gurnaling. Journaling. Okay, sure. Look at that decision you just made. Yeah.

It might be about keeping track of stress and journaling. That's a decision. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to put this to the. test. Watch this. I'm going to put this to the test. Josie, what did you like better on film club? I, Tanya or the dressmaker?

As a movie or... Make a decision. Okay, okay. I taught you. There we go. Done. Next. Josie. That wasn't stressful at all. I don't give a shit. I don't give a shit. La boo-boos or oh-hooos. Oh, who-hoo. Thank you. Uh, uh, uh, would you rather stab someone or shoot someone? Stab. Ooh. You surprised yourself with that one. Yeah. I don't like guns. I like knives.

I was my thought. I want to be in it, you know? Yeah. Let's get, let's get the, let's paint this town red. Let's paint these hands red if we're doing this. No, I got she. I got you. Well, we made a decision here on Bitter Sweet Infamy as we roll into season six. Mm-hmm, we did. Sit down. Sit down, folks. Take a seat, Penny. Take a second. Get ready to speed dial your child to tell them. Season six, we'll see. the departure

of the beloved minfamous format. It's not, okay, departure. Departure? Departure makes it sound we're never going to see it again. No, no, no. It's not a departure. It's simply a vacation. Yeah, a vacation. That's a good me to put it. A vacation for the Mymphomis. The Minfamous called us up and said, yo, I'm really stressed out about this current state of the world. Yeah, burnout. Can I take the season off?

Basically, to let y'all in on it, we are going to be back to doing our own editing for season six. And so because of that, we were looking for ways not only to reduce the editing time, but also to liven up the format and make sure that we're still delivering to you all what you need. Something fresh. And so what we've realized is that people really love the infamous format, but sometimes the way that we deploy it ahead of our main story, it'll end up being 30, sometimes even 4'HRR and it's long. And so what we thought was we could streamline the episodes by making

making them more featured around one specific thing, which we now have time to flesh out even a little bit more. Exactly. And then the minfamous format isn't gone forever. We're going to take it and we're going to redeploy it in other ways. Maybe we'll do episodes that are just a minfamous or just Josie and I both bringing a minfamous on a theme or not on a theme. We're still batting it around because we love the minfamous. We don't want to get rid of it forever. But we do want to go into season six with a renewed sense of focus.

We're bringing Sixie back. Wow. Wow. You hear it. Wow. Yeah. Josie, that trip to New Zealand. I'm bringing sexy back.

I'm bringing sexy back. It really got into your bones. Yeah, yeah. That was what, two years ago? No big deal. It's what's it called? It's delayed. It's a delayed, delayed.

Delayed. Long Kiwi. You know what I mean? It's true. It's true. And again, the Mimphemus is not gone. It is not. It is not left.

In fact, in April, I definitely want to do our factor fiction infamous. So we're going to, it's not gone. It's not gone. It's just, it's in its movement and hibernation as the best of us undertake in this time of year. Got to say, by the way, before we go, before we talk, move out of the weather, because I love talking about the weather. That's my other hot take, by the way, is one, I love small talk. I think it's very underrated. And number two, the best small talk is about the weather.

I think that the weather is like. It affects us all. It affects us all. It's something you can talk about. like you go up to your racist grandmother from hell and you have nothing to say to her because you don't agree on anything politically and she hates all the people you love and all that. But sure as shit, it has been raining a lot lately. It might snow Saturday. Yeah, exactly. What's this? I feel this chill. I think it's going to snow, but it may not quite get to freezing.

You know, these are great talks. These are great important talks that we have. And on that note, it's been very foggy here, very, very foggy. Oh, really? Oh, for like two days. In fact, it was supposed to be like aurora visible. Right. But the fog. The mysterious Agatha Christie fog that has been like in Vancouver for days now. It's really nice. Ooh, I think I see it now.

The diffused light. Yeah, you can see it kind of behind my shoulder there. Well, we might actually get snow on Saturday. Ooh, see, this is a great conversation. It's great. I'm loving it. Hopefully we keep power and the grid stays a light. Ted Cruz will drag by and fling a bit.

bag of funions at your house. On his way to the airport? Yeah. Oh, fuck that guy. I guess to wrap up our discussion on the geopolitical situation, you had mentioned to me that you'd seen this piece of graffiti in your, or was it Mitchell who said that? One of you mentioned that you had seen a piece of graffiti in Spanish, and I don't remember exactly what it was, but I liked it.

Sin prisa, but sin pausa. And for those non-Spanish speakers, that means some. something like without rushing, but without stopping. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Like, we're not going so fast that we're getting sloppy, but we are not stopping. This can't, we can't afford to stop. It's a really nice phrase for these, these times where you have to push, but you,

but you have to push for a long time. You have to be able to go and do. It's a marathon, not a sprint, right? It's kind of a similar thought. Poko apoco. That's, I mean, little by little. That's the other one that I like to live by. But then I just fall asleep.

Yeah. That's the Boko. That's the Boko that you're doing. My dude, you have a story for me. I do. I do. I considered bringing in something that was very relevant to our dire times. And I guess it sort of is if you tilt your head and squint really hard.

I've brought in things that are less relevant. Which I've been known to do. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes you lose your glasses. They fall in the toilet. it, whatever. I would say that this is sort of one that I brought just because I thought it would be an interesting, fun, well-known story to kick off our season because last year, Josie,

you did that great, fucking like three-hour long season premiere. It's a bit long. A skukum gal that season premiere. And it was about the heiress-turned vigilante, Patty Hurst. And how her whole saga, you know, captivated. a nation and spun off into all this bloodshed and mayhem. And I really liked that you had brought such a skukum story for our premiere. And so I wanted to sort of model that. I wanted to do like a wow premiere. Get your sequin vest on. Get crazy. Da da da da da. Start spreading the news.

I need a sequin vest. Okay. I'm surprised you don't have one already. I guess you've never been like a croupie. So that makes sense. I mean it's 2026. You got to do got to do. do something. Gotta get creative out there. Yeah, exactly. What's the economy these days? My feet picks aren't selling out only fans. Gotta do something.

AI took my footpick job. I go there and I see AI feetpicks with six, seven toes. And I'm like, fuck, what's left for the rest of us? It's so true. I can't, I can't make a live in teaching writing anymore because of AI. And now the feet picks are off the table. So what the hell? There's already, you're going to laugh.

There's a feet picks joke in my story here. A totally unnecessary and irrelevant feet picks joke in, my story. So I'm going to ask you to like cheer when it comes. That's your, that's your audience, like pantomime audience participation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like how you got to boo when the villain comes on the stage. I'm going to ask you to cheer when the feet picks joke develops. Is there really a story without a nod to the feet picks? To pegiesfeet.com. Who yeah. Absolutely. That's one of our most common like cultural references on this podcast, I feel like is pegiesfeet.com. That and Shannon Doherty's podcast. Those are the two things that we rep above all. Let's be clear.

let's be clear. Josie, the subject of today's premiere has much in common with previous subjects I've covered on the show. Those subjects include The Delorian, the controversial car from episode 46. Yes. As well as The Dale, the three-wheeled automobile that we learned about in episode 71. Carmichael. Liz Carmichael.

Based on these clues, Josie, what kind of subject do you think we might be tackling in our season premiere? something at emotive? Bad guess. What even got you there? What? That's so bizarre, Josie. Let me take over. Your guesses are bad. What do the Dale and the DeLorean have in common? They both have, what, Tudors?

That's right, Josie. Today's story brings us back to the Tudor era of English history. From 1485 to 603. Also, fuck you. That's funny. Happy New Year. It's still the same as it ever was. I'm doing my same shit. From 1485 to 1603, the Welsh-born House of Tudor assumed the royal throne in England and Wales.

Josie, what, if anything, do you know about the Tudors themselves? And how do you imagine life in the Tudor era? Ooh, the Tudors. So again, 1485 to 1603 is when we're talking here. So this is before the Elizabethan era. Are she a tutor? It encompasses the Elizabethan era. The Elizabethan era is the end of the Tudor era.

At the end of there, we're getting some Shakespeare. We're getting the houses that have their plaster with wood. Yeah, triangle-thingy guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thatched roofs. We have that on. Fetch that, mother. If I put some fatching on that bitch.

Fash away. We're on the tail end of like Middle Ages. We're coming out of the Middle Ages, at least in Europe. Into the Renaissance, baby. Let's write things down. Let's fucking write things down. Let's be scientific about it. Yeah. Let's draw naked people and have their anatomies be roughly in proportion to actual human anatomy. And let's go across the oceans and conquer some people we don't know. Oh, but that, you know, Greenland, like that, that is evergreen. Like that is... It's true. It's true. We've been doing that. We continue to do that. I guess there are some repetitions in human history. You know what they say about history? It is never the same way twice. Everything that happened in history happens once and then never again. And we don't really have anything to learn from that process. That's what they say. Uh-uh. Yeah. Yeah. Josie, the Tudor era brought economic expansion and an overall feeling of security to England. Although naturally, there was a great distinction between the lives of the richest and the poorest. Yeah. Well, the average English citizen lived off their own plot of land.

and survived on various breads and an ever-changing soup of the day called potage. And it was always different potage. I was seeing this thing. I watched this really good what was life like in the Tudor era. And they talked about how it really was the case that your diet changed every two weeks. Because like even when the cows were in season, well, at this time of the year, they're eating the grass that's high and fat and better for butter. And then after that, they eat the less fresh grass that is better for cheese. And so, like, literally, like, every two weeks, and everything changes.

