"The Six Wives of Henry VIII" by Alison Weir

Re-visit to the book I have read long time ago, with different (hopefully more mature) perspective this time.

It is easy to be completely fascinated with Tudors - after all, not only they were really interesting characters surrounded with intriguers, sycophants and manipulative leeches but their lives were fortunately extremely well documented so we don't have to reply on second or third hand testimonies, it has all been noted, filed and remembered in all its glory and gory. What appears as scary, cautionary fairy tale actually really existed and to our current minds seems almost unbelievable that people really lived and behaved that way - which is probably also what the future generations will say about us. For one thing, back than religion had a really utmost importance in people's lives and obviously it was a question of life and death - today we might take it as a purely personal choice but in 16th century there was no such a thing, you either follow the rules or burn on a stake. 

Henry VIII was of course, history's great true life Bluebeard and one of the unexpected facts of this well-researched book is that trough his life people actually liked and respected him very much. Not feared, loved. Such was his public image, glamour and charisma that most of the time it appears that people genuinely cared for his well-being and all this wives business was understood as necessity - one after another, these women went in and out but it seems people blamed them instead of Henry himself. I wonder could it be because as a young man he was so promising (athletic, joyous, generous) that everything that came later in life (obesity, cruelty, egotism and basically tyranny) went kind of overlooked? Historians tend to divide his reign (and personality) between two clearly defined parts, the younger, golden years and later decline into brutality and neurosis. On closer look, it seems that his personality really drastically changed in his mid-40es when the pressure of international politics, internal intrigues and matter of successor eventually made him deeply suspicious of everybody - people were executed at his whim and there is no doubt that some (like Cardinal Wolsey) he later regretted, though when it came to his wives, they had incredibly difficult task of pampering him as a overgrown spoiled child or else. 

I don't remember my impressions first time around - except that I enjoyed the book very much for its vivid presentation of a certain time and place in history - but now I analyse things perhaps little more cautiously and from this perspective, it appears that a lot of space was focused on first wife, Catherine of Aragon, in fact so much that it almost overbalances the rest of the book. True, their marriage was by far the longest (24 years) and it took agonising eight years of legal wrestling before finally Henry had enough, cut the ties with Vatican and made himself head of the church in England. I think there is no doubt that Catherine of Aragon would have completely different life if only she accepted his decision and either packed for Spain or enjoyed comfortable life tucked away somewhere in a countryside - that she refused to do and insisted on her royal prerogative is very brave but, honestly, kind of pointless. The only thing it achieved, it made life more difficult for both herself and her daughter. Boleyn, on the other hand appears as manipulative hussy whose vengefulness eventually turned against herself. Each of following ladies were completely different as personalities and it makes for enjoyable reading, its just that now I somehow see it differently than in my younger days when I read it as almost horror story about Bluebeard and his innocent victims. 

Now I think none of them was innocent - each single of them knew what she is getting herself into, starting from Catherine of Aragon who was biding her time in forced poverty until Henry proposed to her (echo of what is to come). What really makes me curious is, why - after the third wife it became clear that we are dealing with extremely wilful and determined ruler - women still flocked to him and even considered marriage at all. Not everybody - Christina of Denmark famously declined - but it seems that people were just ready to close their eyes and switch off the conscience when it came to possibility of royal favors. Living with such a person meant you were always in some kind of danger - be it from Henry himself or his advisors, as the last wife Catherine Parr learned very well.