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*Another one.*

While I definitely agree that Mary I suffered mistreatment as a teenager, I do not agree that this either justified or necessitated the later violence in her reign.

There’s a lot of this rhetoric in comment sections on YouTube documentaries– “is it any wonder that happened”, even going as far as saying that if those years at Hatfield had never happened (even going as far as blaming Anne Boleyn, in a roundabout way, for them– that her specific mistreatment of Mary guaranteed Mary doing this later), the violence wouldn’t have either, or at least not to the extent it did.

I’m sure it affected her psyche in some way, and it’s awful to have to to balance between two parents that want you to do different things. Surely she felt humilitation at being made a servant after a life of pomp and importance (de facto Princess of Wales), surely she was made to feel uncomfortable for not signing the Oaths she was asked to, and pain at being ignored/not acknowledged by Henry for doing so (besides to call her, later, his “worst enemy in the world”). While her mother’s treatment of her certainly didn’t match Henry’s callousness, and she always insisted she was legitimate, nor can I say it was entirely selfless, and much as Mary loved her, it was probably hard to know she wouldn’t do anything for her. COA begged to be allowed to visit Mary when she was ill, but wasn’t willing to take the actions that would have allowed her to do so. She was certainly capable of being manipulative, implying that she risked hell if Mary did anything to make her living situation more comfortable and reconcile with Henry (that is, to sign the Oaths) in a letter:

Answer with few words, obeying the King, your father, in everything, save only that you will not offend God and lose your own soul.

Even that to put up with any discomfort made her more holy:

“…we never come to the Kingdom of Heaven but by troubles.”

I’m not implying their treatment of Mary was equitable in any way– Henry’s, obviously, was much worse– but she did receive a significant amount of pressure both parents, and that has an effect.

Nevertheless, I wouldn’t go as far as saying this mistreatment guaranteed the later violence. Maybe if her parents had continued to live together, maybe if COA had agreed to an annulment and Mary stayed legitimate in good faith it wouldn’t have happened, maybe if Henry and Anne married but Mary was allowed to keep her own household in the comfort and luxury in which she was accustomed to, and allowed visits with her mother, it wouldn’t have happened.

But I think the only potential scenario in which we can say it was guaranteed that Mary wouldn’t have had hundreds burnt at the stake is if, quite simply, she never had the power to do so.

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Henry VIII wasn’t as widely-hated in England as pop. history genre claims.

The Reformation, of course, wasn’t universally popular by any means. He was certainly hated and there were definitely dissenters, but to claim he himself was “widely-hated” by the English people during his reign is erroneous, and it probably actually slides farther on the other side of the spectrum.

Actually, considering the religious upheaval, and considering the excommunication of the Pope (which allowed any Englishmen to rebel and depose him, said it was not treason to do so, and that those that did so would still go to Heaven) it’s incredible that there weren’t more rebellions than there were.

His reign was nearly 40 decades, and all in all there were only four rebellions. For roughly the first 16 years, there were none. None of the rebellions were aimed at deposing Henry.

The first was in 1525, against a high tax. The ringleaders of this one were pardoned after Wolsey interceded for them. There was also the Kildare Rebellion, the Pilgrimage of Grace, and Bigod’s rebellion.

In contrast, Henry VII had six rebellions during his reign, some calling for his deposition, within the span of 11 years. Edward VI had three rebellions within the same year. Mary I had one rebellion with the aim of her deposition within her reign of five years. Elizabeth I had seven rebellions, some with the aim of her deposition, within the 45 years of her reign.

So, doing the ratio of years vs. rebellions/uprisings, Henry VIII actually had the least among the Tudors, and none for his deposition.

That is rather remarkable, and the question of why exactly this was (despite the costly wars, despite how the Reformation hit those in poverty the hardest, despite the alleged extremely high number of executions– 72000 seems very unlikely) is a matter that deserves further examination and attention.