Huh. I like that. Variety. Variety. So there's sort of this idea that the tutors had a really limited diet, but even when we talk about bread and potage, those were different things, depending on what time of year you made them, what type of ingredients you used. Yeah, exactly, exactly. While the average tutor peasant, not a slur, was making their bread and their potage,

the tutors, the royal family that gives the earth's name, lived at Hampton Court, a decadent palace, which comprised six acres of building, 60 of gardens, and 750 of grounds. And they enjoyed grand meals that serve 400 diners a piece with the early Tudor King Henry VIII receiving a private 28-course dinner in his apartment each night. That's too much. Think of all the leftovers.

Apparently what you did with the leftovers was it was sort of part of your charity as a member of the court to go and distribute them. These are things that like the things that were not, used and or used to the point of completion by the tutors, like, for example, clothes, clothes that they'd used until they felt that they no longer wanted them. Those would always be like kind of passed down to the quote unquote lessers by the quote unquote nobles. And speaking to Henry the 8th, he also led England into what is called the reformation. Do you know anything about the

reformation? The church changed from Catholicism. Well, through a whole bunch of changes into Protestantism, but in particular in England, Henry the 8th was like, oh, no, I want more because I want to be able to divorce my wife. So can we just like, you got it. Do the Church England thing. And they're like, what? And they're like, okay, fine. There we go. Anglican Church, born. There you go. That's kind of the gist of it. And you've got not only the what, but why Henry the 8th badly needed an annulment so he could get rid of a wife in whom he had lost his interest and trade her in for a more appealing model. And Bolin. And when that wife lost her luster, he cut off her head and found a new wife to cherish. And so on and so on and so on. Deadheading. Deadheading. Dead. Oh. Like a rose bush, you know?

Isn't there a Tudor Rose? Yeah. Done. Yes. Like any great English Rose Garden, right? Half a dozen marriages ranging from 24 years to a paltry six months long, each to a queen doomed to be misunderstood. for generations, her flaws amplified and character flattened by an unfaithful and merciless husband with the power to control her depiction in the historical record. Who were these women, really? Who was Henry? And why does this saga persist as one of the most immortal interludes in the long, long history of the British Empire, narrativized in countless films, musical compositions, books,

stage plays, and more. Josie, put on your puffy robes and feathered cap. Oh. Prepare your jousting lance. and cross your fingers for a male air because otherwise, heads are going to roll. This is the love story of Henry and Catherine and Anne and Jane.

And Anne and Catherine and Catherine. This is the story of the six wives of Henry VIII. Oh my gosh. Scoogum, baby. It's a Scoopum story. We're going to be burning through wives. So some quick notes here, some quick disclaimers. First of all, I'm going to be talking a lot about England.

Take for granted that at various points in this story, Henry is actually king of like England and Wales or England, Ireland or whatever. But I mostly just talk about England for simplicity's sake. Another thing that I want to say is that I think that one of the things that has really helped this story persist is that it's really easily narrativeized compared to something like the War of the Roses, which sort of kicks this whole thing off. And it's like kind of very difficult to explain succinctly. there are ways to tell the story of Henry the 8th,

where you can really just focus in on the guy and his wives, which is kind of what I've done here. But with that said, a lot of what animates the things that happen with Henry and his wives is there's a lot of behind the scenes scheming. There's a lot of people whispering kind of poison in Henry's ear about his various wives. There's a lot of random dudes,

Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer, Thomas Moore, lots of people named Thomas, who kind of are in and amongst stirring the pot. And I haven't really focused, too much on them, even though they are legitimately very major historical figures and very important parts in this saga, I went for like a really streamlined approach that focuses on Henry and the wives, just for simplicity's sake. And I took some of my cues around structure from this great three-part documentary I watched called Six Wives with Lucy Worsley. And it focuses, again,

specifically on the saga of Henry and the Wives. It's great because it's a documentary that's like half reenactments and half Lucy Worsley delivering exposition to the camera and showing off like, well, these are the letters that we draw upon to kind of have this understanding and whatever. But the reason that she's great is because she is always secretly like in the background of the various dramatizations that are happening, like dressed as a maid. So Henry and Catherine of Aragon will have this like big fight. And then out of nowhere, one of the maids will turn to you and be like, well, Catherine won't have liked that. But what came next for our royal couple? And then she'll like change into her like modern clothes all of a sudden and she'll be back walking down.

It's great. It's a great presentation. That's, you know, why not? have some fun. Why not? Realize that upstairs downstairs vibe. Get it going. We've already got the permission to film in fucking Hampton Court.

Let's go for it. Yeah. And the last thing that I'll say is a warning ahead, as you might expect in a story where women are sort of like gone through like grain in an attempt to secure an air. There's a lot of like miscarriage related stuff in this story. And then there's also particularly when we get to wife five, there's a lot of stuff. around sexual abuse, unfortunately. So just, and child sexual abuse at that.

So I'll just flag that kind of going ahead. Okay, okay. Thank you. Yes. Nor is. Shall we go back to the War of the Roses? When the Yorkist King Richard III died in 1485, his descendants began a lengthy squabble for the crown called the War of the Roses. This was a notoriously complicated and convoluted affair with multiple different

claimants to the crown. I won't go too much into it except to say that it shows the precarity of the throne and it emphasizes the succession drama that will recur throughout this story. To make a long story short, Henry the 7th, the half-nephew of former King Henry the 6th

ultimately seized the kingdom. History knows Henry the 7th as the first ruler of the Tudor dynasty, but immediately after the War of the Roses, the Tudor claimed to the throne was still somewhat shaky. So the Tudors were very anxious to reinforce their claim with a string of legitimate male heirs, women not being allowed to enter the line of royal succession at this time.

I guess that changes with Elizabeth then. At the end of this story, so just hang tight. Okay. There's a light at the end of the tunnel. Hey, yeah. Skip ahead about 90 minutes or whatever on the fucking bar at the bottom if you want to get to the Elizabethan error real quick. Just skip the wives, you know.

Yeah. What are we here for? In 1491, Henry the 7th and his wife, Elizabeth of York, had their third child and second son, Henry the 8th. Okay. Henry received a first-class royal education, but he was very much the spare, not the heir. Ah. The heir was meant to be his older brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales, named optimistically after

the mythical King Arthur of Camelot. Oh, yeah, great name. Since Prince Arthur was lined up to be king, this meant a strategic marriage at a very young age. At the age of 15, Arthur was betrothed to Catherine of Aragon. Okay. the youngest surviving child of Spain's King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella. Heavy hitters in the royalty space. I'm sure you agree. Yeah, Columbus is money bags.

Catherine was the epitomey of royalty. A fair and comely princess with a broad education, including language, literature, history, politics, domestic duties, and court etiquette. So when we talk about court here, we're usually talking about, unless we're talking about like a law court. We're talking about like all the various fucking backbiteres that I've been talking about who live in the palace and fulfill various duties either as ladies and waiting, advisors to the king, courtiers, all these things. Takes a lot of people to make a palace that big run, right? Dukes, duchesses. Viscounts, probably some fucking viscounts in there. You know what I mean?

That's a nice one. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Vizigoth. That's not. Nope. No visigoths, probably. importantly, Catherine was also a devout Catholic, which suited the Tudors just fine, as England was predominantly Catholic at this time. Bookmark that thought. This alliance with the Spanish throne was meant to solidify the Tudor claim to royalty, still seen as illegitimate by some. After a two-week-long process of wedding celebrations, Catherine and Arthur married in 1501, and Arthur died of sweating sickness in 1902. Sorry, sweating sickness? Not the ideal way to go. I'm sure you agree. Is that like, you just sweat too much?

You sweat too much. You never shut up. No, it's that. Whoa, man. 1502. What a time. What a time to be alive because then you'd just die. RIP with Arthur passed away.

Catherine was a very young widow and our boy Ace Ocho was thrust into the Tudor line of succession. Oh, okay, okay. I see. Catherine of Aragon wouldn't take it over. Obviously, okay. No. God, no. I'm with you. Oh, God, no. Yeah. A woman and not within the same lineage. Okay. But also at that point, Henry the 7th was still the king, too. So there was no need for, like, an immediate successor.

Gotcha. Okay. Anyone with an older sibling knows that you end up with a lot of hand-me-downs. And that's what happened with Arthur's widow, Catherine of Aragon. Arthur may have died, but the political strategy behind the marriage was still sound. Yeah. Besides, Catherine and Henry VIII had a legitimate spark that made them a genuine love match. Rare in a world of tactical intermarriage. Yeah, a little bit of a little bit of chemica. A little bit of that was. Yeah.

In fact, Henry said that he would choose Catherine of all the ladies in the world. Again, I want you to bookmark that. I have a lot of bookmarks over here. King Henry the 7th was said to object to the match, but he died in April 1509 and two months later in June. Bye. The smitten new King Henry the 8th married his brothers. widow. Okay. He was 17 years old and Catherine was 23. Okay. The two took up residence together at Hampton Court, the seat of power for the tutor throne. Was it the factching and the, was it the tutor style?

Where we're going, we don't need thatching. This is like an actual palace. Like this is like a big fuck you palace. Holy cow is ever a big fuck you palace. I like that is an architectural term. Oh, fuck you palace. Oh, it's a big fuck you power for sure, for sure. Fuck thee in the, in the, in the, in the parlance of the era. Yeah. Fucketh thou. Yeah. By 1510, Catherine was pregnant with their first child, auspicious in a world that spun on the new queen's ability to produce an air.

Yeah. Unfortunately, five months into the marriage, Catherine suffered a miscarriage. Wow. Things seemed bleak until the royal doctor informed her that she was actually carrying twins. And while one had not been carried to term, the other had survived and was still viable. Wow. That's a big turnaround. Yeah.

Heartbroken over the loss, but relieved that the pregnancy would continue. Catherine spent the last month of her pregnancy locked away in a tower with her own personal servants, quarantined to avoid the passage of disease that compromised so many pregnancies of this era, royal and otherwise. A time where disease was rife and poorly understood and women frequently died in childbirth. Yeah, yeah. But when the time came for Catherine to give birth, there was no child. The doctor had misdiagnosed her, and the second twin that she seemed to be carrying was merely an infection.

