History Series / TheSixWivesOfHenryVIII

* Wife #1: UsefulNotes/CatherineOfAragon (Annette Crosbie), a Spanish princess brought from across the sea to marry Henry's older brother Arthur. Unfortunately, the sickly Arthur died soon after the ceremony, leaving Catherine at the mercy of Arthur's skinflint father, [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfTudor Henry VII]]. It only was after his death that Catherine was finally able to fulfill her destiny as the royal baby-making machine for the new King, Henry VIII, but her performance in that department left much to be desired since she could only produce a single daughter, Mary, and a few stillborn children. Henry eventually tried to trade her in for a new, younger model (one of her Ladies-in-Waiting), who was to become...

* AdaptationDyeJob: Averted. Very unusually, Catherine of Aragon is portrayed not as the stereotypically dark Spaniard she's often portrayed as but as the strawberry blonde she actually was.

* Wife #5: Catherine Howard (Angela Pleasance), the Anna Nicole Smith of her day. Henry knew nothing of her early life, however -- and probably wouldn't have found out about it, if one of Catherine's old hook-ups hadn't shown up at the palace one day asking for a job. Rumors of Catherine's underage "Girls Gone Wild" behavior soon began to circulate, and she realized the only way she could survive the king finding out about it would be to bear him a son. Unfortunately, the king was impotent, and since Viagra wouldn't be invented for another 500 years, Catherine had to find an alternative means of impregnation. This she did by luring one of Henry's more handsome attendants into becoming a sperm donor, but the two of them quickly grew careless with their liasons and were soon discovered. Everyone who was involved with the scandal swiftly had their breathing licenses revoked, with Catherine herself being made to share the same fate as her cousin, Anne Boleyn. In spite of all this, Henry decided to give the whole "wedded bliss" thing one last try with--

Whew. This series had a lot of history to cover, and it did it well. Helping it along was its main star, Keith Michell, who does such an excellent job of portraying the bombastic, stubborn, larger-than-life Henry VIII, once you've watched him in the role you'll have a difficult time picturing anyone ''else''. He went on to reprise the role in the 1996 series of ''Literature/ThePrinceAndThePauper'' by Creator/TheBBC. Rich with period detail and great performances, this series (now available on DVD, as well as on [[Creator/TheBBC {{BritBox}}]]) is a must-see for anyone interested in the drama and history surrounding one of the most interesting men who ever lived. The series also inspired a sequel series, ''Series/ElizabethR'', about the life of Henry's second daughter who, ironically, turned out to be the "son" that Henry always wanted, a powerful, intelligent monarch who was to usher England into one of its greatest Golden Ages.

* Wife #5: Catherine Howard (Angela Pleasance), the Creator/AnnaNicoleSmith of her day. Henry knew nothing of her early life, however -- and probably wouldn't have found out about it, if one of Catherine's old hook-ups hadn't shown up at the palace one day asking for a job. Rumors of Catherine's underage "Girls Gone Wild" behavior soon began to circulate, and she realized the only way she could survive the king finding out about it would be to bear him a son. Unfortunately, the king was impotent, and since Viagra wouldn't be invented for another 500 years, Catherine had to find an alternative means of impregnation. This she did by luring one of Henry's more handsome attendants into becoming a sperm donor, but the two of them quickly grew careless with their liasons and were soon discovered. Everyone who was involved with the scandal swiftly had their breathing licenses revoked, with Catherine herself being made to share the same fate as her cousin, Anne Boleyn. In spite of all this, Henry decided to give the whole "wedded bliss" thing one last try with--

''The Six Wives of Henry VIII'' is a six-part landmark British mini-series made in 1970 which details the life of one of England's most colorful kings. (It's also one of the first British drama series to be videotaped in color, and was first introduced to American audiences via CBS and then PBS' ''Masterpiece Theatre'' series.) Each episode is a self-contained play which revolves around each of Henry the VIII's hapless spouses, who are as follows:

* Wife #1: UsefulNotes/CatherineOfAragon, a Spanish princess brought from across the sea to marry Henry's older brother Arthur. Unfortunately, the sickly Arthur died soon after the ceremony, leaving Catherine at the mercy of Arthur's skinflint father, Henry VII. It only was after his death that Catherine was finally able to fufill her destiny as the royal baby-making machine for the new King, Henry VIII, but her performance in that department left much to be desired since she could only produce a single daughter, Mary, and a few stillborn children. Henry eventually tried to trade her in for a new, younger model (one of her Ladies-in-Waiting), who was to become...

