i'm henry the eighth, i am!

one thing you can do if you have netflix is you can kill all your weeknights for a substantial chunk of time watching all the tudors episodes and i really recommend that you do.

it’s GOOD. like history and intrigue and murder and corset heaving kind of good. king henry viii was a mercurial ruler which doesn’t mean he was poisonous if ingested but does mean he was moody and changeable and ruthless in the finality and quick execution of his decisions.

i use the word ‘execution’ on purpose because he did, execute, almost everyone who was at one time close to him. it makes for interesting television because each season is a whole new host of characters but it also makes for nerve-wracking television if you like a character because you never know when they'll fall out of favour and onto the block.

if you were in the kings court and weren’t beheaded, or drawn and courted, or stripped of your riches/houses/priestly robes, you probably died of a swift and deadly disease for which there was no known cure. in fact only one of the kings long standing dukes, (charles brandon), and two of his six wives (anne of cleves and catherine parr) survived his wrath. uncle wikipedia says 'he beheaded more english notables than any monarch before or since'. i wonder if they put that in his yearbook. i wonder if anyone signed it.

i love the dresses and the jewels and the royal swan pies. i love the court dancing and the music and the uncomfortable pairing of royal pomp with torture and execution. it is a savage time when people were at once in love with the beauty of finery and luxury but not yet beyond the savagery of unjust persecution, changeable law and toilets that didn't flush.

it’s like a soap opera! with be-headings!

history is fascinating because everything is so different. i can't watch that show without wondering what their underwear was like and not just because i'm perverted but because i'm a student of everything new. or in this case old. i want to know what they thought about. what they worried about. how their life was different with the absence of the ability to communicate in the immediate way available to us now. i wonder if social media would have saved anne boleyn! we could have made a facebook page and liked it and king henry viii would have had to call the whole thing off because, after all, we're only slaves to popular opinion.

watch the tudors! and wear your courtly jewels! maybe just ixnay the corset if you're going to have snacks. those things aren't kind to digestion.