Worst. You want a child who got an infection. No good. That turned around and then turned around again. It's turn around bright eyes. You're going to be an ice dancer. Just spinning around in the story, Judge. I promise you. You're just like screwing deeper into the ground. Rumors began to spread that Catherine was unable to conceive. But Catherine let her haters be her waiters in the birthing chamber of success. On New Year's Day, 1511. Aspicious.

A good omen, right? Happy New Year. After a smooth second pregnancy, Catherine gave birth to a son, Henry. Oh. The grand occasion was celebrated by bonfires, fireworks, and of course we got to have a joust. Okay. King Henry himself was an avid joster. And to mark his son's birth, he jousted under the title of Sir Loyal Heart, a message

to his beloved Catherine. Okay, cute. I want you to bookmark that thought. Okay, okay. The Post-in notes are flying over here. The book is getting thicker. Things were good, and things would always be good. As they always are.

Seven weeks later, baby Henry grew sick and died. The prince's body was interred at Westminster Abbey, and the royal couple were devastated. Did we know what it was, or just like, uh-oh, he's sweaty? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Put any death in this story that doesn't specifically end with someone being decapitated, I want you to just assume it was a death of sickness. Uh-oh. Uh-oh.

SpaghettiOs, yes. That's on the death certificate. Yeah. Catherine wouldn't get pregnant again until the age of 27, basically geriatric in Tudor terms, certainly as pregnancies went. Her third pregnancy ended in another miscarriage, and yes, it had been a boy.

Oh. However much he adored his co-sovereign, Henry's eye inevitably began, to wander to younger, seemingly more fertile options. He started an affair with a young lady in waiting named Bessie Blount. Catherine knew about the stallions but turned a blind eye as long as Henry was discreet. After all, Henry was the king. And what the king wanted, the king got. Yeah. Yeah, hard one. Yeah. Henry's affair with Bessie bore a son, Henry Fitzroy. King was stoked, Oves, and he loved his son. But Henry Fitzroy was illegitimate.

he could not enter the line of succession. Yeah. Henry sent Bessie away from the court out of respect for Queen Catherine. What a husband, what a guy. And the hunt for Britain's next top male heir continued. After six years of marriage, five pregnancies, and four miscarriages and deaths, Catherine of Aragon finally gave birth to a healthy baby girl. Yay!

Yay! Every child is a blessing, right? Yeah. Happy accidents, happy surprises. young Princess Mary was a blessing upon the court to be sure, but again, we need a male heir to the throne. Yeah. Never mind that Catherine of Aragon had proven herself an able interim ruler, while Henry was away fighting wars in France, as he frequently was. And never mind that during that time, she'd been instrumental in the military defeat and ultimately the killing of perpetual thorn in the English side, James 4th of Scotland.

Wow. The line of succession depended on men, and much of the angst of Henry's infamous romantic life was seemingly dictated by this arbitrary fact of royal life. Yeah. By the time Catherine of Aragon was 37, she was still trying for that male air, but if 27 was geriatric for a treat of pregnancy, Josie, a 37-year-old woman was effectively the Nazi from Indiana Jones in the last crusade, who drinks from the wrong grail, and rapidly ages into dust. Josie, can you imagine any creature older, more weathered and ancient than a 37-year-old woman? I certainly can't.

That's great. Do you know any 37-year-old women? Probably not. They're all dead, right? Oh, they're six feet under. Long-a-old. Long-buried. Josie, how old did you turn in this December?

38. Oh, okay, okay. Wait, am I? Yeah, I, the math. It's so hard. It gets worse, huh? Me too, me too. And I'm a December maybe?

I was 36 for a whole year before I was 36. Yeah. Good thing I'm still alive to keep going with it, huh? Barely. Well, Henry felt the same way, and he consoled himself with a new mistress. Mary Bolin, the fair and vivacious daughter of landowner Thomas Bullen. Mind you, Mary, was married to Ocho's best friend, William Carey, but that's a minor wrinkle when you're the biggest kid in the playground and happy to take any shiny toys that strike

your fancy. I bet those fucking, those courts were just kind of grody spots to be. Oh, just chucking dick around, and it was. dirty to boot, I'm sure. Yeah. To quote Janelle Monet, as the Tudor scholars so often do, Henry's affair with Mary burned bright and exploded in flames, but horny Henry wasn't satisfied to bask in the embers.

Royals like to keep it in the family, and so in 1525, Henry moved on to Mary's younger sister, the one that you know, Anne Boleyn. Anne, hi, Anne. And what reputation do you know Anne Boleyn to have? Like, when you think of Anne Boleyn, what is her historical reputation to you? Is she the first one to be beheaded? She is. So there's the popular, like, little rhyme that you say to remember what happened to these women is.

Do you know this one? No, I don't think so. Divorced beheaded died. Divorce, beheaded, survived. Ah, okay, okay. And this is, like, a very, like, popular, like, nursery rhyme type song that, like, I would imagine, especially a lot of, like, little English kids learn this song when they're doing their, like, history unit, you know?

That makes sense, yeah. So she, Anne Boleyn was, okay, that's why I know her so well is because that's what caused the reformation and the creation of the church. She's the catalyst. She's the catalyst. I mean, Henry's, Henry's the catalyst, but yeah, born in 1501 or 1507, which puts her in her late teens or early 20s at this time. Was that like a handwriting thing? It's like, oh, is that a seven or is that a one? The doctor smudged the ink or something. Yeah, we don't know. We don't know. Anne Boleyn was sophisticated and well-mannered, having been educated by the French court in all manner of finery. She was sort of from what I saw it described as sort of a Nouveau-Riche family,

not in the sort of negative context that that has where we think of Nouveau-Rich people as being like, you know, flashy with their money, but more just an acknowledgement that what country has older money than England, whereas the Bolins were relatively new money. And so Anne and Mary would have been like among the first of their kind of family to have this noble, courtly life. This access, yeah. Anne was fashionable. She could sing.

dance. She spoke perfect French. She was curious about matters of the mind, like politics and religion, and could hold her own in any conversation, like, and had been educated to do so, right? When you're, like, educated as a courtly woman, so much of it comes down to, like, being an interesting conversationalist and a good flirt, because that's a lot of what you're going to be doing. That and berthin, yeah. If you're lucky, you make it to term. And Anne was confident and flirtatious, the ideal combination of a French coquette and an English rose, there's, was the tiny trouble of her already being betrothed to a man she loved, Henry Percy. That was easy enough for Henry VIII to break up, and he did.

There was also the trouble of Anne being Queen Catherine's maid of honor, sort of like a junior attendant, but Henry had already proven himself eminently willing to shit where he ate. Remember the Bessie Blount affair and his illegitimate son. Yeah. In 1527, after a year of Henry pursuing Anne Boleyn, the young woman publicly gifted the king with a model ship, a brilliant diamond hanging from the bow. This is now seen as the earnest beginning of their courtship, although we know from 17 love letters which survive in the Vatican Library

that the two of them did not have sex, which probably kept Hank all the more keen. Fair. Henry knew that he wanted to marry Ambulin, but again we're talking about these minor problems, these small matters. Already being married. He's got this 18-year-old. long marriage to Catherine of Aragon, the popular and beloved Queen of England.

And don't forget, England is a Catholic country. And Henry and Catherine are a Catholic couple. That means no divorce without specific permission from the church. And even then, you're not allowed to marry again afterwards. Oh, okay. Yeah. What Henry needed was not a divorce, but an annulment. The annulment is different because it doesn't end the marriage.

It says that the marriage was invalid to begin with. So the marriage doesn't count. Erases it. Yes. Wipes the white's the white. board claim turns over that etch-a-sketch, you know what I mean? Yeah, exactly, yes, yes. That's why it was like 15-01, 15-07, the extra-skech.

Yeah, exactly. Shaken, yeah. And then they said, uh-oh, Spaghetti-O's as they did. It was great time. An annulment, however, required the personal blessing of the Pope. And of course, Josie, as a scholar of the papacy, you know that the Pope at this time was... Paul. I think I heard Clement the 7th.

Yes. If I heard correctly. Or one. You're right. Yeah. Clement the 7th is who we're talking about here. In the summer of 1527, Henry the 8th put together a committee of advisors to tackle what they cryptically called the King's Great Matter, building a case to the Vatican that Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon should be annulled. Can I ask it?

You may be asking. Sure. You may be asking. Go ahead. Well, it's kind of a roll back the tape a little bit. Sure. So what happens if Henry the 8th does not produce an age? air. Who takes over the throne? There's a lack of clarity and that same lack of clarity is what led to

the War of the Roses to begin with. So we're really hoping to avoid that. We're really hoping to avoid ambiguity around the line of succession. We got to make this clear. We got to pump out a male ear. Okay. Okay. Now you may be asking, and I've written a different question than the one you just asked. How do you annul a marriage that's lasted nearly 20 years and born multiple children? Yeah, that is a good question. There's sort of the context with annulments that they're about marriages that were either not consummated sexually or marriages that shouldn't have gone forward to begin with because someone like did not disclose some important piece of info. Someone was already married or something like this, right? That's where an annulment comes in.

Or it was one crazy Vegas night. A crazy Vegas. Vegas annulment industry. Yeah. Well, we didn't have, whoopsie-d-Z, whipsing, oh-oh, spaghettios. We didn't have that. that approach back then. It was very, very, they tended to think of marriage as a for life gimmick. We love a gimmick here. We love a gimmick. We love a gimmick. We love a gimmick. Dude, what is the church of England, but not the biggest gimmick yet attempted by a monarch at this point? Amen. Amen.

