Doomed to Fail - Ep 5 - Part 1: Divorce is fine, calm down! - The Story of Anne Boleyn & Henry VIII

Episode Date: October 20, 2023

We are re-releasing the story of Anne Boleyn and her husband, King Henry VIII. Anne didn't 'give' Henry a boy heir (like you can control that), and the Catholic Church wouldn't let them divorce. Instead of I don't know - keeping trying, or buying a boy baby from someone -- Henry decides to destroy his relationship with the Catholic Church, create the Church of England, accuse Anne of having an affair, and have her head cut off. He's a bit much.Re-visit this Tudor Classic with us!Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] Pics via Public domain & AI Some Sources:Lust, Lies And Empire: The Fishy Tale Behind Eating Fish On FridayCollaborativeDivorceTexas.comNoble Blood PodcastAnne of 1000 Days - the movie  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail]  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

Hi, Taylor from Dune to Fail. Today we're re-releasing Episode 5, Part 1, the story of Anne Bolin, who was the second of Henry the 8th's wives. Not the first to be doomed. He wasn't very nice to his first wife either, and learn a little bit more about who got beheaded, who got divorced, who changed religions, who refused to change religions, who was exiled, all those things, just so Henry the 8th could have an heir. But, spoiler alert, Anne Boleyn, her daughter, did become Queen Elizabeth. So good for her. Let us know what you think. And I'll see you on the other side.

In the matter of the people of the state of California versus Horanthall James Simpson, case number B-A-0-19. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Hello and welcome to Doom to Fail. The only podcast in existence where we advocate not killing your family. I'm Fars, joined by my co-host Taylor, and every week will bring you two stories, one historical and one true crime of relationships that were doomed to fail, and call out the red flags as we see them. Taylor, how are you doing today?

Oh, I'm good. How are you? I'm tired. We are recording this incredibly late for our usual recording schedule because I spent the entire day moving. And, yeah, I'm ready to just kind of collapse. great well i'm glad that we're doing this to wind wind down your day and then you can i don't know watch a movie go to bed unpacked tomorrow yes yes and i also want to call out thanks to everybody who's been listening and who has been providing feedback especially about my terrible audio quality i have no idea how this is going to actually sound once i upload it but i will say that i now have a much more professional setup and hopefully it's going to sound a lot better than it did before the past. And you look great. We got to work on, I'll work on my podcast face and we can get this on YouTube because you look very profusche. Yeah, just the mic, the mic in the face,

it helps. I think in response to feedback, this is me talking slow. America, I'm really trying hard. So you can make me slower by lowering the speed of your podcast. Yeah, Taylor has one speed and it's fast forward ahead. This is me trying. This is me trying my absolute fucking best for you right now. Absolutely. So what is our signature drink going to be this week? Cool.

So we have two drinks this week. One of them is a signature cocktail from South Carolina where our true crime story takes place. It's sweet tea vodka. So you see tea bags in a jar of vodka to make the concentrate, but it's it for a few hours and then when the vodka gets dark, you can pour over ice, as in lemon juice, simple syrup and then add some water or syrup as well because it's going to be just vodka. And I told you that I have something to say about this because after college, my roommate and I,

we bought a Brita specifically for filtering shitty vodka through. So we would buy like the worst vodka possible, put it through the Britta like six times. Then we put it into jars with like pears or tea bags or strawberries or like something and let it sit for like a few weeks. And then it was freaking delicious, and we just probably should be dead because we would drink like a teacup of like vodka that tastes like tea and it was delicious. And I hear that's really easy to over consume given how. Yeah. Because you don't really taste the vodka. No, it's just like delicious.

Like the pear wine was so good. And you're like, this is juice. And you're like, no, no, no, no, no. You just drank a glass of vodka and now you're asleep. Yeah. Yeah. So I looked up the recipe for this. and I was surprised at how detailed it was

because I thought it would just be just take some vodka and pour some tea in it but no right no you're not like mixing it with like a pre-made like a lipton no you're not you're creating a concentrate then you know the added syrup and lemon it's it's a whole thing it's a whole thing that's the key it's also the danger yes yeah as with a lot of things southern it is a little bit more ornate than one would assume

Well, I can't wait to hear more from the South when you do your story. The drink, well, mine's alcoholic, too. I try my best, but I, whatever. My drink for this episode is Mead. Have you ever had Mead? It's like a sweet wine. It's not the thing Germans make, right? No.