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Preface it by saying this isn’t me knocking casual interest/ reading for fun (I myself have only shallow knowledge on several topics, and probably not much depth of knowledge for any except like…Tudor but not even all Tudor? Henrician but a pretty shallow understanding of Marian and Elizabethan eras)…

But if your end goal is the understanding of a particular figure at Henry VIII’s court, like Thomas Cromwell or Anne Boleyn, you will eventually need to do some reading on Henry VIII as well. A few articles, and probably at least one biography focused on him at some point.

Personal dislike/hatred aside, you’re not going to have an adequate understanding of the workings of an intricate court if you totally sidestep/ignore…the figure at its center. This is true for whoever your favorite figure at his court is; but it’s especially true if that figure had a significant relationship with Henry.

Nor will you have one if you only do reading on the most notorious of his deeds.

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In regards to “the Tudors are overrated, I don’t want to see more projects about them”:

Is kind of a moot point, because (especially in regards to Henry VIII) they’re so deeply embedded in the pop culture nexus at this point that they’re just, quite simply, not going anywhere.

Henry VIII especially because he’s really, in essence, a reflection of everything we hate about ourselves (magnified to extremes): capriciousness, vanity, the desire for fame, grandiosity, the inability to forgive, ruled by emotions/highly emotional, hypocrisy, the desire to be loved, self-indulgence, and the desire to be remembered.

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Hm idk if I have a contentious opinion on Cromwell, all mine have probably been said before?

I think he was very adept at adjusting to shifts in power, and even pushing them himself at times.

Don’t agree with the take that he was Henry’s puppet, don’t think Henry ‘forced’ him into ‘finding a way to get rid of Anne’ early as April.

Cromwell was aligning himself with Chapuys and apologizing to him directly “for having promoted the King’s marriage to Anne” in April:

True, it was (he said), that seeing the King so much bent upon it, and so determined, he (Cromwell) had paved the way towards it. Although the King, his master, was still inclined to pay his court to ladles, yet it was generally believed that in future he would lead a more moral life than hitherto—a chaste and marital one with his present Queen. This Cromwell said to me in such a cold indifferent manner that I had a strong suspicion that he meant just the contrary. Indeed, I observed whilst he said so…he leant against the window close to which we were both standing, and put his hand to his mouth to prevent the smile on his lips, or to conceal it altogether from me should it come on;

“Put his hand on his mouth to prevent a smile on his lips” …. doesn’t really strike me as him being pressured by Henry to do something he doesn’t want to do….or like the prospect of Anne being ousted is something he’s really torn up about.

He was aligning himself with the Seymours, and with Mary.

He benefited from the events of May 1536 as well (at least, in the short term):

“The cui bono evidence is also interesting: Cromwell replaced Anne’s father as Lord Privy Seal and obtained a valuable stewardship as a result of George Boleyn’s execution; his servant Sadler received William Brereton’s freehold estate near Greenwich.”

hi yes i will happily enable you : 👑

So all the…”X was an usurper” (this isn’t shading for any figure in particular, this is me regarding all the figures of this era)…rhetoric…and I just say…

Who care? WHO care? Who c a r e s ???

I mean as far as analyzing which prominent people of the time viewed X as an usurper, sure, it’s important but as far as like……”I myself think they never should have ruled because they were an usurper”, uh:

a) It was such a mutable definition, it depended on who you asked at the time, and who was around when you asked them, and who won in a battle, and who had more people on their side, and like a myriad of different factors but basically…it was down to who you asked (’is X the rightful ___ or nah?’, that is)

b) ‘Divine right’ is uh…..like…….they made it up?? Like they very much believed in it but also it was not…real.

I’m hoping we know by 2018 that no one deserves to rule a country just for being born to two specific people.

And you know that Facebook Group that’s like “if a witch eats the president, the witch should become that president” ?

“If a contender for the throne kills the king, that man should become king.”

Me, a 24-year-old peasant about to die: “That sounds wrong, but I don’t know enough about the Bible to dispute it…”

c) Starkey has said R3 was an usurper. He’s also said H7 was basically an usurper.

R3 may have taken the throne, but it was technically by legal methods (excluding the executions of Anthony Woodville etc. and I’m def not saying legality equates morality but there is that).

H7 won it in battle.

