Now Streaming With Bonus Beheading Content – Henry VIII Had Six Wives and Zero Self-Awareness
Now Streaming With Bonus Beheading Content – Henry VIII Had Six Wives and Zero Self-Awareness
I visited the Tower of London on a school trip in 1994. I was eleven. I bought a fridge magnet shaped like a headsman’s axe and a pencil with a detachable head – Anne Boleyn’s head, specifically, which came off with a satisfying pop. My teacher confiscated it. My mum kept the fridge magnet. It is still on the fridge. Some things about Britain do not change: we find the beheadings funny, we sell them in the gift shop, and we bring the kids.
Anne Boleyn has been streaming ever since.
Anne Boleyn’s True, Tragic Story: A Tudor Red Flag Retrospective
The London Prat’s cultural correspondent revisits Anne Boleyn’s story – now streaming on Netflix with bonus beheading content and a Spotify playlist curated by a production designer who clearly went through a lute phase.
The Tudor period, in retrospect, was history’s most elaborate series of red flags dressed in velvet. Henry VIII needed six attempts at marriage to “figure himself out,” which in any modern context would be grounds for a serious conversation. In Tudor England it was considered emotional growth, good governance, and occasionally grounds for France to send a letter of mild concern.
Things Tudor England Considered Normal
The Prat notes, with admirable deadpan, that in Tudor England: a king dissolving an entire religion because it wouldn’t grant him a divorce was considered “firm leadership”; charges of adultery levied against a queen were considered credible even when invented at short notice; and being invited to a private meeting with the King was, statistically, not great news for anyone involved.
If your annual performance review could end with your head on a spike, you would also work very hard. This is, historians agree, the real reason Tudor England was so productive.
NewsThump’s history desk observes that Henry VIII remains the most-streamed British monarch in television history – which says something interesting about what we find entertaining and something more interesting about what we choose to romanticise.
The Gift Shop Endures
Anne Boleyn was twenty-eight when Henry had her executed on charges that most historians describe as “fabricated” and that a modern employment tribunal would describe as “a fairly clear case.” She had given him a daughter, a Church of England, and five years of her life. He gave her a French swordsman, which was considered an upgrade on the standard axe. Britain put it on a fridge magnet and called it heritage.
My mum’s fridge magnet is still there. Between the pizza place number and a photo of the cat. Anne deserves better. The pencil, honestly, was brilliant.