In a crock pot? No, that's like a mold wine. Okay. I have no idea what it is. So a meat is like a sweet wine that you like drank in like medieval times and I had mead for the first time when I was studying abroad in London in grad school and my friends and I went on a tour of the Tower of London bought a bottle of mead and then drank it on a boat on the Thames. So that's exactly where our story takes place. So imagine yourself drinking mead or sweet tea or whatever you want just in regular sweet tea, no booze. And I'll will jump in to talk a little bit about.

Henry the 8th and his his six wives love it so six is a lot of wives we'll talk about maybe one in particular or a big thing happened and a big change happened but I also want to give a little bit of like background into what we're talking about and where we are so Henry the 8th was born in 1491 and what do you know about Henry the 8th and Boleyn I only know Ambulin. That's it. Okay. And what happened to her? She had to have been killed. Yes. Yes. She was, she was beheaded. So there's a little bit of beheading in this story and lots of blood. I promised violence and I have violence in here. But the reason that we're getting to violence talking about this is like because Henry the 8th couldn't get divorced and there's some reasons that he wanted to be divorced and we'll talk about those. But I was like thinking, Why can't Catholics get divorced? Like, God says no, but like, why?

Like, why is that the rule? And I went to collaborative divorce, Texas.com, which has a really, actually great history of divorce. And other cultures are okay with it. Like we talked about with Pocahontas and Kokowum. So who wants, like, this couple in the village to be yelling at each other all the time? No one. So you let them get divorced and who cares?

In some places, they make it really, really hard. And I'm like, why do they make it hard? And so from my like seven minutes of research on collaborative divorce, Texas.com and being who I am, I think it's just to control women because then if you can't get divorced, then like, you don't have to pay back the dowry. You don't have to like apologize for the things that you're doing to this person. You can just like abuse them and everything is fine and you don't have to. And I guess that goes both ways, but there's no like admitting to your guilt or anything.

You just like have to stay married. And also they want to like make sure that like, they were there, that their kids were there. So they're like, adultery is a crime punishable by death. So you have to only be with me and have my kids. A lot of this is like thinking about your birth line and her being hereditary related to, you know, anyone in your line, which is dumb. So I wrote down that this is dumb. And I also was thinking about another Catholic theory that I have. And I was thinking about why you can meet on Fridays when you're a Catholic. And I have this theory that is not backed by anything that like it's probably because the meat would be

bad on Fridays and people were getting sick and they were like, let's stop. Let's like make a reason people not to eat meat on Fridays. I don't know if that's true, but that's like what I feel like there has to be an economic reason for all these roles, you know. That makes sense. You know, yeah. So that's what I'm thinking. But anyway. Economic or control of others. People. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So I was just like on a rabbit hole thinking about that. And I found an article on NPR called Lust lies an empire, the fishy tail behind eating fish on Friday. And it's actually, Henry

the 8th is actually, I was just thinking about that because I was thinking about Catholicism, but Henry the 8th is actually tied to eating fish on Fridays. So in, before all of Henry the Ace stuff, like leaving the Catholic Church, you would only, you would eat fish on Fridays, you wouldn't

eat meat, and it was because you couldn't eat anything with a womb for whatever reason. Really? Wait, that was the reason that you had to eat fish? Yeah. And like, I don't know. Yeah, that was a justification. Yeah. And so like in the article, they're like, I guess you could eat a lizard, but like no one wants to do that. So they were eating fish. I didn't. I mean, yeah, right. I didn't know fish. I never thought about it. Me either. And I don't, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. This is, I don't know. This is how you go down rabbit holes. Whatever. So, but actually, so fish is super easy to take on a road. So you could dry fish and go on the. a boat for six months and like eat dried cod for that whole entire time. And so people were doing that and like, you know, using it a lot when like, you know, there wasn't a lot of, um, other meat available. But once the, there's so many Catholic holidays where you couldn't eat

meat. So you ate fish. And so after Henry the eighth left the Catholic church, people could eat meat again. And things got really, really bad for the fishing industry. And they were pissed because they were like, well, because if you come down to it, people would choose a hamburger over a fish, you know? And people, yeah, and people were like, oh, okay, I'd rather do this. And so then Henry the eighth son, when he becomes king later in our story, brings back the no meat on Fridays to people to help the fishermen, which I just thought was interesting. And then another thing that I thought was fun is in the 1960s, the Pope relaxed some of the rules on eating fish and eating meat on Fridays. And then that also was a big blow to the fishing industry. So it happens over and over again when like the church makes these roles and they have like huge economic impacts. And then the filial fish at McDonald's was invented. I was just thinking about the filial fish. I'm so glad you brought up. That's literally why I was invented. There was a guy who owned a McDonald's franchise around in a big Catholic