* Wife #2. UsefulNotes/AnneBoleyn. An opportunistic, dark-haired beauty with a cutting dry wit and an uncanny ability to generate enemies all around her. But she rode the moon as long as Henry loved her--and as long as there was a possibility of her bearing him a rightful son and heir. Henry's battle to convince the Catholic church to allow him to divorce Catherine and marry Anne was a long, protracted affair, but eventually the bombastic, over-the-top monarch hit upon a perfect solution: break off from the church in Rome and start a new church with himself at the head! Soon Catherine was out of the picture (to die later on from neglect) and Anne was in. Unfortunately Anne wasn't nearly as good at the "dutiful wife" thing as she had been at the "snarky outspoken mistress" thing and Henry soon tired of her increasing nagging - whatever Catherine's failure in the marital bed, at least ''she'' kept her mouth shut whenever Henry wandered. Anne also wasn't very good at the whole "bearing a male heir" thing, as she was only able to produce a daughter, Elizabeth. A few trumped-up charges of adultery and incest later, and Anne was on the chopping block, to be replaced by--

* Wife #3: UsefulNotes/{{Jane Seymour|Royalty}}, AKA "Plain Jane". Jane spent much of her time as Queen trying to reunite Henry with his estranged daughters and angsting over what had been done to her predecessor, Anne. Surely karma (or the English Renaissance equivalent of it) wasn't going to let her profit from such a travesty of Justice. One can almost see the relief in Jane's face as the karmic hammer finally falls, striking her with puerperal fever and death a few days after giving birth to Henry's son and heir Prince Edward. Henry was genuinely devastated by Queen Jane's death and thus refused all thought of tying the knot again, until his slimy chancellor, Thomas Cromwell, urged him to marry--

* Wife #4: UsefulNotes/AnneOfCleves, a German princess whom Henry had never met in person, but whose official painted portrait was pretty hawt. Unfortunately her picture was the Renaissance equivalent of a heavily Photoshopped Craigslist photo-- once the king saw her in person, he wanted nothing to do with her. Yet he had to marry her, lest he offend the Germans with whom he was hoping to form an all-important Protestant Alliance. Anne, for her part, was not too keen on marrying the by-now morbidly obese monarch, but she went ahead with the wedding ceremony (which, thankfully, did NOT conclude with a hot, steamy consummation scene). Ignored and without friends, Anne tried her best to survive in the cold atmosphere of the English court. Cromwell, the official who arranged the whole debacle, begged Anne to make the marriage work, but she told him (in a very polite and British way) to stick it. (He was executed a short time after, but it was okay since he was sort of a jerk.) Anne savvily arranged her own exit from the chains of wedded bliss by promising Henry a quick and easy divorce, and wound up with wealth, prestige, and the title "the King's beloved sister". Once free, Henry then went on to marry--

* Wife #5: Catherine Howard, who could be called the Anna Nicole Smith of her day. Henry knew nothing of her early life, however -- and probably wouldn't have found out about it, if one of Catherine's old hook-ups hadn't shown up at the palace one day asking for a job. Rumors of Catherine's underage "Girls Gone Wild" behavior soon began to circulate, and she realized the only way she could survive the king finding out about it would be to bear him a son. Unfortunately, the king was impotent, and since Viagra wouldn't be invented for another 500 years, Catherine had to find an alternative means of impregnation. This she did by luring one of Henry's more handsome attendants into becoming a sperm donor, but the two of them quickly grew careless with their liasons and were soon discovered. Everyone who was involved with the scandal swiftly had their breathing licenses revoked, with Catherine herself being made to share the same fate as her cousin, Anne Boleyn. In spite of all this, Henry decided to give the whole "wedded bliss" thing one last try with--