How do we know this marriage is always in our search for clarity. We turn to the good book. Leviticus 2021 says, if a man shall pake his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing. He has uncovered his brother's nakedness, they shall be childless. That doesn't seem to warrant. No, it works for me. As a Bible guy, I'm like, oh, if I was the Pope, that seems pretty clear. He did marry his brother's wife. That's not right, according to Leviticus.

But doesn't that seem like, well, it was in the Bible. He should have known. Like, now you're being punished by, thanks, next. No one knows everything that's in the Bible, not even the Pope. Okay. So to be crystal clear. remember that before she was married to Henry, Catherine was the widow of his elder brother, Arthur. Even though the marriage between Catherine and Arthur wasn't consummated,

Henry argued to the Vatican that it made his marriage to Catherine invalid and incestuous, and that is why God would not allow them a son. Oh, G-O-D, you know. G-O-D's, baby, G-Ods. With the royal marriage on the rocks, Henry asked, speaking to G-Oads, Henry asked Catherine to live apart, but she wasn't willing to give up that easily. no divorce meant no divorce to Kath the Catholic and she still loved Henry and wanted to make this marriage work.

Besides, her role as queen hung in the balance and potentially so did her daughter Mary's own position. Ooh, yeah. No, she does, yeah, she's got a walkout, not just for herself, but for her daughter, too. So quoting pop star Cheryl Cole as the tutor scholars so often do, Catherine got ready to fight for this love and began compiling a case of her own to the Vatican. She also secured a key ally, her nefarer.

you, Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, who is currently in the middle of conquering Europe, making him a powerful ally for negotiations with the book. That is an ace in your pocket, Catherine. I don't know if those dresses, those Tudor dresses had pockets, but... Layers and gowns and apparently underneath you were head-to-to-linen underwear, the point of which was partially to, like, draw the dirt out of your body. Oh, God. So when you changed, it was always pretty nasty.

I mean, as much as 2026 sucks, like, I am glad that that's not my underwear situation. Silver linings, right? Clean silver linings. Unmuddied, untarnished silver linings. Yeah. Pope Clement heard both cases and then spent about two years hemming and hawing under pressure. Oh, geez. During which time, Anne Boleyn moved into her own apartment on the grounds of the royal palace, a scandal.

Yeah. Her and Catherine kind of like crossing paths in court, apparently, which is incredibly awkward. Oh. Finally, Henry got fed up with the delays on June 21st. 1529, Henry convened a public court in Blackfriars London so that senior church clerics from England and Rome would hear his case. Not one to back down, the queen said she would give her evidence in person in public as well. Ooh, what a badass. I like that.

At the court, Catherine gave an impassioned and moving plea directly to her husband, the king, to be allowed to continue to serve him and to not be punished for an unconsumated marriage that ended in a death. Yeah. And we actually have some record of what Catherine said here. Would you have any interest in reading a tiny bit of it out loud? Sure, sure. Part of me was like, oh, you're going to play.

It's going to be more Cheryl Cole lyrics. No, I got that. Yeah. I was like, are we going to get a Janelle Monet music video right now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alas, sir, where have I offended you? Or what occasion have you of displeasure that you intend to. to put me from you. I take God and all the world to witness that I have been to you a true,

humble, and obedient wife, ever conformable to your will and pleasure. I have been pleased and contented with all things wearing you had delight and dalliance. I never grudged a word or countenance or showed a spark of discontent. I loved all those whom ye loved only for your sake, whether I had cause or no, and whether they were my friends or enemies. This 20 years and more, I have been your true wife. And by me, ye had had diverse children, though it hath pleased God to call them out of this world, which hath been no fault in me. And when ye had me at the first, I take God to be my judge. I was a true maid, without touch of man, and whether it be true, or no, I put it in your conscience. If there be any just cause by the law that you can

allege against me, either of dishonesty or of any other impediment, to put me from you, I'm well content to depart, to my shame and dishonor. If there be none, I must lowly beseech you. Let me remain in my former estate and receive justice at your princely hands. you get a really good idea of not only Catherine's desperation here, because she's saying this directly to her husband, don't forget. Yeah, in public too. In front of everyone. And she's the queen of the nation. And she's taking this like incredibly humble, I lowly beseech you, right?

This is a very humble position she's taking. But also like, as far as a strategy to win public sympathy, I think it's kind of bulletproof. Yeah. My heart goes out to her here. And that seems to be the reaction that a lot of. lot of people have who listened to her and were like, hey, she's right. She hasn't done anything to you for you to be treating her this way. She's been a very faithful and steadfast wife, an excellent queen whom we all adore. And here she is in public, like, pouring her heart out to you. And that is,

like, she received a lot of support from the public, like even leaving the courtroom for this kind of speech. She has done no wrong. Yeah. I have done no wrong. Yeah. And so with that sort of like big, moving, impassioned speech, the Pope denied Henry. request for an annulment and Henry was humiliated. Whatever. In 1530, Henry sent Catherine away to Windsor Castle with their 12-year-old daughter, Mary. Later, Catherine and Mary got cleared out of Windsor and separated to different estates. Oh.

Catherine never saw Mary again. No. Yeah. So they kind of get sent off to the middle of nowhere to kind of go into a series of smaller and shittier, you know, exiles. Yeah. Meanwhile, the king, still legally married, banged Anne for the first time, which seems lascivious, but I do want to make note of the many times Henry has sex outside his marriage for rhetorical reasons later on. Okay, okay. And has already had sex outside of his marriage. Oh, he has a kid. Yeah. The Pope still wasn't offering an annulment, but Hank was overbegging those pointy hats of the Vatican for mercy. He had a new strap, harness the growing religious rift between Catholicism and a new form of Christianity.

called? Protestantism. You got it? Which believed that services should be self-governed rather than led by Rome, in the native languages of the participants rather than Latin, etc. Yeah, take some of the shiny gold off of stuff. Yeah, yeah. We don't need to give that pedophile another ring. We can do the services in English. What's the little phrase, as the coin drops in the coffer, a soul from from Hell Springs or something like that? Oh, man. Is that something they taught you at your Episcopalian school? I guess. So, yeah. But it was an indictment of the Catholic church and how you could kind of buy your way out of sinning and tithing was such a good heart.

And if you have the right amount of power and pass the trash and you know all that good stuff. Yeah. You know who is a big supporter of Protestantism? Amblin. Oh, well. So therein thought Henry lay the solution. People are already pissed off at the Pope. See also Bittersweet Infamy number 62, fight the real enemy.

Uh-huh. Yeah. What if instead of the Pope being the guy who decided who could get a divorce or an annulment, I were the guy who made that call. Let's just streamline this. There's so much bureaucracy. Let's cut out the red tape middlemen. You know what I mean? Let's get rid of some of these desk jockeys and get these fucking annulments flying through, right?

Stamp, stamp, stamp, stamp. Government. Let's get done. Yeah. This was the birth of the Church of England, which eventually came to practice Anglicanism, a hybridization of Catholicism and Protestantism. That's very much oversimplifying it. Yeah.

The British monarch was its leader and still is to this day. Shouts told two buck chuck over in Buckingham Palace. It's gripping to think, what is awe? Oh, Prince Charles, King Charles. No, no, it's more than two bucks check actually. That's funny. I keep forgetting that I'm making jokes. I remember what it was two bucks.

Oh, is it not two bucks? Nine buck chuck now? Yeah, I got you. It's a little more expensive, yeah. Yeah. I know, I realized I said that. It did sound like I hold a soft spot for old Kingy Charles, but Charlie and I don't go back. No judgment here.

We don't King's shame. We don't King's Shame. We don't King's Shame and Bittersweet A. We're bringing Sixy back. Oh, dude. It didn't even occur to me. Of course, six wives for season six. That's the connection.

Oh, my gosh. We're celebrating season six with one wife for each season. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. Oh, wow. And it really is gripping to think how much of the history of Christianity was dictated by one guy wanting to trade his wife in for a newer model. Betty Broderick punching the air in disgust here. It's a true shame. It is pretty wild.

Though, maybe I'll interject here as well, that it does seem like, in terms of producing an air, he does seem, well, they both seem very trapped, right? if Catherine can't do this, which she didn't, then what happens? You know, I guess the less lustrous story is that it's like, well, we tried, but somebody else has got to do it and then they pass it on and hopefully everything's okay. But obviously that didn't happen. You're telling me a story about six women. Just fucking adopt. Oh my God. Well, yeah. That makes sense too. Steal a child. These people are so good at that kind of shit. Just take a child. Go and find a cute one on the street covered in dirt dressed in rags and just kidnap them and when their parents come around crying about it have them killed fuck am i the only person talking sense in this court that's option

a then option b is like start a new religion it's like what's easier huh like what yeah i would argue mine i would argue mine yes yes very much easier just starting an entire new religion just kill some poor people the the english royalties great at that yeah with a plan for the annulment in place. Henry was basically single. So he and Anne married in a small... The annulment's coming. Chill out.

In a small secret wedding at the dawn of January 25th, 1533, lots and lots of January weddings and such in this story. So cold. Allegedly because Anne was already pregnant. Already pregnant. By April, church congregants

were being instructed to pray for Queen Anne, effectively the soft launch of their relationship to the broader English public who were largely disgusted by what they perceived as their king's bigamy and the betrayal of their beloved Queen Catherine for some upstart pretender. Yeah, it does help that Catherine was such a good queen. Yeah, and a good public

speaker and she had a cool Spanish accent like Hilaria and all that good stuff, right? Yeah. Paella on the weekend. Paella. Tapas. Yeah, no, exactly. Siesta. Midday siesta's in the court. in May 1533, King Henry had the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, annull his first marriage.

So that popular rhyme, divorce beheaded, died, divorce beheaded, survived. King Henry actually only got annulments. Not divorces. I think it's just a less commonly used term than divorce. But all of King Henry's so-called divorces were actually annulments. Because again, if you get a divorce in, I mean, well, it's the fucking Church of England, we can make it mean whatever we want to mean. But in the Catholic Church, after a divorce. you couldn't actually remarry.