neighborhood and he wasn't getting a business on Fridays. So he made a filet fish. So did you know what the precursor to flayo fish was what it was grilled pineapple between you buns yeah that sounds terrible if i mean i've never had a flea i don't think i want to have a flay fish so i wanted to because my mom loves them and i was like nervous i was going to like them and like always want one and then i have one with my mom and she was like this is not the best flea fish i've ever had and so she wants me to try it again because the one i had was not very good yeah i'm i'll get around to it You know, once I've exhausted all the McRibbs, then maybe I'll try a flail of fish. There's cheese on it, which I don't.

That's weird. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, that's a little bit of history about fish in the Catholic Church, but there's all these rules. So we're in a time period of the world where the Catholic Church has a lot of power, and there's a ton of rules. So on October 31st, 1517, Martin Luther starts the Protestant Reformation. So people were paying the Catholic Church to get into hell. heaven because of course they were. And at the same, this is the same time that all those stuff

is happening with Henry the Eighth. And basically, Henry the Eighth is saying throughout this whole story, well, I'm the king and God does what I want. So whatever I want to do is what God wants. Of course, yes. Yeah. Because that's what you're saying people. My understanding of the royalty is that that is kind of the assumption is that I'm here because I was chosen to be here. Yes. Exactly. So he's going to use that when he's like making his decision. to change some things about the church. And then I wrote, what are the differences between Protestant

and the Church of England and Catholicism? And then my next bullet is, I don't care. Like, I don't know. I kind of looked it up. It's like, there's always like matrices of like very like beliefs that people believe and whatever. So either way, there's differences and there's reasons why people move to different ones.

And so people are leaving the church for various reasons. So I want to pause here before I actually talk. about Henry the 8th and all of his wives. This can be like a nine hour podcast. I'm going to do it in like 10 minutes. So we're really going to like rush through these ladies. But these relationships were all all doomed. And I wanted to pause and talk about the royal family in England because while researching this, I was like actually good for you, Megan Markle for saying out loud that this shit's dumb. Because it's always been dumb, but like people haven't said it in a while maybe. And like, hereditary lines to power are dumb like even like our most recent queen elizabeth she was only in line for the throne because her uncle who was the first one in line married someone else i had to quit you know so you do you know i was born in the uk no yeah i was born in newcastle england and i had zero interest or affiliation with anything that has to do with the core of the UK which is the royal family i never cared don't know i have no idea what the genealogy

looks like what any of that like who succeeded who because of whatever reason like it's all foreign to me and i i kind of like it i kind of don't think that my brain needs to apply itself towards learning that shit no literally who cares it's really dumb and so i mean long story elizabeth who just died her dad was the king but he was only the king because his brother who was the king before him wanted to marry a woman who had been divorced and they wouldn't let him And so he quit being king to marry this like other woman. But like his kids would have been in line. Then Elizabeth was in line.

So it's just like any little thing can like move these lines around and whatever. So Henry is like one of the last kings in the house of Tudor. I don't know what that means. It's like very complicated. But it's pretty much just like the rich get richer. So the king's speech wasn't that guy the one that took over because the other guy wanted to marry the divorce woman? Yeah. And then wasn't she a Nazi or something?

Wallace Simpson I don't know She's American Okay maybe it was like more He had some association or affiliation With like empathy I don't know I'm probably talking about my ass

So like let's not I'm probably gonna cut this out I know I think that that I think you might be right That is ringing some bells Because I do know that like JFK's dad Was the ambassador to England

During that time Like during before World War II And he was like Let's just hear what Hitler has to say come on yeah it's a problem i believe you know so that's not great so possibly possibly but either way it's all it's all bullshit and a lot of people are gonna die and just in the marrying yeah so many people are about to die like for money it's real dumb but but anyway so here we go so henry the eighth is actually the second son of king henry the seventh

he's born in 1491 and his brother arthur is set to take the throne. So Arthur, the older brother, marries Catherine of Aragon. She's from Spain. She's really young, like a teenager, and she marries, she marries Arthur, and that marriage is never consummated. And I don't really know why. It sounds like they were just young and, like, didn't really know, again, like, what to do or weren't able, they weren't able to do it. And I believe that because Catherine of Aragon was a very, very Catholic. And what happens next depends on, like, her honor and her virtue and all these things. So I believe her when she says that that was not consummated because Arthur dies pretty young before the marriage was consummated. So the king,

King Henry the 7th, still wants to have an alliance with Spain because that's really important for money. So he marries his second son, Henry, to Catherine. And they get around that by saying that because the first marriage to Arthur was never consummated, that Catherine can marry Henry. And Henry becomes Henry the ace. So much revolves around virginity and like purity and it's just like, oh my God. Oh, my God. So she swears up and now she's a virgin. It's okay.