So by that definition, if we want to trace back, would Edward IV also not technically be an usurper? He wasn’t born king, that was Henry VI.

I literally don’t have much of a POV re: preference between these three (actually…Edward IV but also see above what I just said…also all three of them had some sort of blood claim to the throne as well), I’m just using this is an illustrative point in that the word is basically kind of … meaningless.

In that you can apply it to anyone/ anything you want, if you delve into technicalities/precedent deep enough.

I’ll also see it with COA vs. Anne Boleyn discourse so like….far reaching enough to even apply the term of ‘usurper’ to Queen Consorts (usually applied to Anne), which is very odd. It’s one thing to say “COA believed it was her divine right to be Queen” (true!) another thing to say “it WAS her divine right.”

Like…it wasn’t. See above: they made it…..up.

It wasn’t any more Anne’s, either, although she seemed to believe this as well– she said to a Venetian diplomat that God had inspired Henry to marry her.

Tl;dr, we should all find it very convenient that anyone that sat on a throne essentially said they were there “because God said so.”

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In some nonfiction works (usually where the author or the historian is especially sympathetic to COA), I’ve read the take that Henry’ VIII’s acknowledgement and ennoblement of his son was unconscionable and/or unconscionably cruel.

Now…I don’t think this was particularly a considerate thing for him to do concerning his wife, obviously (although the adultery itself is…more so, I would think? the pregnancy and child was simply the result/proof of it).

And I’m wondering what, conversely, these writers think he should have done instead? Because usually it seems less like they’re implying “well, he just shouldn’t have committed adultery in the first place” (which tends to be…an argument not made often, because what is ‘shouldn’t’ to a king, esp. when it’s kind of de rigueur) and more like “it’s fine to commit adultery, but he should at least have to decency to conceal it/lie about it” and I don’t really think that makes it, like……better….

So, yeah, conversely he was supposed to…what? Be like “good luck with all that” to Bessie Blount? Pull an #IDon’tKnowHer ?

Because the ennoblement and acknowledgement certainly wasn’t, like I said, considerate to COA. But I don’t think it was “unconscionable”– what would’ve been more so would be, actually, to do the opposite of what he had done: not acknowledge him, not title him, not extend lands/incomes, not arrange a noble marriage for his former mistress, not grant her property, etc.

I’ve also read that if she’d had a daughter, he never would have acknowledged her, and that he only acknowledged Henry Fiztroy to “rub salt in [COA’s] wounds for not having had a living son yet”.

While I’m sure they read his secret diary and thusly know all his motivations behind every decision, I don’t have this diary and so…don’t know.

But also? We don’t really know that, because that isn’t what happened. He may well have acknowledged an illegitimate daughter (although people say one of Mary Boleyn’s was his, and a few other women’s daughters were his, there’s no definitive proof), although I don’t think he would’ve titled a potential bastard daughter by Blount as “Duchess of Richmond”– hereditary titles/peerages weren’t typically given to even women of legitimate birth (besides the Countess of Salisbury in 1512, and later the Marquess of Pembroke for Anne), much less illegitimate ones. He was probably far too much of a traditionalist for that [which, you know, he was…….save for the whole Thousand Year Break With Anglican Tradition to Marry ‘The One’ (of Six) thing].

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Re: the take that Henry’s courtship of Anne was tantamount to sexual harassment…

I definitely get that there was a power imbalance there. However, just because he could definitely have taken advantage of that if he’d wished to doesn’t necessitate that he did.

This was from 1531:

His Holiness had lately letters from France in which they tell him that the king of England is so passionately fond of the Lady [Anne] whom he intends taking for his wife, that having had a quarrel with her, he sent for some of her relatives and implored them with tears in his eyes to appease her wrath, and induce her to make peace with him.

I mean…I know this is just one example, and it’s not very early in their relationship. However, he certainly could have, as king, commanded her to speak with him, or commanded her presence during what sounds like a rather heated conflict between both of them.

Instead, he asks her family members to act as messengers because he knows she doesn’t want to speak to him.

