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The Ex-Wives
As a Group
- Color-Coded Characters:
- Catherine of Aragon — Yellow/Gold
- Anne Boleyn — Green, drawing from the belief that the folk song "Greensleeves
" was written about her. - Jane Seymour — White
- Anne of Cleves — Red
- Katherine Howard — Pink
- Catherine Parr — Blue
- Together We Are X: The song "Ex-Wives" introduces the Queens this way more than once. At least on three occasions, each of them announces how they became Henry VIII's exes — divorced [him], beheaded [by him], died [during childbirth], or survived (in the sense of having outlived him); after one or two related verses, all six sing they are "live tonight" for the audience's sake. Immediately after, they sing, "Everybody knows that we used to be six wives". Mid-song, each Queen introduces herself by stating her name and narrating her situation briefly; with the other Queens serving as Greek Chorus and echoing which fate that Queen endured. Then, they sing the chorus one last time and add a "But now we're ex-wives" line that is followed by each Queen singing up her number and all of them in unison finishing with "Six!".
Catherine of Aragon
"There's no way!"
Henry the Eighth's first wife, whom he ultimately divorced to marry Anne Boleyn.
- All for Nothing: In her song "No Way", Catherine tells Henry that she won't let him divorce her and that she'll remain his wife no matter what. And as we all know, Henry did manage to divorce her and marry Anne.
- Church Lady: She's a devoted Catholic, and this ends up causing a rift between her and Henry.
- Determinator: Believes that she's Henry's rightful wife and will do whatever it takes to remain this.
- Fiery Redhead: A lot of her actresses have red or auburn hair and she has a very fierce personality, as shown by her song.
- Gold-Colored Superiority: Catherine of Aragon, who still proudly held onto her title as Queen of England even after Henry annulled his marriage with her, has gold/yellow as a Color Motif.
- Gratuitous Spanish: Like both Annes and their gratuitous language. Justified as she was from Spain.
- The High Queen: The casting description refers to her as "A real badass monarch. Commanding, sure of herself, bold."
- Heir Club for Men: Protests that she did have a child with Henry, but it wasn't enough if that child wasn't a boy. Joke's on Henry, because in the end, Mary would become queen.
- Leitmotif: "No Way".
- Naturalized Name: Her given name was 'Catalina', however she became known as "Catherine" in England, which the show calls her.
- Rage Breaking Point: Catherine was disregarded as women were at the time, and clearly cheated on. Being divorced, especially as she was a fervent Catholic, was the straw that broke the camel's back.
- Stiff Upper Lip: "Had my golden rule / Gotta keep my cool, yeah, baby." No matter what life (or Henry) threw at her, she never showed anger or sorrow — right up until Henry said he wanted an annulment.
- X Meets Y: Her "Queenspirations" are Beyoncé and Shakira.
Anne Boleyn
"Sorry not sorry 'bout what I said!"
Henry's second wife, who lost her head after being (likely falsely) accused of cheating on him.- Brief Accent Imitation: Andrea Macaset's Anne adopts a mocking version of Catherine of Aragon's English accent for the "Don't be bitter 'cause I'm fitter" line in "Don't Lose Your Head".
- Gratuitous French: Justified like Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves in that she grew up in France.
- The Hedonist: Anne Boleyn, by her admission, is just out to have a good time and doesn't care about who she hurts.Sorry, not sorry 'bout what I said
I'm just trying to have some fun!
Don't worry, don't worry, don't lose your head
I didn't mean to hurt anyone - Heir Club for Men: A major reason Henry turned against her was that though she bore him a daughter, she failed to give him a son.
- Hidden Depths: After coming off as The Ditz for most of the show, she presents a very erudite critique about the flaws of comparing the six women. Though it's suggested at the end that her ditziness may have been at least partly an act.
- Leitmotif: "Don't Lose Your Head".
- Oh, Crap!: When King Henry finds out that Anne has been cheating on him and scolds her, Anne replies by insulting him. This makes Henry so furious that he orders her to be executed. Anne realises the consequences of her actions only after their argument is over and has no idea on how to save herself.
- Phoneaholic Teenager: To the point she misses her cue the first time!
- Red/Green Contrast: This imagery sees usage in "Ex-Wives", contrasting her green sleevesnote and red lipstick, implying promiscuity and/or passion.Why did I lose my head?
Well, my sleeves may be green
But my lipstick's red - Sophisticated as Hell: Ah, Anne Boleyn… She was extremely well-educated and boasts of having grown up in the French court, but also has such gems as "Everybody chill, it's totes God's will".
- Suddenly Shouting: "OH MY GOD, YOU GUYS, HE'S REALLY GONNA CHOP MY HEAD OFF!"
- Sympathetic Adulterer: Admits she flirted with some men (and perhaps went further) when Henry began sleeping around, "just to make him jel". She's still portrayed sympathetically, mostly because Henry cheated first and responded by killing her.
- X Meets Y: Her "Queenspirations" are Lily Allen and Avril Lavigne.
Jane Seymour
"I'll be by your side, cause my love is set in stone."