They, um, so I have a little timetable. So at this point, his first wife, Catherine, she's 24 and Henry the eighth is 18. So she's actually older than him because she had been married to his older brother. So she's older than him when they get married. And they're married for like 23 years. So they're married for a long time. during their relationship they have one child it's a girl boo girls no one wants a girl and it is mary and mary becomes like mary queen of scots bloody mary the one that will that is like in the

history books for wanting to keep like ireland and scotland and parts of the uk of the ukk whatever catholic so her mom was very catholic mary is very catholic she is the first daughter of henry the eighth but there's no sense bloody so this is the Mary that you can say Bloody Mary in the mirror three times and she shows up? No, that's like a weird ghost. But Bloody Mary is like the violent

queen. They just have the same name. I don't think it's like Mary Criott's that comes up in the mirror. I think it's like someone else. I might be confusing this with Candyman. Oh, so good.

We can. We can just have a about that. I think Candyman's a love story. I can talk about that later. It is. Oh, for sure it is. Yeah, yeah. Same page. We don't even have to argue this. Great. Great. I didn't see the second one, but I will. So he's married to Cafeter of Aragon. She's, he's the king. She's a little bit older. And he needs a son. And he's like, why won't God give me a son? Why won't my dumb wife give me a son? Why can't she just do it? Like, that's possible to just like, be like, oh, I'll give you a son. I choose son this time. But the part that's confusing is that they all need daughters for these alliances. So why are they pissed when they have daughters? It's true. And he's like, I don't want to talk to her.

And you're like, why? Like I watched a movie from the 60s called Anne of a Thousand Days with Richard Burton playing Henry the 8th. And it's real good and like real dramatic. But he definitely is like, I will never talk to this daughter. I hate her. You're like, but you're right. They need to have daughters anyway because they have to like sell them off. Yeah.

And like, yeah. Shortsided. These people are very shortsided. Agree. So he's super upset. He wants a son. he's obviously in the meantime having a bunch of affairs and as we'll see that adultery is punishable by death unless you're him of course like he can do every once but like the woman

is for death so he gets a woman named mary bolin pregnant um guess who mary bolin is i can't hear you oh i muted myself on accident okay i think that would be anne's sister it's her sister so he gets her sister pregnant she's like one of his mistresses which is super gross. And he also gets another. And so she has a son, actually, named Henry Carey. But he doesn't really want to marry her. And it couldn't marry her anyway because she's not a virgin, which is so dumb because you're like, it's, it's your fault. Well, wait, hold on. Who wasn't a virgin? Mary Bolin, because she was having an affair of Henry. He didn't want to marry her and he's

already married and all these things. So he didn't like take that extra effort to marry Mary Berlin. She just had like a bastard child. And so it didn't. She had to, have been a virgin even if she was a virgin when they started hooking up i think it's like a little bit of that actually maybe a little bit more of like he was already married and didn't want to go through all the hullabaloo of like legitimizing this child which i don't really know why yeah all right it's it sucks to be mary bolin it's just i think that's the takeaway yeah sounds like yeah it's to be married to this guy or in his orbit it sounds like yeah and i feel like a red flag is like if a dude got your sister

pregnant and abandoned her, he's not a good match. Yeah. Yeah, that's a big red flag. He also, Henry also has another son with another mistress and that son is also named Henry, another Henry Fitzroy. And that's the only one he acknowledged for whatever reason, but he became like a Duke

or something, but wasn't in line to be king because he wasn't an official child. So he's definitely like out there like having babies, but he's sick and tired of having no sons with his wife. And he The only thing he can do is get an old because he can't get divorced because of the Catholic Church. And they really won't let him, like, do anything.

So all of a sudden, he's like, I'm sure that Catherine stopped with my brother when they were married and that she's been lying to me for 23 years. So because of that, he can say that makes Catherine of Aragon his sister because she's slept with his brother and that makes it incest and that makes it unnullable. That is so many leaps in logic. So many leaps and so dumb, but he actually gets it ends up leaving the Catholic Church to be able to officially just make it a divorce because the church won't give him an annulment because they're like, that's dumb. And they won't give him a divorce because they don't do divorces. So this is when he starts the Church of England and becomes head of the church specifically so we can get divorced. And that's like eighth grade history. The ego of the fact that you could start your own religion and get people to kind of convert over to.