And every Friday's pajama day, you know? Why not? Yes. If we're making rules, let's make a rule. That's true. That's true. You're right. You're right.

You're right. Put on the pajama. Make some paella. Let's go. The annulment allowed for Anne to be publicly installed as the new queen via a big coronation at Westminster Abbey in front of a crowd of subjects who hated the new queen. means guts calling her the king's goggleide whore. Ooh, whoa, gogalide.

Hore is like, ouch, but whatever, we expected that. But goggleide. You can't read the comments, Josie. No, no, don't go down that. It's not worth it. It's a downhill slope. You're not going to enjoy it. Get them off.

Don't read the reviews. Put those DMs on friends only. But goggleide. Gogolide whore. That's rough. I think I heard Portia Williams say that on an episode of Real Housewives of Atlanta, dude. You know what I mean?

Goggle-eyed whore. I mean, it's funny because, like, horror is definitely the more horrible slur there, but I'm like, you know. Gogolide would last longer with me. It really would. Goghle-eyed would sit, would bother me when I was in bed at night. What do they mean?

Is it my bags? What's going on? Do I need new glasses? Yeah. Oh, God. As Anne Boleyn entered confinement for the last month of her pregnancy, the same way that Catherine of Aragon had, because, again, we don't know

what makes infections happen, but we don't want it to come to our queen. Right. She hinted to the king that she expected him to be faithful. But we know old Hank the love tank better than that. And this suggestion resulted in a huge argument between the parents to be. Oh, no. They didn't speak to each other for several days. In September 1533, Anne gave birth to a healthy baby girl.

Girl. Anne loved her daughter, Princess Elizabeth, but there had never been a hereditary female monarch. The push for a male heir continued. Yep. Okay. See, and here's, wait, here's the other, like, what about option C, y'all? Create a new religion, steal a baby, and hide the backstory, or reformat the government so that women can be heirs. No, no.

No. No, no. Let's create a new religion. That one, that one, that one. We're going to need to make many strategic alliances against the Pope instead. Oh, God. In January of 1536, after several years of missing her daughter and being shuffled away to, you know, smaller and worse residences further and further away from court, Henry's first wife, Catherine of Aragon, fell into poor health. On her deathbed, she wrote a letter to her former husband forgiving him and asking his forgiveness.

He left her on red and she died six days later at 50 years old, pretty old for Tudor days. Their marriage having lasted 24 years. And if you're worried about that pacing as it relates to our episode, don't be. He's about to start flying through wives. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm like, wait. If she, she's only like five years older than him. So we're getting into matters of months and kind of single years after this. Yeah. Okay. to wit around the same time queen anne was pregnant again but henry had already gone off her she'd lost her youth she had to be wearing that albatross of being in her kind of mid to late 20s by now which you know that's no way for a woman to live she'd lost her perceived youth and also her novelty

i think yeah and the talks about politics and religion that he used to enjoy he now found intrusive and tiresome men think they want a woman with opinions who will challenge them but they don't again I roll men. Men. Yeah. Instead, Henry found himself more and more captivated with another young lady in waiting named Jane Seymour. Oh, yeah.

Not Dr. Quinn Medicine woman. Different Jane Seymour. Different, yes. That's okay. Thank you. There's a timely reference that everyone will understand. That's so good. I should go back and watch that.

Hey, she's riding her wagon around fucking hand and out, potions and tonics. Jane Seymour was Anne's second cousin. and like her cousin Anne she had also been a lady in waiting for Catherine of Aragon Henry flirted with Jane brazenly and began growing colder and more distant from Anne the divide grew when Anne miscarried the child Oh

Henry gave her the silent treatment and drew yet closer to Jane Sorry was this miscarriage do we know the gender of this I mean gender is a construct so whatever I don't know, but apparently, it was Henry's non-binary regnant child. We know that. No, it was one of those situations where I don't know if we know this exactly, but apparently the one thing that Henry said to Anne in the wake of all this was like, it seems God

doesn't want me to have a son or something of this nature. So he's certainly at this time. Yeah, man, you get it. Take a hint. Yeah. But it seems like certainly at least at this time, Henry believed there was the possibility. that this child could be a male. Yeah.

So he draws yet closer to Jane. Jane is everything that Anne wasn't meek, compliant, respectful, and Catholic. We're back to the Catholic. We are going to go, again, keep turn around and turn around. It's like a ping pong match, this whole story. Jane Seymour was also, as it happened, placed in her role by enemies of Anne Boleyn, conservatives who are loyal to the Pope and coached Jane Seymour on how to attract Henry's attention, which worked.

He likes this perfume. He likes that you're young, he likes that you're a lady in waiting, he likes that you might give him a male heir, and he likes that you're not his wife. Yeah, so you got all those things going. Yeah, get in there. Oh, God. With Jane in the picture and no male air on the horizon,

Henry and Anne's marriage was precarious. The fuse for its ultimate explosion was lit on April, 19, 1536, when Anne had a flirtatious exchange with a courtier Henry Norris. Now, flirting in court was very much the role of a lady, and especially it was the purview of a queen, even when she was entertaining men who were like socially her lessors, which everyone in the court would have been, because the only person hired them the queen in the court is the king. Yeah. But there was sort of the expectation that Anne would be doing it as a courtesy and that it would

largely be like initiated by the male. So there's a real protocol to this that the men kind of had to initiate the pursuit lest and seem too eager or too sincere in her flirtations. Yeah. And that's kind of what ends up happening here, whether it's sort of a convenient way to scapegoat Anne or whether legitimate offense is taken. That's kind of how this plays out. The story goes that Henry Norris was courting Anne's cousin, Mad Shelton, but he was dragging his feet on the engagement, prompting and to suggest that he might be smitten with her instead. The quote that's attributed to her is, you look for dead men's shoes. For if aught came to the king but good, you would look to have me.

So basically, if something bad happened to the king, you would want to have me instead. Okay. You'd step up. You'd be the dad that stepped up, right? Yeah. For baby Elizabeth. Hearing the queen purred to him this sort of bizarre flirt threat that invokes the death of the king.

Yeah. A shocked Norris quickly de-escalated, saying, if I should have any such thought, I would my head were off. So, like, cut off my head if I would ever think such a thing. Yeah. Seeing Norris's reaction, Anne freaked out and tried to threaten him into silence, no-go. By the next day, everyone in court had heard some version of the conversation repeated back to them. The whole thing snowballed and was amplified by Anne's many in-court enemies until the May-day jousting tournament, Anne's final public appearances queen. Shortly after the tournament, Henry Norris was rigorously questioned by the king on horseback.

Like, he took them both aside on their horses and was like, let me grill you about this right now as we go back to the fucking palace from the joust. Whoa. Henry Norris protested his innocence as well as Anne's, which he always did. He always said there was nothing between me and Anne ever. Yeah, yeah. And Anne said the same. Yeah. But the next day, Anne Boleyn was arrested for high treason and brought to the Tower of London.

Oh, okay. She was accused of plotting to kill the king and cheating on him not only with Henry Norris, but with four other men, including her own brother, George Ballin. Yeah, I don't believe there's any actual evidence of any of these charges, let alone that she was doinking her brother. But it was a pretext to write the inconvenient and out of the picture in the most dramatic of ways, and in her alleged co-conspirators were sentenced to death by beheading. Woo!

Secluded in the Tower of London, her familiar, lady's maids dismissed and replaced with spies who reported back to her enemies. Yeah. And understandably lost herself to the stress of the situation. She began to crack dark jokes, dubbing herself Queen Anne the Headless. Because she kind of cooked on that one for a woman on the gallows humor, right? They call it gallows humor. That's kind of funny.

And it's incredibly sad way. Kind of badass. Kind of got them. And she also remarked all this for so little neck. Like, dude, my neck isn't even long enough. to be cut off like this. Oh. On May 17th, the marriage between Henry and Anne was annulled.

And on May 19th, 1536, three years and four months after marrying Henry, and not three weeks after her ill-received joke to Henry Norris, Ambelin was beheaded. So they were annulled, though. They didn't, he didn't need to behead her. He didn't need to kill her. It's the principal, Josie. And she was accused of treason. Remember, because she was accused of plotting to kill the king.

She said to him, if something bad happened to the king, you would want to, you know. And that was it. That's kind of the, that was the, much like with Al Capone, it was the taxes. With Ambulin, it was apparently this one remark that sort of lit the fuse on a powder cake that had been kind of building up for a while. Don't try and justify it. Come on. Are you accusing me of being like a Henry of the Eighth sympathizer? No. Because I am. You're right. You got me.

You got me right. Let's all, free love. Let's marry who we want, man. Why can't we get divorced more easily? Huh? Yeah, okay. You've never broken up with someone and been like, man, I wish I could like legally behead that person and have it go unchallenged.

That has not been my experience now. Well, the night is young. 2026, man. All kinds of crazy shit's going to happen in 2026, as we know. New Year. Mm-hmm. And Belin's death was the first execution of a queen in English history. Whoa.

Modern scholars broadly accept that Anne was innocent of the accusations against her. And I should say that broadly, there has definitely been a trend in modern scholarship toward being much more sympathetic toward an understanding of these women and their various conditions rather than just sort of like repeating Henry V.8's party line that this one was a prude and this one was a slut and this one, you know, that sort of thing. I think that we're kind of looking a lot more critically at the lives that these women had and the ways in which they were and critically were not empowered. And it seems like Ambulin in a lot.

You can kind of have that thing of like thinking of her as this sort of like, you know, coquettish other woman who seduces the king and steals him out from under the beloved Queen Catherine of Aragon who's been his wife for 24 years. Or you can look at someone who like was already with someone else when the king of England started fucking pursuing her. And he broke that up. And he was willing to defy the Pope and upend the religious order for the next several hundred. years, mind you, in order to get a taste, what are your options?