And even in 1527, he had granted her a fair amount of authority (this was literally her speaking for him, in his presence): when Wolsey’s messenger came to ask Henry for a private audience, his messenger returned with a message from Anne (who had been at this side when he’d arrived):

“Where else is the Cardinal to come? Tell him he may come here, where the king is.”

Again…aware of the power imbalance, but this doesn’t much sound like someone who’s grappling with extremely limited autonomy to me.

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When AB mega-stans are like “Anne would have never been Henry’s mistress because she had too much self-respect” my eye twitches a lil bit.

Because the implication there is basically that Bessie Blount, Mary Boleyn, et. al any woman that ever did become a king’s mistress didn’t respect themselves and I….hm…….don’t like that.

Also it’s weirdly…kind of like Starkey’s take? If you replace ‘self-respect’ (and take away his implication that she was essentially playing hard-to-get) with ‘ambition’, in his documentary ep about her he was basically like “OBVIOUSLY Anne was witholding sex up until Calais because Henry would have never bothered to write/send ANY of these letters if she wasn’t…and probably wouldn’t have stayed betrothed to her…it was her chastity that attracted him, etc.”

(In other things Starkey has been like “Henry was not a man driven solely by libido” and then I’ll remember the above and be like so what is the truth, mustard-colored-suit wearing man??)

Idk, I don’t base my admiration on someone based on whether or not they had premarital sex? I find it kind of weird when people are like “she abstained and that was a BALLER MOVE, WE STAN” like uh…aight then. Denotes a weird preoccupation with “purity” that I’m not overly fond of. I think some of it is in response to like, the one-dimensional portrayal of her as Sultry Temptess and nothing else, or the slander and alleged ‘promiscuity’ voiced to smear her name during her trial, but if that’s your focus (She Never Would Have Because She Had R-E-S-P-E-C -T) you’re still…defining her by sex so it’s not great? (i.e. just by an absence of sex vs. by sex alone).

(Remembering a take that referred to her ‘witholding bomb p*ssy–> her p*ssy caused the Reformation’ like… incredibly reductive doesn’t even seem to cover it but that’s kind of what I’m referring to with the ‘baller’ thing).

Anyway…additionally we don’t actually know whether they consummated their relationship in any way before this date, it could have been either? There’s evidence that supports both possibles, and it could’ve fallen on a spectrum of anywhere in between.

Like, sure… Elizabeth Howard chaperoned their meetings sometimes (but like that would be the first time a couple shirked a chaperone, lol). Anne also had her own private lodgings as early as 1528, and I don’t think her mom accompanied them on their hunting trips.

I’m not definitively saying they did either, I’m just saying we don’t really know which it was.

I wasn’t like, floating with ye olde popcorn outside their bedroom window pre-marriage so…I can’t really say I know one way or the other.

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Oh gosh contention…ok we’ll go wiiith…reigns of Richard III vs. Henry VII in Discourse:

Personally, I don’t really feel like…comfortable comparing their two reigns? Mainly because I feel like it can’t be an equitable comparison; because Richard’s was only two years and Henry’s was ‘round twenty-four years.

B.I.G. said ‘Mo Money, Mo Problems’, and I say…mo time, mo opportunities to…uh…fuque up?

It’s kind of similar to how I feel about the statement that Mary I’s title as “Bloody Mary” is ‘unfair’ because overall she had less executions during her reign than her father had in his own.

Like…for sure that is technically true (about overall numbers), but also Mary’s reign was only five years, and H8′s was nearly forty years. So that was kind of inevitable; and also likely she would’ve continued religious persecutions had she lived and ruled longer.

Anyway…if I had to I would say that– as far as policy (especially considering Richard’s enduring legacy and policy in Northern England), that I’d say Richard’s reign was overall more successful, and he was more successful as king.

But again, talking about hypotheticals again and how there are kind of inherent issues in posing them (esp. with history)…he certainly could have become a worse king with time (or conversely, a better one). We don’t really know. It’s a lot easier to grab power than it is to maintain it, ultimately. And he may have been able to, but even if he had won at Bosworth there could’ve been a future rebellion that deposed him– it is, again, hard to know.