* Wife: #6: UsefulNotes/CatherineParr, a pious widow who had already married and buried two husbands by the time she met Henry. Her main purpose in marrying the king was to serve as a political pawn for the Protestant faction of the government, who was at war with the Catholic faction of the government, who was at war with pretty much ''everyone'' who disagreed with them. The CorruptChurch official, Bishop Gardiner, eventually prods Catherine into tying her own noose and sticking her head into it by leading her into a religious argument with King Henry (who, by that time, felt he was a religion unto himself). Angered that his wife would disagree with him about ''anything'', he orders her sent to the dreaded Tower of London. Catherine has to engage in some serious backpedalling and kissing up to get Henry to forgive her, which he does. At which point he drops and soon dies, leaving Catherine to continue her career as pawn-turned-Queen for the ambitious Thomas Seymour, one of her pre-Henry paramours and uncle to the incoming King, Edward the VI.

Whew. This series had a lot of history to cover, and it did it well. Helping it along was its main star, Keith Michell, who did an excellent job of portraying the bombastic, stubborn, larger-than-life Henry VIII. (Once you've watched him in the role you'll have a difficult time picturing anyone ''else'' as Henry VIII. He went on to reprise the role in the 1996 series of ''Literature/ThePrinceAndThePauper'' by Creator/TheBBC.) Rich with period detail and great performances, this series (which is now available on DVD) is a must-see for anyone interested in the drama and history surrounding one of the most interesting men who ever lived. (This mini-series inspired a sequel series, ''Series/ElizabethR'', about the life of Henry's second daughter who, ironically, turned out to be the "son" that Henry always wanted, a powerful, intelligent monarch who was to usher England into one of its greatest Golden Ages. )

* {{Blackmail}}: When Queen Catherine Howard's old boyfriend comes back into her life blackmailing her for a job, one has to wonder why she doesn't simply point out the very logical fact that if he reveals their earlier indiscretions, ''he'' would be liable to face the same punishment that she would. But then again, Catherine Howard wasn't portrayed as being very smart...

* DecadentCourt: The various religious and familial factions of Henry's court were constantly at war with each other. They would even support the execution of their own family members if doing so got them ahead at court. This is especially a key part of the episode on Jane Seymour, who is too naive and principled to consciously navigate the various plots and factions at Henry VIII's court, especially the growing conflict between Catholics and Protestants over England's religious future.

* FaceDeathWithDignity: Both Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard muster up as much dignity as they can facing the headsman; Catherine actually spends her imprisonment practicing on a block brought in at her request. Totally averted off-camera by Cromwell, whose final letter to the king devolves into begging for "mercy, mercy, mercy".
* {{Foreshadowing}}: Cranmer hopes that one condemned man isn't sentenced to be burned: "We all fear those flames." Cranmer would later be burned as a heretic by Mary Tudor.

* HeroicBSOD: Catherine Parr has one of these after learning that her husband plans to send her to the Tower of London. It takes a talking down by her friend, Bishop Cranmer, to get her sane again.
* HistoricalBadassUpgrade: Anne of Cleves is depicted as being politically smart, and she persuades Henry to never consummate the marriage, as well as start the negotiations for her divorce. The real Anne of Cleves' upbringing and personality was much closer to Jane Seymour's, although [[StrongerThanTheyLook Anne]] also had a hidden stubborness and toughness which her predecessor lacked.
* HistoricalBeautyUpdate: Averted with Henry, for the most part. Unlike that [[Series/TheTudors other show about Henry the VIII,]] this one didn't feel the need to keep its star looking like a hunky supermodel throughout the character's entire life. Keith Michell is just as compelling as the Older Henry covered with makeup and a fat suit as he was as the thin, handsome Younger Henry.
* {{Hypocrite}}: When Henry is courting Jane Seymour, he tries to impress her with a "miraculous" relic that he owns, and she is indeed swayed. Once she's his wife and is trying to get him to ease up on the monasteries, he rails against the corruption of the Roman Church and demonstrates the trick behind the fake miracle to show how cynical the Roman Catholic religious establishment is. Jane is too distraught to think of pointing out that this means Henry took advantage of her ignorance with what is essentially a cheap illusionist's trick-- ''exactly what he was just condemning the Catholics for doing''. Just as well, since Henry probably would have reacted violently to that.