He's a cold leader. He's almost a cold leader. Yeah, absolutely. And similarly, so many people are going to die. And he gets to sleep with everyone. He's exactly a co-leader. Yeah. Yeah.

So poor Catherine is like, this is BS. Like I never, that's not true. It's my virtue. But she gets kind of exiled back to where she came from. And until her death, she's like, I'm the rightful queen of England. And she wants her daughter, Mary, to, you know, go back and rule and make England Catholic again, which she does in some way, shape, or form via violence. So.

Now that he can get a divorce, and I'm thinking, like, why is he doing this? Like, this is crazy. It's so much work and so much violence. And it's just because she can't have a son and he really, really needs one. Like, he really, really needs that legitimate son or, you know, he's going to lose his line and lose his, like, heirs to the throne. So he can't, like, he has to have a legitimate son. So he has, like, really no other choice. So.

So he meets a lady in waiting before he gets divorced, of course. It's Mary Bolin's sister, Anne Boleyn. So Anne Boleyn is really like the reason that he did all of this because he wanted to marry her and not be married to Catherine of Arragon anymore. So Anne Boleyn, she was like of like mid-level status. She spent some time in France, comes back to England. The king like falls in love with her, you know, whatever that means. And eventually like maybe she loves them to, maybe it's a power thing.

And by the time they get married, she's already pregnant with his baby. But it's like, okay because he's divorced. So a lot of logic. A lot of logic. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of you have to do for this. So she has a people in England are mad because actually really loved Catherine.

They saw how devout she was, like what a good wife she was. So they're pissed and like annoyed that he's married to Anne. Anne is either 32 or 26 when they get married. It's like not clear her exact date. And Henry is 42. So if she's 32 and he's 42, I feel like that's fine. Yeah, that's reasonable. Yeah.

So they get married and she's pregnant right away. And she has, guess what baby she kind of baby she has? I would assume inbred. Well, fine, but it's a girl. Which we don't like, obviously. We have another girl. And her name's Elizabeth. And Elizabeth is actually going to be Queen Elizabeth, like the first Queen Elizabeth.

like the first queen elizabeth and a whole bunch of crazy stuff happens with her that is a whole other story so can i interject here yes please so there's been female monarchs yeah like why do you have to have a son if you're the king because as we just you just explained your daughter could also be the head of state right and she does become that but i guess i don't know if that was the rule before this maybe before this it was all just all sons and then they changed it and maybe this is impetus for changing it because you'll see later that they like have to change it they have to give it to elizabeth if that was the case then it kind of does track given like where humanity was at that point in time that it was easier to invent a church to try and get a divorce than it was to change the rules

and let a female be the head of state. Exactly. So I wanted to bring this up later, but I'll bring it up now. I'm a Disney channel. They have, speaking of Disney. I'm a Disney channel. They have these really funny five-minute videos of Olaf from Frozen retelling fairy tales. And it's like just him and he plays all the characters and it's really funny.

And he does Aladdin. And in Aladdin, he's talking about how Jasmine can't be the ruler because she's a woman. And he goes, he's like, well, it's too bad. Your dad can't change the rules that he literally made up. you're like of course that's exactly the point yes so yeah so he also has a son he has Elizabeth and Elizabeth and her half-sister Mary later will start a bunch of wars about religion but not yet for now and is trying to have another baby but tragically there's a bunch of miscarriages and some stillborn babies so she does give birth to a son but he is is born stillborn and right now

I'm thinking like why wouldn't she just buy a baby from someone like wouldn't you do that if you're like all I have to only thing I have to do is make a son why don't I just like find another white dude and buy a baby from him and pretend it's mine you're making you're kind of doing like a Henry the eighth situation here where you're making a lot of leaps in judgment and assumptions here like there is somebody out there who's like transacting babies and And also, like, what happens because you in theory have either faked a pregnancy at that point or you actually are pregnant? Then you got to dispose of that baby. It just gets really complicated.

It feels like, I guess. I guess you're right. And I guess that makes sense. It does. It is also more Game of Thrones because you know how in Game of Thrones is all these babies, but you're guaranteed somehow to have your dad's hair color in Game of Thrones? Oh, yeah. For sure. For sure.