Henry's third wife, and the "only one he truly loved". This is arguable, as she ended up dying in childbirth of Henry's only son.- Death by Childbirth: Of Edward VI. Although he outlived both of his parents.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Often played by a blonde, she is perhaps the kindest of the queens, only losing her temper once.
- Leitmotif: "Heart of Stone".
- Love Martyr: She fully admits Henry was far from a perfect person, but stuck by him and loved him until the end. By her own admission, she lacked the fire of the other queens; the only way she could deal with Henry's temper was to face it and love him regardless.
- Mama Bear: She swears to Edward that her love for him is stronger than death. This is evident in the song "Six" where the queens imagine how life could have been better for them; of the six, Jane is the only one who imagines still marrying Henry, albeit not being defined by it.
- Pungeon Master: "But I'm not what I seem, or am I? Stick around and you'll suddenly see more"note , and "the Royal-ling Stones"note .
- Silk Hiding Steel: "Heart of Stone" is all about this trope, with Jane singing that no matter what comes her way, no matter what Henry puts her through, she can take it, and is still going to be standing in the end.
- Team Mom: Shares this role with Parr, given as she only loses her cool ONCE in the whole musical, and is generally one of the calmer queens.
- X Meets Y: Her "Queenspirations" are Adele and Sia.
Anne of Cleves
"I'm the queen of the castle!"
Henry's fourth wife. Rejected on her looks, but got the run of her own castle.- Born Lucky: Anna, out of all the others, got the best deal -– divorced from Henry with a large settlement to boot.
- Graceful Loser: The other queens are quick to point out that Anna's entire would-be argument that she had the worst time of being married to Henry consisted of bragging about how great her independent, single life was as his honorary "sister". She quickly concedes and shrugs it off with a cheerful (and still slyly boastful) "Oh, well. Back to the palace!"
- Gratuitous German: Like Anne Boleyn and Catherine of Aragon and their native languages. Anna is from Germany, so it's logical she'd speak it.
- Inconsistent Spelling: Her name is spelt both 'Anne' (the traditional spelling in England) and 'Anna' (in her native German).
- Leitmotif: "Get Down".
- Sassy Black Woman: She's often played by Black actresses, like in the original West End and Broadway casts, and her Leitmotif is one long "I Am Great!" Song about how great her life was after she and Henry divorced.
- Troll:
- X Meets Y: Her "Queenspirations" are Rihanna and Nicki Minaj.
Katherine Howard
"I think we can all agree, I'm the ten amongst these threes."
Henry's fifth wife, although Henry was far from her first relationship...- Am I Just a Toy to You?: She has a Heel Realization about the men who abused her when she was younger, realizing that none of them cared about her in the end.
- The Baby of the Bunch: She was only 18/19 when she died, much younger than most of the other ex-Wives.
- Break the Cutie: We see this happening to her in the course of her song, as she reflects on her (ahem) promiscuous past and realizes that what she had gone through was sexual abuse.
- Deadpan Snarker: On Henry VIII:Globally revered
Although you wouldn't know it from the look of that beard - Despair Event Horizon: "I thought this time was different… Why did I think he'd be different? But it's NEVER, EVER DIFFERENT!"
- Desperately Craves Affection: Katherine Howard just wants someone to love her, genuinely love her, not just use her for sex. She doesn't even need it to be romantic love; when she befriends Thomas, she's happy to have a confidant and friend who seems to genuinely care about her well-being. When she realizes he doesn't, she's devastated.
- Fille Fatale: Deconstructed and played for tragedy. For all her promiscuity and flirtatiousness, at the end of the day, Katherine is a teenage girl who adult men used as a sex object.
- Leitmotif: "All You Wanna Do".
- Mal Mariée: Katherine is married to a man thrice her age, and is rumored to have slept with Thomas Culpeper, who's closer to her own age.
- Oh, Crap!: "[Thomas] says we have a 'connection'..."
- Pink Is Erotic: Her signature color is pink, and she prides herself on her sexual promiscuity... before realizing that men only want her for sex.
- Pink Means Feminine: That said, her pink clothing also alludes to the fact that she was still a teenage girl when she died, as the color is usually associated with young girls.
- Proud Beauty: She thinks very highly of herself and her good looks.I think we can all agree
I'm the ten amongst these threes - Rape as Backstory: Katherine has been sexually abused by adult men since she was thirteen, convincing herself that it's "love", up until Katherine believes herself to have finally found a friend in Thomas Culpeper — only to realize that he also only sees her as a sex object, and is implied to rape her.
- Rose-Haired Sweetie: Her ponytail is, in most productions, hot pink, and historically, she was known (outside of her alleged adultery) for her kindness.
- Sanity Slippage Song: Despite how many have interpreted it, throughout "All You Wanna Do", Katherine slowly goes insane with pain and grief.
- So Beautiful, It's a Curse: At first, she's rather arrogant about her beauty and claims that she's the best-looking of the monarch's many lovers. But then she starts going into her past — "And ever since I was a child / I'd make the boys go wild" — and explains that throughout her entire life, men have treated her like a sex object (in real life, for example, Katherine was only thirteen when her music teacher, Henry Mannox, began having sex with her — and he was as old as thirty-two). Though initially Katherine claims that she likes all of the attention and power she derives from these relationships, she ultimately realizes that she's been a victim of statutory rape and abuse for her entire life, and the one time she thought she'd finally made a male friend, it turns out he was the same as the others; to rub salt into the wound, it was her friendship with that man which ended up getting her killed, as she was accused of adultery.