** Katherine Howard insulting the king's beloved jester and having him banned from court, just because she didn't like his looks. Considering he was one of the only members of the court who wasn't a self-serving jerkass this comes across as particularly mean.

* MoralityPet: Jane Seymour is this to Henry, to an extent. She tries to get him to go easier on the monasteries and the Catholics who are rebelling against him. Although this largely fails, she does inspire him to PetTheDog a few times - see example below.
* NotWhatItLooksLike: A very dark example. Henry catches Catherine Parr and Thomas Seymour at the end of a romantic conversation, and Catherine has to come up with a quick way to defuse the situation. The scene ends with Thomas wisely asking and being granted permission to leave the country.
* OneSteveLimit: Averted. Henry marries two Annes and three Catherines.

** After Jane Seymour's death, Henry decides to honor her wish to support a convent, despite it going against his religious agenda. And he decides to announce his intentions of doing so in front of Jane's rival, the evil and scheming Cromwell, just to make a point about how much he loved her.
** Jane Seymour, who is a devout Catholic has a sweet moment with Thomas Cranmer. While he is staunchly Protestant, It's clear that they still respect each other and neither one tries to backstab the other. In real life, Jane Seymore never tried to execute Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer or even Anne Boleyn. They were the three most outspoken Protestants in Henry's royal court at the time.
** Thomas Cranmer is rather sympathetic here compared to other potrayals. It's clear he disagrees with the Catholic Church from a religious standpoint, but he is not really anti-Catholic and/or a fanatical Protestant in this potrayal and he is not scheming to kill Catholic figures such as Thomas More, John Fisher and/or Catherine Howard. In the film adapation, he clearly is trying to HELP Katherine Howard and does not want to see her executed.

* WholeEpisodeFlashback: How Jane Seymour's episode is structured. Jane is too sick to play an active part in her son's christening, so she watches on while laying on a stretcher. While she lays there, her story is told through flashbacks.

* LighterAndSofter: Compared to later dramatizations of the Tudor era, such as Showtimes "the Tudors" and Wolf Hall.

** Thomas Cranmer is rather sympathetic here compared to other potrayals. It's clear he dissagrees with the Catholic Church from a religious standpoint, but he is not really anti-Catholic and/or a fanatical Protestant in this potrayal and he is not scheming to kill Catholic figures such as Thomas More, John Fisher and/or Catherine Howard. In the film adapation, he clearly is trying to HELP Katherine Howard and does not want to see her executed.

* InsistentTerminology: Best not to refer to the Bishop of Rome as "the Pope" in front of Henry.

* MoralityPet: Jane Seymour is this to Henry, to an extent. She tries to get him to go easier on the monasteries and the Catholics who are rebelling against him, but this largely fails, (although she does inspire him to PetTheDog a few times - see example below.)
* NotWhatItLooksLike: A very dark example. King Henry catches Catherine Parr and Thomas Seymour at the end of a romantic conversation, and Catherine has to come up with a quick way to defuse the situation. The scene ends with Thomas wisely asking and being granted permission to leave the country.