But, like, Elizabeth and Henry, the 8th, actually both have red hair. So I guess you just find another ginger and be like this one is your time. You know, whenever you were describing his plan on getting annulled, the whole incest thing, I forgot for a moment that we're talking about a king. And so this was not somebody just sitting around, like, waxing poetic on his own. This was probably a team of like the most elite members of society trying to devise away. yeah you can probably you could probably bring that tag team back together to figure out how to sell a child and buy a new one yes so now i'm back on she should have done that i could go either way but i feel like maybe she tried and it didn't work out but either way she never has a boy and henry's like this is this is bullshit i have to leave and he's already like um eyeing someone else one of one of her ladies in waiting and so now he wants to divorce anne but he's embarrassed a little bit he's like we have a divorce like this isn't going to work and she won't do it but he charges her with having a bunch of affairs and one of the podcasts i listened to about her

they were saying that she totally had all these all these affairs but i don't believe that because that would literally be life or death for her you know so i feel like i would feel like she'd be more likely to buy a baby than to have an affair because as you'll find out like she gets killed for having an affair that she didn't even have so spoiler yeah spoiler alert and dies so he he he accused her having an affair and he wants a divorce and or like an annulment because of that and she won't do that because if she does then elizabeth is out of line to be queen so if they get divorced or annuled then that like delegitimalizes i don't know legitimatizes their marriage legitimizes whatever so they do that then elizabeth is no longer in line for the throne and she won't do that so they accused her of adultery. They declare that she's guilty. And her, Ann, and like five dudes who were accused of having an affair with her, including her brother, are all executed. So the dudes are executed by axe. And then Henry does one favor for her and gets a fancy fresh French executioner to use a sword and do like one swift. Why's that a favor? Because otherwise it was like an English shoot hacking your head off. Oh, so it was going to take a lot longer. Yeah. Got it.

Yeah. So we got the top executioner to do it. So Ann dies. And the next day, Henry gets engaged to one of her ladies in waiting, Jane Seymour. So I always think it's hilarious that Jane Seymour is also the name of the actress who plays Dr. Quinn Medicine woman. I was going to say that sounds so familiar. Isn't that like, it's just weird.

That's her name. And then there's also this Jane Seymour in history. But third wife, Jane Seymour, Henry is, you know, allegedly in love with her. She does have a son. So this is his son. Edward. He will be King Edward the seventh eventually or the sixth. Oh my God. Roman numerals. Edward the six later. So it's plague time. So the people don't really get a lot of time with Jane, but she's around. And they seem to like her. She's a very dutiful wife. And unfortunately after she has Edward, she dies a couple months later from complications of the birth. So that's just another thing of like having babies is really hard even now. But even then it was just like awful and disgusting. It was probably an infection that ended up killing her.

So that must have been really painful and awful. So Jane dies and Henry's sad, but he needs to make more babies. He's had that backup son. He's that spare. So he already has one. And he marries a woman named Anne of Cleaves. So Anne of Cleves is his fourth wife. And let's look at this, my thing.

So when he married Jane Seymour, she was 28 and Henry was 45. So we're starting to see a little bit of a gap. Anne of Cleves when they get married is 25 and Henry's 49 so this little gross yeah so um Anne doesn't speak English she only speaks German but she is brought by Henry's advisor Cromwell and sets them up and eventually Cromwell will die because Henry doesn't like this marriage and so he kills was like one of his oldest friends because of this but that marriage was never consummated between Henry the eighth and Anne of Clemell. and it's for a couple reasons that people think it was one he just like couldn't do it because he was old her and starting to you know lose his veracity and say 48 yeah but he's also like really overweight and like it was the 1500 so i feel like i don't know 48 is probably like 82 yeah yeah i say not great he's not he's not great at this time and she's doesn't really know what's going on either so they definitely had a thing where like she was like oh he kissed me and her legs in the waiting were like

that's not going to do it hon like that's not going to i'm not going to make me be that way i read a thing about him forever ago that i don't know if it's true or not but i heard that towards a latter stages of his life he was so overweight that they had to create these mechanical devices to just move his body around like he wasn't able to like actually be ambulatory on his own he definitely has an infection from like a hunting accident and his legs and his legs produce so much pus he has to wear different pair of pants every day. Ugh. So much detail.

So fucking gross. So he sat in like the pinnacle of health at this moment. And so he uses his poll and says, I need this marriage. I'm not going to be like they have. She's very pretty. Wait, Taylor. And pause. It was cutting out.

