Filling the Gaps with Flair: On Henry VIII and The Tudors

History, a distillation of rumors.
Thomas Carlyle


In all honesty, I’ve never paid much attention to England’s King Henry VIII. The only thing I believed worth knowing about this historical personage was that he married six times, had a couple of his wives beheaded, and was responsible for dealing the Catholic Church a severe blow by creating the Church of England and appointing himself its head.

But my general indifference toward the legendary monarch changed when my sister introduced me to The Tudors—a Showtime television series.

From the onset of the program, the supporting characters—most of who played prominent roles in England’s history—mesmerized me. And perhaps what drew me toward them was their attraction to Henry VIII’s power, which is impossible for me to comprehend, given the King’s custom of beheading sycophants who had outlived their usefulness. It's supremely interesting to watch these bitter—and thus outright creepy—flatterers and parasites (Thomas More, of course, being the notable exception) try to fulfill every one of the monarch’s wishes in the hope of obtaining his favor. And their misplaced devotion to the creator of the modern English state makes this program all the more captivating as their existences often come to an end at the sharp edge of the axe.

Intrigued about whether the incidents portrayed in The Tudors adhere to historical truths, I was compelled to learn more about the notorious English king. To do so, I read Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht’s The Life and World of Henry VIII, a helpful primer on the sovereign’s life, and I examined various websites devoted to his legacy.

Through these readings I discovered that although the television drama greatly compresses time (for instance, Mary Boleyn, Anne Boleyn’s older sister, is seen as only a passing fancy for Henry VIII when, in reality, she was the ruler’s mistress for five years), the storyline is quite faithful to events as they’re recorded in history books.

Nevertheless, it is in the gaps between what historians know to be true, the wide margins of uncertainty where rumors almost acquire the weight of facts, that the scriptwriters find the sordid and shocking scenarios that tantalize viewers.

A case in point: most historians maintain that the overly-ambitious and worldly Cardinal Thomas Wolsey died of natural causes in a Leicester Abbey bed. Reportedly, the last words he uttered were: “If I had served my God as diligently as I did my king, He would have not have given me over in my grey hairs.” The Catholic Church has accepted this statement as indication of Wolsey’s full repentance, and this earned him sainthood.

In The Tudors, however, the scriptwriters opted to follow the trail of rumor with regard to the Cardinal’s death. In the series, the power-hungry cleric—masterfully played by Sam Neill—who had been summoned to London on charges of treason and was therefore destined to be beheaded, pronounces the phrase to his confessor; and once he’s left alone he proceeds to take his own life in the most dreadful of manners. And it is during moments such as this, when the writers exploit the gap between historical certitudes, that the drama reaches beyond the screen to clinch its viewers.

Since watching the first season of The Tudors, I’ve developed a great interest in Henry VIII’s reign—particularly with regard to the intrigues and schemes hatched within his court. And since my newfound curiosity has yet to be satiated, I shall continue reading about this fascinating English ruler because, as I now know, his life is, indeed, worthy of study and wondrous retelling.