- Sympathetic Adulterer: Justified because what happened with Culpeper was unambiguously rape in the musical. (Historically, whether or not their encounter even took place is unknown.)
- X Meets Y: Her "Queenspirations" are Ariana Grande and Britney Spears.
Catherine Parr
"I don't need your love, no no"
Henry's sixth and final wife. Survived from outliving him.- Blue Is Calm: She has blue as a signature color and is the only queen who doesn't partake in the fight.
- Blue Means Smart One: She has blue as her Color Motif and is The Smart Girl of the six wives. She mentions advocating for women's education and the fact that she was the first queen consort to publish a book under her own name.
- Brainy Brunette: Frequently played by dark-haired performers, Parr is a published author (in Real Life, she was the first Queen Consort to produce a book under her own name) and an advocate for female literacy.
- "Dear John" Letter: Her song describes the letter she had to write to her sweetheart after Henry proposed.
- Leitmotif: "I Don't Need Your Love".
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Along with Jane, she is the blue to Cleves, Aragon and Howard's red.
- Team Mom: If Jane isn't, she is. She's the sole one who doesn't get caught up in the fight (despite insults flung her way) and indeed, in "Six", she's the one who organized the whole thing.
- True Blue Femininity: Dresses in blue, and is kind and even-tempered even when she is being insulted.
- X Meets Y: Her "Queenspirations" are Alicia Keys and Emeli Sande.
Other Characters
Henry VIII
"I can't believe Henry literally sucks!"
- 0% Approval Rating: All the queens hate him for the way he mistreated them.
- Abhorrent Admirer: To Parr, who was in love with another man at the time Henry proposed.
- The Bluebeard: Killed two of his wives (Boleyn and Howard) on trumped-up charges, and arranged for another (Aragon) to die of neglect. Even Seymour's death could be indirectly attributed to him, since he was the one who got her pregnant, leading to her later death from childbirth complications.
- The Ghost: Does not appear in the play, but is portrayed through his effect on the characters' lives.
- He does appear on-stage in the West End production. He's the vacuum cleaner they clean up the show with.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Henry, both historically and in the musical, was rash, hot-tempered, and was quick to order the execution of his wives when they wronged him (or if he perceived that they had wronged him).
- Hate Sink: The entire musical is his ex-wives pointing out how he ruined their lives. (Only Seymour defends him, but even she realizes his love for her was conditional, on her having a son.)
- Heir Club for Men: A major motivator for his serial matrimony.
- Hypocrite:
- He accuses both Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard of cheating on him and executes them for it, despite being a serial philanderer himself.
- Anna of Cleves points out it's very rich of him to call her ugly given that he was twenty-four years her senior and in very bad shape by the time she met him.
- I Was Quite the Looker: Even after everything she's been through, Catherine of Aragon is still willing to concede that Henry was pretty hot when they got married.
- Karma Houdini: Died of natural causes, still rich, powerful, and respected.
- Large and in Charge: He's the King of England and head of his own church, and noted for being a big guy.
- The Loins Sleep Tonight: Anne accuses Henry of this in "Don't Lose Ur Head", leading to her execution.
- Lousy Lovers Are Losers: He's implied to be a lousy lover by more than one of his Ex-Wives, likely because he never really cared for them. Anne in particularly mocked him for his impotency and got beheaded for it, and Anne of Cleves implies he's very underendowed.
- Pet the Dog: He treated all his wives terribly, but even he wasn't awful 100% of the time. It doesn't alleviate his actions one bit, though.
- Jane remembers him being kind and loving to her, though it's partially ruined by the fact that she knows it's only because she bore him a son.
- He gave Anna of Cleves a pretty cushy deal, giving her a castle and permission to drop in on court whenever she liked. It's probably the most decent thing he ever did for any of his wives.
- Start My Own: When Rome wouldn't give Henry an annulment from Aragon, he decided to break away and found his own church.
- Teeny Weenie: As Anne of Cleves puts it (but is cut off from Catherine Howard).Anne of Cleves: Funny how we all discuss that [her rejection from Henry because of her looks], but never Henry's little–
- Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: He described by the queens, who are all pretty attractive, as having: a messy beard, a Teeny Weenie, gross obesity, and leg ulcers. This wasn't always the case, as Catherine of Aragorn admits that he did to look handsome in his youth. His ugliness wouldn't be so bad had his personality not been so awful and had he not been hypocritically obsessed with her wives' beauty before considering them as actual people.
Hans Holbein the Younger
A painter who is mentioned in the song "Haus of Holbein" and briefly in "Six".
- The Ace: Nobility and royalty from all across Europe have him paint their portraits, and the King of England specifically chooses his wife from how good she looked in Holbein's portrait of her.
- The Ghost: Never shows up but in-story (and real life) made several of the paintings we know the queens best by.