The audio was, it's choppy. Okay. Is it back? Yeah, yeah, it's back. We like go back to after the pus thing. okay so they now henry wants us marriage and old because he's like we're not having sex we're not going to have a baby i don't think she's very pretty i don't really like her she doesn't speak english and she she was engaged i know okay um there's a story that like maybe the the painting he got

of her was like a little bit generous so he was like this is what i expected and oh that's right he would have gotten a painting of her you know like he like didn't know you to get a painting and be like i guess this person looks fine yeah i'll marry them and And he also, she was engaged when she was like six as like another like political thing. And he used that as a reason for the annulment as well because he was like she, you know, wasn't, she was never mind to begin with, whatever. So that one actually got annulled. And he gave, he gave Anna Cleave some money and she got to live out her life.

She actually became good friends with him afterwards. Like once their marriage was over, they became friends. And she was, you know, really good friends with his children as well. So she's kind of in the picture. Later, she wants to marry him again. And they're like, he's like, no, nah, not really. But. Why? So Anna Cleese is just like around. So now he needs to marry someone else. And he wants to marry someone like smoking hot to prove that he can like have sex with someone. So he finds another lady in waiting. And her name is Catherine Howard. So she's his youngest bride. She's 16 and he's 49 when they get married. So that's gross. Catherine Howard is very pretty. She has a history of flirtation. So she allegedly went to this all-girls school when she was very young that had reputation for like letting boys sneak in at night, you know, like teenage stuff.

And she doesn't have any kids with him. They're not married for very long. And she probably does have an affair with one of his guards named Thomas Cool Pepper. So Henry finds out and he's pissed. And he doesn't want to be made a fool again. So he charges her with adultery. And there's some people who confess that they've seen her with Thomas. and so everyone gets their head cut off.

Catherine, her friends who were like her, the witnesses on the stand, Thomas's head gets cut off and it gets put on the London Bridge on display, which is fun. That is fun, Taylor. You know, like that's fun. So they're all, they're dead. That's the last one. That's the fifth wife.

And then his final wife, her name's Catherine Parr. She is, so this means he's married, of all of his wives, 50% are Catherine's. 33% are Anne's and 17% are jeans. So we just wear a lot of Catherine's. And Captain Parr is a widow. She's been married two times before, not seven, like that song. And she was involved in the education of Henry's children. She was very smart.

She published books on prayer. I think she's one of the first women in England to publish a book. So super smart. And when he went traveling, he would leave her in charge. They were never going to have kids because at this point, well, she was an old maid at 31 and he was 52. So they probably weren't going to have any kids, but he wanted to, like, have a companion. So he was married to her. So for this time, I wrote, he's leaking.

He's not doing well. And there's other, I mean, obviously during this whole story, there's like huge political things happening that I'm not even talking about. But we're talking about like this man's desire to have an heir and his desire to continue to be king. So Henry dies in 1547. He leaves her money. So he leaves his last wife, Catherine, some money.

and she marries Jane Seymour's brother. So Jane Seymour, the wife who had died after childbirth, her brother marries Henry, the sixth wife. And it's a counter that she really loved him. And this was a person that she had actually wanted to marry. This is her fourth marriage because her first three husbands died. And it sounds like that'd be really fun, except it does sound like that they got Queen Elizabeth as a child to look after her.

and the husband wants to marry her. So he, like, molest slash courts her when she's very young while he's married to Jane, which is terrible. And she, Elizabeth has like tons of problems growing up. And a lot of it probably is because of this abuse that she suffered at this time, living with her dad's, like, widowed wife and her step uncle. It's very confusing. So it's so, I mean, that's the thing that, okay, so this is. why like i said earlier i never go deep or have gone deep on royalty and royal families is because it's so weirdly interconnected it's like this guy's fucking like related to that guy with his sister

married that uncle and the cousin and it's just yeah just confusing yeah and then either way poor jane does die at the age of 36 she gets pregnant which is a surprise because she's 36 and um she dies after childbirth as well because having babies is awful. Yeah. And so she does from that eventually too. And so, I mean, the moral of the story is what happened is there's a moral. But what happened is Henry VIII needed an heir. He did anything he could to get it. So his son, that he has Edward, his son did become king when Henry VIII died. He was only king for a few years. And then he died. He was a teenager when he died. And then his sister, Elizabeth, became queen. because she was officially the next in line because Mary was not because her parents had gotten

divorced. So the good news is Anne Boleyn did get executed for a reason. She knew why she was doing it and she was doing it so her daughter could become queen and she did. So she got what she wanted like later in life. So good for her except she died really young and tragically. And yeah. do you think that when your head gets cut off that you are still awake for like a couple seconds i hope so i hope so i mean i don't know i think that's probably the better way to be