* PetTheDog: After Jane Seymour's Death, Henry decides to honor her wish to support a convent, despite it going against his religious agenda. And he decides to announce his intentions of doing so in front of Jane's rival, the evil and scheming Cromwell, just to make a point about how much he loved her.
** Jane Seymore, who is a devout Catholic has a sweet moment with Thomas Cranmer. While he is staunchly Protestant, It's clear that they still respect each other and neither one tries to backstab the other. In real life, Jane Seymore never tried to execute Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer or even Anne Boleyn. They were the three most outspoken Protestants in king Henry VIII's royal court at the time.

* UglyGuyHotWife: A non-comedic example.

* Wife #4: Anne of Cleves, a German princess whom Henry had never met in person, but whose official painted portrait was pretty hawt. Unfortunately her picture was the Renaissance equivalent of a heavily Photoshopped Craigslist photo-- once the king saw her in person, he wanted nothing to do with her. Yet he had to marry her, lest he offend the Germans with whom he was hoping to form an all-important Protestant Alliance. Anne, for her part, was not too keen on marrying the by-now morbidly obese monarch, but she went ahead with the wedding ceremony (which, thankfully, did NOT conclude with a hot, steamy consummation scene). Ignored and without friends, Anne tried her best to survive in the cold atmosphere of the English court. Cromwell, the official who arranged the whole debacle, begged Anne to make the marriage work, but she told him (in a very polite and British way) to stick it. (He was executed a short time after, but it was okay since he was sort of a jerk.) Anne savvily arranged her own exit from the chains of wedded bliss by promising Henry a quick and easy divorce, and wound up with wealth, prestige, and the title "the King's beloved sister". Once free, Henry then went on to marry--

* Wife #3: UsefulNotes/JaneSeymourRoyalty, (a.k.a Plain Jane.) Jane spent much of her time as Queen trying to reunite Henry with his estranged daughters and angsting over what had been done to her predecessor, Anne. Surely karma (or the English Renaissance equivalent of it) wasn't going to let her profit from such a travesty of Justice. One can almost see the relief in Jane's face as the karmic hammer finally falls, striking her with puerperal fever and death a few days after giving birth to Henry's son and heir Prince Edward. Henry was genuinely devastated by Queen Jane's death and thus refused all thought of tying the knot again, until his slimy chancellor, Thomas Cromwell, urged him to marry--

* Wife #5: Catherine Howard, who was easily the Anna Nicole Smith of her day. Henry knew nothing of her slutty early life, however -- and probably wouldn't have found out about it, if one of Catherine's old hook-ups hadn't shown up at the palace one day asking for a job. Rumors of Catherine's underage "Girls Gone Wild" behavior soon began to circulate, and she realized the only way she could survive the king finding out about it would be to bear him a son. Unfortunately, the king was impotent, and since Viagra wouldn't be invented for another 500 years, Catherine had to find an alternative means of impregnation. This she did by luring one of Henry's more handsome attendants into becoming a sperm donor, but the two of them quickly grew careless with their liasons and were soon discovered. Everyone who was involved with the scandal swiftly had their breathing licenses revoked, with Catherine herself being made to share the same fate as her cousin, Anne Boleyn. In spite of all this, Henry decided to give the whole "wedded bliss" thing one last try with--

* Wife #1: Catherine of Aragon, a Spanish princess brought from across the sea to marry Henry's older brother Arthur. Unfortunately, the sickly Arthur died soon after the ceremony, leaving Catherine at the mercy of Arthur's skinflint father, Henry VII. It only was after his death that Catherine was finally able to fufill her destiny as the royal baby-making machine for the new King, Henry VIII, but her performance in that department left much to be desired since she could only produce a single daughter, Mary, and a few stillborn children. Henry eventually tried to trade her in for a new, younger model (one of her Ladies-in-Waiting), who was to become...