Fuck, that's hard. Leave town, change your name? Yeah. What do you do? That's tough. That is tough, yeah. And certainly, again, when we see her execution here, there's no evidence that she had sex with any of these men, all of whom were killed, by the way.

Oh, whoa. Including her brother? Including her brother. Oh, wow. Ambulin's ghost is said to haunt the church where she is buried, and specifically it's said that She walks around the tower carrying her head under her arm, as headless ghosts are wont to do. Queen Anne the Headless. Yeah.

Eleven days after the execution, Henry married 27-year-old Jane Seymour. Hooray! A new queen. The throne was getting lukewarm. In contrast to the divisive Anne Boleyn, Jane was looked upon fondly by most of the court. If Anne Boleyn was a jalapeno pepper, Jane Seymour was a tall, soothing glass of milk. she was to put it in tutor terms, right? Yes. They loved their halapeno poppers

from like TGI Fridays. Yeah. That's where the phrase TGI Friday comes from is thank God it's Friday so we can wear pajamas and jalapeno poppers at Hampton Court. Yeah. Wash them down with tall glasses of milk. Tall glass of milk like Jane Seymour

who was obedient and passive, not a savvy political intellect like Catherine or Anne, not one to sort of butt in and be like, here's what I think the Holy Roman Empire should do. But she was domestically skilled. she was a good Catholic girl so there were hopes among some that she would nudge the king back to the winning side and she was a unifier who helped improve the king's relationships with his children

especially Mary predictably a bit embittered after that whole thing where Henry sent her into exile and killed her mother of a broken heart right yeah yeah separate exiles even ripped her away from the mother's bosom terrible so unnecessary so unnecessary but like so is everything that Henry does kind of in this story yeah a little bit like Henry's other wives quickly became pregnant and on October 12th, 1537, after two days and three nights of labor,

Jane gave birth to a girl. Boy! Oh, boy. We got boy. Prince Edward. Okay. The baby boy was healthy, but tragically, the same could not be said for his mother, who developed an infection during the birth.

On October 24th, 12 days after giving Henry the 8th the male air he had craved for so long, Jane Seymour died. The widowed Henry grieved his wife of 18 months, and after his own death, it was Jane whom he was buried alongside. Okay. The one that he didn't ruin her life. I mean, he kind of did, but sort of indirectly, but in the way that giving birth, like, if you're not safe to give healthy birth in the fucking king's court, where are you,

right? Like, this could have happened to anybody, any woman anywhere. Yeah. But I do think that there's something to the idea of the fact that she simply has to hadn't had time to piss him off. Right. Okay. That makes sense. They had already had some minor disagreements about the way that Henry was sort of like looting the Catholic monasteries because he needed more money and Jane was Catholic.

She's like, dude, I think that's bad. And he was like, you know what I think is bad? Women with opinions. And she was like, noted. You know what I mean? So there could have been that tension. But because Jane Seymour died so young and in such this valiant way, she gets to kind of be the noble wife who he didn't have the time to sour on because at a baseline she was kind of a pretty bland agreeable chick both in terms of her general disposition but i also think and i've heard it argued as a little bit of a strategy right like we've seen what happens to outspoken women in this court not only was there not enough time for her to piss him off but she bore him the male air so yeah she doesn't even have that mark against her

because that was the thing that he wanted and that's what she gave him and then she immediately punched out damn for three agonizing years henry went without a wife the longer time since he got married to Catherine of Aragon. He was like a serial monogamist, serial killer, too, depending on your definition. He started to feel those familiar pangs and yearnings, naturally. His advisors were able to persuade him that rather than simply porking one of his dead wives' ladies' maids, he should return to the tried and true royal approach of a strategic marriage with a key ally. Yeah. This couldn't go wrong. In this case, the ally was the Duchy of Cleves. Cleves, situated in what is now Western Germany, had also resisted the forces of Catholicism in the Holy Roman Empire.

Oh. So, you know, matchy, matchy. And the woman tapped to take on the unenviable position of Henry's latest prospect was the original AOC Anne of Cleves, a Dusseldorf-born Duke's daughter. OJ.A.O.C. The OG.A.O.C. Before he confirmed the arrangement, Henry wanted to lay eyes on Anne, who confirmed that she was a suitably attractive. of prospect. Nowadays, he'd just slide into her DMs and say send nudes, but in the tutor era, that wasn't an option for a variety of reasons.

The Wi-Fi wasn't as good then. So he did the 1500s equivalent. He sent his official portrait artist Hans Holbein the Younger to Cleves to paint a portrait of the bride to be. Whoa, okay. Upon seeing Holbein's beautiful portrait of Anne, Henry deemed her fit to be his bride. Okay. But, unfortunately,

and possibly unfairly, Anne of Cleaves would earn a dubious reputation as history's earliest and highest profile catfish. Oh, oopsies. When Anne arrived in England and the two met face to face, Henry let anybody who would listen know. Quote, she is nothing so fair as hath been reported. Or, in modern terms, U-G-L-Y, she ain't got no alibi, she ugly. Oh, no. Oh. What a terrible thing to have strangers say about you 600 years later.

You know, it's the worst. You know, what a terrible guy. The worst. He's the worst. He's the worst. He's the worst. It also didn't help that the circumstances under which Henry and Ann finally met in person were incredibly awkward. Oh, shoot.

Yeah. Henry decided he was going to surprise poor Anne at one of her stops on the way to Hampton Court. She'd kind of just come over from England. And mind you, she's in her early 20s. She does not fucking speak English. She is so... She hasn't really been told much about royal court life, English etiquette, anything of this sort.

So she's a little bit, I would say, like, from the outside. I'm not from the Duchy of Cleaves. You know, despite what people have said about me. Not from the Duchy of Cleves, but it seems like she wasn't maybe the best prepared that she could be through no fault of her own. Her people didn't kind of set her up for success. Yeah.

So while the queen to be and her retinue were resting in Rochester, Henry played one of his favorite whimsical masquerade pranks. He snuck into the palace in a cloak disguised as the noble robber, Robin Hood, who apparently is quite a long tenured noble robber. He's been around for a while. Yeah, ironic that the king of England would figure himself to be... I steal from the rich and give to the poor. Yeah, that's what I do. Upon encountering him, Anne's reaction moved from disinterested to confused to scared shitless. She did not recognize her soon-to-be husband. And again, she did not yet speak English.

So she took the king to be a vagrant, a middle-aged pervert who had eluded security to slobber over the back of her hand and ask for feetpicks or something sorted of that nature. Yeah, yeah. Bangs and pots and pans. Oh my gosh, thank you. Yes. Feepeg! Peepeg! Pong! Pong! Thank you. It's a pencil and a book, but we'll take it. This initial interaction soured things between the royal lovers immediately, and shortly afterwards, Henry began railing against Anne's looks and blaming Holbein for his overly generous portraiture.

And here I should note that the most unbiased contemporary sources describe Anne as a reasonably attractive woman. I have no doubt. I think she was probably not... which is a shame because again, that's a few hundred years of she's the ugly one, right? That's a fucking shame. Yeah. Henry and Anne's meeting had been awkward, but it would be even more awkward to call the marriage off and insulting to England's allies and Cleaves. So despite his frequent and loud attempts to wriggle out of his fate, Henry married Anne of Cleves on January 6th, 1540.

Another January wedding. Another Jan wedding, yeah. The couple's first night together was a debacle. Oh, shit. The marriage went unconsumated with Henry remarking to Thomas Cromwell, I liked her not before, but now I like her much worse. Oh, uh-oh. Rettro. Uh-oh. Spaghetti-oh.

Yeah, oh, SpaghettiOs. It's possible this smear campaign about Anne's supposed unsuitability as a match was an effort to masquerade Henry's own impotence. The king had reached middle age, and his legs had been crushed by a horse in an unfortunate jousting accident. Oh, damn. Stay safe. Stay safe when you're jousting.

Wear shing guards. Wear your seatbelt. Yeah. This meant not only that he would spend the rest of his life plagued by ulcerative sores on his legs that were constantly, painfully weeping fluid. Yum. Oh, God. But also that it was difficult for him to exercise regularly. And that, combined with the richness of his diet, meant that Henry had gained a scout and he had gained a substantial amount of weight, which impacted his ability to perform consistently in the bedroom.

Oh. But the king had to preserve his image of virility, the theory says, so Anne had to take the hit on her reputation instead. Henry had his royal doctor spread rumors around the castle, alluding to Anne being the source of the sexual problems between the king and the queen. Oh, God. Man. Man. Within months of his marriage to Anne of Cleaves, Henry's eyes had already moved on to his next conquest. A teenage lady in waiting named Catherine Howard.

Go back to... He tried to marry out of type and it didn't work, right? Yeah. Go back to the love. Try and true. Stick with what you know. It really is remarkable because you started with the story with like, yes, he marries his brother's wife, his dead brother's wife. But it's for love.

But he also like really loves her. Well, he really loves all of them. Yeah. Oh. I think Henry the 8th might be a bit fair weather. I think he's, he loves you when you're easy to love. He loves you when times are good. He loves the beginnings of things, you know.

I see. That's kind of it. Anne saw the relationship with Catherine Howard unfolding, but she was fine with it. She wanted out. If he didn't want to fuck her, she definitely didn't want to fuck him. Yeah. She's like, fair. Bear, bear.

I'm out. I see what's happening here. Yeah. Peace. In June 1540, Anne was sent away from court to the palace of Richmond with the excuse the weather's nicer there. We love talking about the weather. We love the weather.

The weather affects us all. Send me letters about the weather. You go to the Palace of Richmond. You write me, tell me if you see a cloud, okay? Yeah. Good, great. Let's shake on it. And bye.