killed isn't it i mean it sounds swift when it's swift i don't like the whole hack in at your neck thing that you mentioned earlier yeah i hate that do you do you think that if you were in that position do you think the people who were royalty those in those days they ever have moments for like why am i doing this like i could just like selfish like how much how hard would it be to selfish nobody's trying to kill me nobody's trying to poison me i don't have to be executed because i'm not having sons like i don't know i feel like i feel like it's simpler life would be preferred yes and no i feel like now you can easily be like prince harry and be like i'm going to go live in l. and like calm down but I think then if you weren't like in the court you were like living in a pile of

shit yeah yeah you know like London was like disgusting and it was like plague time and so I don't know I feel like there was a big jump between a regular person and royalty like bigger I mean now it's a huge jump but I feel like even then it was like even worse yeah but I don't know I mean the reason Game of Thrones is as popular as it is, is the sheer intrigue and fuckery that goes on. It's just like a byproduct of being in that position. It's just, it's fascinating because all the stuff that's happened, that happens, like, I mean, minus the dragons and like other magical things. It's all stuff that's happened. And like we're super fascinated, I think, as like a, right now in our media with like medieval time living. I mean, there's

Game of Thrones. There's the Lord of the Rings that are kind of like medieval. Medieval. I watched all of Willow, which was the delight. There's, you know, it's always something that you want to feel. It's like courtly thing. My husband was watching Star Trek and it kind of felt courtly. Like, there were like kings and queens and all those stuff. So I don't know. People love that shit.

I am recently. So recently these markets started up in Austin that I now regularly attend. And they're witches markets. And it has the air of a Renaissance fair. it's it's so fun it's just people go yeah people just make stuff and they show up and they have little booths and yeah like this this necklace is from a wishes market yeah 15 bucks what's it's supposed to do it's supposed to do something no it's tiger's eye it's supposed to just be like a good luck thing oh yeah yeah i have some crystals here yeah i have this black one that's

supposed to like calm me down and like help me focus like obviously like why would i system i believe to believe that this could do this when I'm like very mad about belief in general but I don't fucking know so I'm just hanging out on my crystal I got I got a big crystal too from the wishes last wishes thing I love it I want to go next time and that sounds really fun hey you brought up Megan and Harry I probably have a controversial opinion about that what is it like you know what the fuck you're getting into I know and it's like it's like it's not the role of a spouse to like show up and just derail everything that you have known and you're I'm not saying that it's good I'm not saying that it's like defending the royal family by any means like if I'm if I

married into like a old-timey family that was like that's just how they've that's all they've known and it's like no you're going to change how you're going to be and this like who are you like I totally agree I felt that way until yesterday when I like maybe I'm leaning 20% on her side, but I'm like, yeah, this is kind of dumb and like it's about having ended. So like if you can be a part of that ending after all these like hundreds of years and like millions of people dying for no reason, then like that's great. So I kind of felt a little bit on her side for just a second yesterday. But most of the time I feel like that. Like Kate Middleton understood the assignment. Yeah. You just like be pretty and do charity work. Yeah. I think it was going to happen.

I feel like she did like a disservice to her husband, which is like abandoned like be. outcast from everything you know mm-hmm because like because diana his his mom was also like their their family was also a royalty of some kind like it wasn't just a coincidence that him and her and the fucking dufous looking guy whatever the king now got together like there was a reason for that like they were intense anyways whatever well just like kind of eight waves like that's why it's like all for like political purposes and like all these things and like very silly and I am I'm going to try to flip my my skepticism to being to enjoying what Megan's doing because I'm like fuck these guys you know yeah yeah I'm okay with it but I wasn't until yesterday

when I was thinking about all this stuff and I was like man if Am Bolin could have like had a podcast she'd be like the fuck is going on the fuck is going on yeah yeah don't get married to try and change that person. Yeah, 100%. Awesome. Cool. That's it. Thank you for that. I do want to call it the fact that I feel a little bit low energy today,

given the fact that I spent all day moving. And so I will try to liven myself as I start. Okay, I'm ready. Moving sucks. Yeah, it sucks. All right. Hope you enjoy. story of Anne Boleyn. Let's meet up again next Friday for episode five part two.

If you have any questions or ideas, please send us an email at doom to failpod at gmail.com and you can find us on all social media including YouTube, TikTok, everything at doom to fail pod. Hopefully we'll hear from you soon. Thanks.