* Wife #2. Anne Boleyn. An opportunistic, dark-haired beauty with a cutting dry wit and an uncanny ability to generate enemies all around her. But she rode the moon as long as Henry loved her--and as long as there was a possibility of her bearing him a rightful son and heir. Henry's battle to convince the Catholic church to allow him to divorce Catherine and marry Anne was a long, protracted affair, but eventually the bombastic, over-the-top monarch hit upon a perfect solution: break off from the church in Rome and start a new church with himself at the head! Soon Catherine was out of the picture (to die later on from neglect) and Anne was in. Unfortunately Anne wasn't nearly as good at the "dutiful wife" thing as she had been at the "snarky outspoken mistress" thing and Henry soon tired of her increasing nagging - whatever Catherine's failure in the marital bed, at least ''she'' kept her mouth shut whenever Henry wandered. Anne also wasn't very good at the whole "bearing a male heir" thing, as she was only able to produce a daughter, Elizabeth. A few trumped-up charges of adultery and incest later, and Anne was on the chopping block, to be replaced by--

* Wife #3: Jane Seymour, (a.k.a Plain Jane.) Jane spent much of her time as Queen trying to reunite Henry with his estranged daughters and angsting over what had been done to her predecessor, Anne. Surely karma (or the English Renaissance equivalent of it) wasn't going to let her profit from such a travesty of Justice. One can almost see the relief in Jane's face as the karmic hammer finally falls, striking her with puerperal fever and death a few days after giving birth to Henry's son and heir Prince Edward. Henry was genuinely devastated by Queen Jane's death and thus refused all thought of tying the knot again, until his slimy chancellor, Thomas Cromwell, urged him to marry--

* Wife: #6: Catherine Parr, a pious widow who had already married and buried two husbands by the time she met Henry. Her main purpose in marrying the king was to serve as a political pawn for the Protestant faction of the government, who was at war with the Catholic faction of the government, who was at war with pretty much ''everyone'' who disagreed with them. The CorruptChurch official, Bishop Gardiner, eventually prods Catherine into tying her own noose and sticking her head into it by leading her into a religious argument with King Henry (who, by that time, felt he was a religion unto himself). Angered that his wife would disagree with him about ''anything'', he orders her sent to the dreaded Tower of London. Catherine has to engage in some serious backpedalling and kissing up to get Henry to forgive her, which he does. At which point he drops and soon dies, leaving Catherine to continue her career as pawn-turned-Queen for the ambitious Thomas Seymour, one of her pre-Henry paramours and uncle to the incoming King, Edward the VI.

** Bishop Gardiner is usually potrayed based on Protestant/Puritan and anti-Catholic propaganda sources, so he tends to get a [[HistoricalVillainUpgrade]].

* DeadlyDecadentCourt: The various religious and familial factions of Henry's court were constantly at war with each other. They would even support the execution of their own family members if doing so got them ahead at court. This is especially a key part of the episode on Jane Seymour, who is too naive and principled to consciously navigate the various plots and factions at Henry VIII's court, especially the growing conflict between Catholics and Protestants over England's religious future.

''The Six Wives of Henry VIII'' is a six-part landmark British mini-series made in 1970 which details the life of one of England's most colorful kings. (It's also one of the first British drama series to be videotaped in color, and was first introduced to American audiences via PBS' ''Masterpiece Theatre'' series.) Each episode is a self-contained play which revolves around each of Henry the VIII's hapless spouses, who are as follows:

Whew. This series had a lot of history to cover, and it did it well. Helping it along was its main star, Keith Michell, who did an excellent job of portraying the bombastic, stubborn, larger-than-life Henry VIII. (Once you've watched him in the role you'll have a difficult time picturing anyone ''else'' as Henry VIII.) Rich with period detail and great performances, this series (which is now available on DVD) is a must-see for anyone interested in the drama and history surrounding one of the most interesting men who ever lived. (This mini-series inspired a sequel series, ''Series/ElizabethR'', about the life of Henry's second daughter who, ironically, turned out to be the "son" that Henry always wanted, a powerful, intelligent monarch who was to usher England into one of its greatest Golden Ages. )

* LighterAndSofter: Compared to later dramatizations of the Tudor era, such as Showtimes "the Tudors" and Wolf Hall.