That kind is what happens. Henry approaches Anne with a deal. Okay. You know this was a mistake. I know this was a mistake. Give me your consent to annul this marriage. I'll let you walk off with a fuck ton of settlement money and properties that I probably stole from the Catholic Church. England and Cleves can avoid an international incident.

You get to keep your head. Not bad. Anne accepted. Yeah. After six months, Henry's fourth marriage was annulled. Six months. Yeah, they're chopping. Now we're getting into those Vegas inelments that you were talking.

Yeah, yeah. Ironically, it took Anne agreeing to the annulment for Henry to finally warm up to her. In gratitude, he gave her, well, she's no longer, now that I no longer need to, like, fuck or marry you, you seem like a pretty nice shit. You know what I mean? It's a real kill-fuck-marry kind of situation. There's no in-between here. And he's like, what about all three?

What about all three? Yeah. Many times over. Let's out of fourth. Divorce. I want to change the game. Yeah, exactly. Let's out of fourth.

In gratitude, Henry gave Anne of Cleves a bunch of cash, two palaces, an entourage of servants, and a special title, the king's sister. Basically, like, I love you, but not like that. Which gave her status above everyone at court, but the king and queen. Oh. Not that she even had to kind of go to court, because she could kind of dip in and out.

She had these other palaces of her own. Yeah. She was there on invitation. She was there for special guest star Anne of Cleaves, right? Yeah. Anne of Cleaves became one of the wealthiest women in England. She never remarried. Instead, enjoying a life of luxury and status.

She died in 1557 at the age of 41 or 42, outliving Henry the 8th and all five of his other wives. Despite going down in infamy as the wife, who, in contrast to Hans Holbein's depiction of her, was no oil painting. Anne of Cleves was the only wife to cash out of the Henry VIII lottery and escape with a relatively happy ending. So who's the cool? Yeah, not Anna Cleaves. Anna Cleaves kind of did that as well as she.

She was like, okay, came in, put in a six-month stit. Didn't have to fuck him, although there were some awkward times that we certainly came close. And I got some houses and some man servants to swan around. I'm not getting married. I'm playing badminton. That's a nice way to be. that sounds great and I saw a cloud and yes my lord I did see a cloud a silvery one indeed I love that for her there you can't really say that a lot in

this story oh no oh oh and dude and the next wife arguably gets it the worst out of anyone so like don't don't cling too hard to that one yeah no two weeks after dumping anne the ink on the annulment not even dry Henry married Catherine Howard. Okay, another Catherine. Another Catherine. Well, back to the Catharines. So, although most estimates put her at about 18 upon her marriage to Henry the 8th,

Catherine Howard was potentially as young as 15 to Henry's 49. I roll men. We're going into that section of the story that I warned you about earlier on. Yeah. Catherine was the daughter of a noble family. Her mother Joyce died when Catherine was around 10, whereafter young Catherine was sent to live with her step-grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, at the boarding school she ran for young ladies in the court.

She's a very like, I guess like a very like novelistic, like almost even Jane Austenie kind of set up to me. Your mom dies so you have to live with your step-grandmother, the dowager duchess at her boarding school for young women on the come-up. That's kind of an interesting scenario to be subjected to, my goodness. British much? British much. Casuo Ishiguro fingerprints all over this situation, right? Exactly. During her time at this school, it was said that Catherine had a series of romantic encounters with her music teacher, Henry Mannix.

And this description has shifted over time. Catherine was as young as 12 and Manix potentially as old as 36. So modern scholars tend not to use words like romance and substitute them with words like grooming or child abuse when describing the relationship. Okay, yeah. Here I should note that there's a lot of discrepancies in the reports of the ages of people not only like Catherine, but like Manix and so on, and the opinion of the historian or biographer about whether this constitutes grooming tends to center around whether they think Manix is closer to 36 or 19.

And what Catherine's relative age is during all of this. Regardless, it should be noted that later on, Catherine will say that the relationship between the two of them was coercive. At the age of 14, Catherine entered a relationship with her cousin, Francis Durham, the two allegedly called each other husband and wife, and planned to get married until the Dowager Duchess intervened. Okay. Upon leaving the boarding school, Catherine was placed as a lady in waiting for Anne of Cleaves, which is how she met Henry. Okay. Her Dowager step-grandmother was like, I got bigger plans for you. Listen, they call me the step-grandmother because I'm going to help you climb those steps, right? Up into Hampton Court.

Mm-hmm. Around Catherine, Henry himself seemed to become younger, acting smitten, losing weight, and piling on the PDA. If that infatuation seems familiar, it's worth noting that Catherine Howard was the first cousin of Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn, aka Queen Anne the Headless. Oh. It also should interestingly note that I think Jane Seymour was Catherine Howard's second cousin. So we're really keeping in the, in true royal style, we are keeping it in the family here.

Wow, yeah. Catherine's taste in men would quickly become her understanding. doing in the royal court. First of all, Catherine's ex, Francis Durham, showed up in court and began bragging of having her favor. After much haranguing from Durham, Catherine relented and appointed him as her secretary. Oh. She also started an affair with one of the courtiers, Thomas Culpepper. A dangerous game in more ways than one, because, again, he's one of these sort of abusive men. And I heard said, although less, less extensively than Manix and Culpepper, but I heard said that Francis Durham might also have been one of the...

these abusive men. So it's just no good options for our girl Catherine here. Yeah. Not only did Culpepper have a reputation as a womanizer, but he had also been accused of raping a parkkeeper's wife and murdering the villager who tried to stop him. For this trespass, he had been pardoned by the king. He's a member of court, right? Different rules. Yeah. But rape and murder pale in comparison to the crime of flirting with the queen, as we learned from Cousin Ambellin. And the liaison between Catherine and Thomas had tongues wagging all throughout Hampton Court. On November 2nd, 1541, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer gave a letter to the king in the chapel at Hampton Court.

The letter, written by Cranmer himself, based on information from the Dowager Duchess's former servants, outlined the young queen's lascivious past. And again, this is a past of abuse, but it was very much framed as like a lascivious past of unmaidenly behavior. She was aired out for her previous sexual encounters, not only with Francis Durham, but with music teacher Henry Mannix. Henry the 8th was initially skeptical, but the archbishop was able to extract that she had, in fact, Lane with Durham and Manix, although she protested that Mannix had coerced her into sex. The investigation further turned up a pleading letter between Catherine and her courtier lover, Thomas Culpepper, quote,

I never longed so much for a thing as I do to see you and to speak with you, which I trust shall be shortly now. That which doth comfort me very much when I think about it, and when I think again that you shall depart from me again, it makes my heart die to thank you. think what fortune I have that I cannot always be in your company. Yours, as long as life endures, Catherine. Wow. Upon the discovery of the affair between Catherine and Culpepper, a devastated Henry VIII, who would never trivialize the sanctity of marriage by having sexual relations outside of its confines,

left Hampton Court to go hunting. Catherine Howard never saw her husband again. Instead, she was left alone at the palace to while her remaining hours away as she waited for the proverbial and literal acts to fall. In November 1541, Catherine Howard was arrested for treason and stripped of her title as queen. Having also been found guilty of treason, Durham and Culpepper were both executed. Durham was drawn and quartered. Will Culpepper was beheaded.

Their heads were placed on spikes on London Bridge for Catherine to view as she was taken to the Tower of London. Oh, damn. And because the world is a vampire, music teacher and child, didler Henry Manick's escape punishment. Oh, God. On February 12, 1542, Catherine was sentenced to die by beheading. She requested that the executioner's block

be brought to her cell on the eve of her demise so that she could practice laying her head upon it. Catherine's last words were repentant, claiming that her punishment was just and worthy and imploring God to save the king. Catherine's marriage to Henry VIII lasted 15 months. She was still a teenager when she died, her ghost is said to run through Hampton Court, loudly pleading to her king for her life to this day.

Damn. That sucks for her. That was just not going to, nothing was going to come out in that wash. Yeah, it really puts Anne of Cleave's story in like a very sharp contrast. Best possible outcome is that he thinks that you are uglier than your portrait. That's the best way that could have gone. Yeah, really, really it is. Henry was beside himself over this whole affair of needing to have his teen wife slaughtered for being a victim of sexual abuse.

It took him a full year to recover, by which point Henry was old, he was sick, he was tired. He only had enough left in the tank for, let's say, one more wife. Oh, my God. Someone's got to wash those stinky leg wounds after all. Ew. On that note, enter queen number six. Okay, here she is. Catherine Parr

A witty, pretty, two-time widow who loved music and dancing. 30-year-old Catherine Parr was experienced in court living, having been born to a courtier and a lady in waiting. And in fact, her name Catherine likely came from the name of her godmother, Henry's first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Oh my, okay. That wasn't the only family connection as Catherine was romantically involved with Thomas Seymour, the older brother of Henry's late third wife, Jane.

Yoink, said Henry. And in July of 1543, Henry and Catherine got married. Because when you use the Hampton Court loyalty card at the chapel, your sixth wedding is free. Oh, okay. Hey. Wow. Yeah. The flowers, all of it.

Orduves. They do a free giant sub sandwich for you, too, for everyone to graze on. You know, it's really a good deal if I think about it. You can't say no. Once you pass the fourth, it's like, well, I might as well. Hey. We're already headed there. We're already going in that direction.

Let's keep going. Now, Catherine Parr was a devout Protestant. if you're keeping track of the ping pong ball of what religion we're kind of in with today. I kind of forgotten, but yeah, thank you. And she earnestly believed that God had chosen her to marry the king in order to spread the word of this new religion. After being installed as queen in 1545, Catherine published a book called prayers or meditations, a series of devotional texts in the English language. This was the first original book to be published in English by a woman writing under her own name.

Oh, wow. the more you know. Yeah. Although it was illegal for women to preach the word of God, Henry seemed happy to turn a blind eye to his wife's activities because, you know, rules for the and not for me. And hey, happy wife, happy life. You know Henry will do anything to support the woman in his life. It's true. At least until his daughter Elizabeth began to fall under the sway of his new wife's spiritual views.

Oh, okay. So Elizabeth is Catherine of Aragon. So his first child. Mm-mm. Okay. Mary is Catherine of Aragon's child. Elizabeth is Ambulin's child. Ah, okay, okay.

And Edward is Jane Seymour's child. And those are the three surviving children. Yes. On New Year's Day, 1546, because it's very convenient that every major event in this story happens in January. Yeah. 13-year-old Elizabeth gave her father the king a gift. A handmade version of her stepmother, Catherine Parr's book, prayers or meditations, translated into Latin, French, and Italian.

Okay. Henry was livid. Not with his daughter, but at the wife who led her into heresy, says the guy who started his own branch of a church in order to facilitate a divorce. What? Word of the incident spread, and the court's Catholic conservatives began to plot against Queen No. 6, because these fucking schemers in the court, right? Why are they scheming against this new wife, fresh to the scene?

Protestant bitch. This is the Henry the 8th who is leading this spurious charge for Protestantism. Because the second that Henry the 8th gets the whiff that you're plotting against him, he'll have you beheaded. If you plot against his wife, he doesn't care because he's also plotting against his wife. That's true. But me? In my, no.

Not in my court, right? Well, maybe some of it too is that he seems to be very easily, alluding to the ping pong situation. He seems to change his mind pretty easily with religion. Path of least resistance in any given moment, right? This hot chick I like is a Protestant. Great, so am I. But in this case, no. In this case, she's a Protestant.

And he's like, I'm an old dog. I'm set in my ways. And my ways are ambiguous mix of Catholicism and Protestantism when it suits me. Right. Yeah. So Catherine Parr was smart enough to kind of get the way that the wind was blowing. And certainly we have ample evidence of what happens when the wives get too upity, right? She had her ladies burn their shared religious materials so as to avoid persecution, get rid of these fucking English language Bibles.

And as a last ditch effort to save herself, she hurled herself at the mercy of her husband, King Henry VIII, fawning over him, begging for his religious instruction. I'm just a woman, what do I know? And apologizing profusely. Her strategy worked. Okay. When the officers arrived at the court to serve their arrest warrant on capital, Catherine Parr and assuaged Henry, who must have dictated this warrant to begin with, tore up the document and dismissed the knights as errant knaves. And after that,

Catherine Parr kept her faith to herself. Ooh, she's Louise. But she wouldn't have to pray behind the bedroom curtains for long because as 1546 carried on, Henry's health took a downturn. He began to spend more time apart from his family, keeping company only with his most trusted advisors. In early 1547, Henry slipped into a coma, and on January 28, 1547, after January's baby, after nearly 38 years on the throne, Henry the 8th died at the age of 55. Within four months of the king's death, Catherine Parr married her original love, Thomas Seymour.

Well, I guess that kind of worked out for her in some ways. It didn't, it didn't. The two of them had a daughter, Mary, but as with Thomas's sister, Jane Seymour, complications emerged during the birth. And a week afterwards, Catherine Parr died at the age of 36. That's a didn't. That's a solid didn't. Yeah. Yeah.

Dying childbirth. It didn't work out. Henry VIII's final wife was married to the king for three years and six months. Wow. Which puts her in like the top three, I think here, honestly, longevity-wise. So, hey, not a terrible run for Catherine Parr. Didn't get arrested, you know? That's true.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She studied her history. Yeah. The English crown was passed on to Henry's much feted male heir, nine-year-old Edward the sixth, his son with Jane Seymour. Edward was dead by 15.

Oh, fuck. All of this. Yeah. How did he die? Sickness. Sweety. Yeah, yeah. Sweat through the sheets.

And after a brief succession crisis, sort of infamously a nine-day queen, Jane Grey, was installed and then deposed. Yeah. Edward's half-sister Mary, Henry's daughter with Catherine of Aragon, took the throne, becoming England's first hereditary queen regnant. Turns out all that boy's only stuff was bullshit all along. We could just change it. But after all of that, all that struggle, all that... Oh, as you said, gender is a construct. This is all made up. Yeah.

This is all made up. And the other half of it is about whether the Bible should be in Latin. I know, yeah, yeah. But like, easier to... I feel like less people would have had to die, less unhappy and tortured women. And option C, let's just make a queen, a queen. Or like, let's just respect each other's religion and get out of this weird gender shit that we're doing, et cetera, et cetera. But like, we're still trying to do that. And people really don't take to it, right?

People don't like when you tell them that, like, you know, little girls don't come out of the womb wearing lipstick. That's something that we push on them. You know, these sorts of things. Oh, man. The so-called Bloody Mary spent her five years as queen undoing a lot of Edwards' Protestant reforms for some good old-fashioned Catholicism. So once the child comes in, there's a bunch of reforms to Protestantism. And then Mary comes in and she's like, no, no, no, we're doing Catholicism again. Remember when?

Yeah. Hashtag flashback Friday, everyone getting your pajamas. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. But all of that was re-reversed after Mary died and Mary's half-sister, Elizabeth I, took the throne. There we go. The Elizabethan era lasted for 44 years, encompassing the rise of historical figures like William Shakespeare and major events like the defeat of the Spanish Armada, which sought to

invade England to re, re, re, re, re-establish Catholicism. Elizabeth I. Elizabeth I remains one of the longest-serving, best-known, and most significant royals in English history. What lessons do we pull from the saga of Henry the Eight and his six wives. From Catherine of Aragon, we learned the power of resolution, but perhaps also the fallacy of sunk cost. Okay. From Anne Boleyn, we learned that if a new relationship seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Probably is. From Jane Seymour, we learned the value of compliance, as well as the value of postnatal care. Yes, very valuable, that one, yeah. Anne of Cleves echoes the main lesson of the film, the First Wives Club. Don't get mad. Get everything. Amen.

Amen. Catherine Howard teaches us what we already knew, that the world can be an exceedingly cruel place for victims of abuse. Catherine Parr teaches us that sometimes it's best to keep religion and politics out of your marriage and that when your head's on the line, it's always worth it to try kissing some royal ass. Yeah. And finally, from Henry VIII, I think we learned the folly of it all. Air or no air, no man is eternal, not even the supreme leader of the Church of

England. So be kind. It's true. And the time you have. Yeah. And last but not least, Henry certainly teaches us to practice safe jousting unless you want to spend the rest of your days to quote the GS boys as the tutor scholars so often do doing the stanky leg. And that is the story of the six wives of Henry the 8th, one for each season of bittersweet infamy, happy season 6. I often hear Henry the 8th, described as, you know, a bastard and like, oh, eye roll men. But when you first described him as being deeply in love with Catherine of Aragon, it's like, oh, well, maybe there was a spark of goodness and time and circumstance and misogyny got the better of him and he turned out to be a fucking I roll asshole, you know?

And power. Empower. Because at that time, he was a teenager. He was a prince. He was unsullied by the world. And he was the spare. He was not raised to be the king. He was raised to be in this little side court, do his little side thing, you know,

joust as much as he wanted to and never have to lift a finger. So maybe he didn't have that preconceived notion of being the all-powerful being of the universe or whatever. It was king. Yeah. What a prick. Power corrupts, baby. And perhaps that's the thematic link we were looking for into what's kind of going on in the world now is that power corrupts. Yeah. So let's all do our best to keep our heads.

Try and keep our heads, exactly. Attached to our bodies, not on pipes. As much as we can. There's not enough neck here, baby. Not enough neck. Thanks for listening. If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweetinfamy.com or wherever you listen to podcasts.

If you want to support the podcast, shoot us a few bucks via our coffee account. At K-O-5Fi.com forward slash bittersweet infamy. But no pressure. Bitter Sweet Infamy is free, baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at Bitter Sweet Infamy, or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it. Stay sweet. My sources for this episode of Bitter Sweet Infamy included,

all three episodes of the short documentary series, Six Wives with Lucy Worsley from 2016. I also watched the documentary, Henry the 7th, The Winter King, directed by Julia Clark and Stuart Elliott. I watched short YouTube documentaries including Sir Henry Norris, another victim of Ambo Lin's Tragic Fall, from the channel The Anbo Lin Files in Tudor Society. I watched a video by History hit called Tudor Expert reacts to Henry VIII on screen. I watched videos from historian Ruth Goodman, including what the Tudors really ate and why it was

healthier than you think. The tough reality of Tudor childhood. Ruth Goodman on harsh lessons and discipline. How clean were the tutors? Ruth Goodman on 16th century hygiene. I also watch videos from the account Historic Royal Palaces, including Henry the 8th's kitchen at Hampton Court Palace and feeding 400 people twice a day, how Henry the 8th's court ate. I read the biographies on the historical Royal Palace's website for all six wives of Henry the to include Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Parr. I read the Wikipedia articles of all six aforementioned women, as well as Henry VIII himself. The text of Catherine of Averagon's speech at Blackfires came from the official website of Philippa Gregory,

and lastly, I read the Richmond.gov.ukuk webpage for Hampton Court. We are extremely grateful for our coffee supporters. If you want to become a coffee supporter and join the Bittersweet Film Club, you can find us over at K-O-5Fi.com slash Bittersweet Infamy. And if you become a member of the film club, you can suggest movies for us to watch, just like our favorite, favorite, favorite subscribers, Terry McCann, Jonathan, Lizzie D, Erica Joe, Sof, Dylan, and Satchel. Bitter Sweet Infamy is a proud member of the 604 podcast network. This episode was edited by Josie Mitchell and me, Taylor Vassau. Our interstitial music was by Mitchell Collins.

And the song you're currently listening to is T Street by Brian Steele.