History Series / TheTudors

* BrokenBase: This serious is not popular with hardcore Protestants due to the almost universally negative potrayal of most of the Protestant characters. It is surprisingly more popular with Catholics and seems to have had more views and buyers in Catholic majority countries.
* BrotherSisterIncest: Never shown or even hinted at in the programme; no suggestion that it was anything more than slander in history.

* BlatantLies: The Protestant propaganda plays. They take place after the sack of Rome in the 16th century. So calling the Pope "a rich fellow" at this point is objectively wrong. It's also unfair to Cardinal Campeggio who was trying to help king Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. To add insult to ingury, Cardinal Campeggio lost everything during the sack of Rome in RealLife and is one of the only Catholic characters who is kind towards Anne Boleyn.
** Anne Boleyn herself lies, cheats, steals and betrays on a regular basis in the Tudors. She is the least honorable of king Henry VIII's wives.

* TheRunnerUpTakesItAll: King Henry VIII inaverdantly ends up secularizing, liberalizing and modernizing the United Kingdom by promoting "humanism" and making treason a bigger cause for execuation then hersey. He also allied with the Northern European Protestant-majority countries which are among the most liberal in all of Europe.
** The dissolution of the monastaries ended up leading to a decrese in religiousity in the United Kingdom. It was panned in most of contiential Europe at the time however.

The first two seasons devotes most of their time to the dissolution of his marriage to the older Catherine of Aragon and his deepening relationship with the saucy UsefulNotes/AnneBoleyn, who was to become his second wife. Gone from this series is the traditional vision of Henry as the bearded, bloated, jewel-encrusted, aging monarch who gleefully sent his wives to the chopping block. Instead, Creator/JonathanRhysMeyers' portrayal is that of a young, dynamic king determined to use his position to squeeze as much pleasure as he can out of life whilst balancing atop the ruthless world of Renaissance politics.

** In a mild case, Katherine Howard. While the show portrays her as definitely guilty of adultery and insinuates that she had a promiscuous past even by modern standards, while in RealLife Katherine Howard was never actually found guilty of committing adultery and most modern historians assert that she was a victim of sexual abuse- being a child when her adult piano teacher began a sexual relationship with her.

* HistoryRepeats: At one point Catherine of Aragon catches her servant Anne with a necklace given to her by the King, Catherine explodes at Anne [[ArcWords while also declaring that Henry will tire of her.]] Only a few years later Anne is Queen and finds her servant Jane Seymour with a locket with Henry's image inside. She responds fairly similar to Catherine.

* HotterAndSexier: This is definitely one of the more...carnal adaptations of Henry VIII's reign.

* KangarooCourt: Anyone who Henry thinks is against him but is too prominent to simply destroy (such as Thomas More, Anne Boleyn, Thomas Cromwell and the Earl of Surrey) are subjected to such trials, Cromwell and Anne Boleyn are not even allowed to speak in their own defence.[[note]]This was actually standard then-the accused lacked any right to speak, call witnesses, question prosecution witnesses, or have an attorney. It's not for nothing those are in the Bill of Rights.[[/note]]

* ShootTheMessenger: Invoked and ultimately averted: [[spoiler: After receiving some extremely bad news from one messenger (namely that the King of Scotland has rebuffed Henry's offer of a peace between them and a Scottish army has invaded and is laying waste to northern England), when a second messenger arrives, before he can open his mouth, Henry rounds on the man, holds a knife to his throat and threatens the messenger with death if he speaks. However, he relents whenthe messenger tells him that his son Edward is seriously ill at Windsor]].

The first season devotes most of its time to the dissolution of his marriage to the older Catherine of Aragon and his deepening relationship with the saucy UsefulNotes/AnneBoleyn, who was to become his second wife. Gone from this series is the traditional vision of Henry as the bearded, bloated, jewel-encrusted, aging monarch who gleefully sent his wives to the chopping block. Instead, Creator/JonathanRhysMeyers' portrayal is that of a young, dynamic king determined to use his position to squeeze as much pleasure as he can out of life whilst balancing atop the ruthless world of Renaissance politics.

* BetaCouple: Charles and Catherine Brandon, until they are separated in Season 4.

Showtime's Emmy-nominated retelling of the life of [[UsefulNotes/HenryVIII King Henry VIII]], which devotes most of its time to the dissolution of his marriage to the older Catherine of Aragon and his deepening relationship with the saucy UsefulNotes/AnneBoleyn, who was to become his second wife. Gone from this series is the traditional vision of Henry as the bearded, bloated, jewel-encrusted, aging monarch who gleefully sent his wives to the chopping block. Instead, Creator/JonathanRhysMeyers' portrayal is that of a young, dynamic king determined to use his position to squeeze as much pleasure as he can out of life whilst balancing atop the ruthless world of Renaissance politics.

** Henry VIII was a redhead in real life, but he's a brunet in the show.

* BlatantLies: The Protestant propaganda plays. They take place after the sack of Rome in the 16th century. So calling the Pope "a rich fellow" at this point is objectively wrong. It's also unfair to Cardinal Compegio who was trying to help king Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. To add insult to ingury, Cardinal Compegio lost everything during the sack of Rome in RealLife and is one of the only Catholic characters who is kind towards Anne Boleyn.

* DiseaseByAnyOtherName: UsefulNotes/HenryVIII's armies are laying siege to Boulogne, but the men are suffering badly from the "bloody flux", i.e., dysentery[[note]] For those of you wondering, Dysentery is really bad. Imagine the worst diarrhoea in the world... now fill it full of blood... now die from it. That is what it is. It is '''''extreme shitting''''' with added death.[[/note]]

** The Pope, his Cardinals and Reginald Pole's attempts to undermine Henry and the Reformation from Rome, and Henry's attempts to eliminate Pole, are giving significant screen time in Seasons 2 and 3. But in Season 4 Pole disappears with barely a mention, and Rome is not seen or heard from again.

** My God, Thomas Boleyn! He will do anything to his children if it means power for him. He forcibly persuades Mary to become Henry's mistress, then places Anne in her place when the king tires of her. He later disowns Mary after she marries a commoner and tells her she and her husband can burn in hell. He forces George to marry a woman he can't stand and abuses Anne to keep Henry's interest. After Anne has her first miscarriage, he blames her for it and is only concerned that the unborn child is his ticket to power. He later protests against Anne and George to save himself and was relieved for himself and only concerned with keep her earldom than their lives. The last time Anne sees him is him giving her a nasty look.

** "Can you not be more like her?" Anne is floored when her brother breaks it to her that Katherine was a good queen and that Anne would do well to take a few lessons from her as to personal conduct and social policy.

** Thomas Moore. John Fisher. Katherine of Aragon. Jane Seymour. The peasant revolutionaries, just to name a few based on their portrayals in the show.

*** Cardinal Wolsey, who was recently denied the opportunity to rise to the papacy, is reminded that he does not have the authority to annul Henry's marriage to Katherine.

*** Judgment regarding Henry and Katherine's marriage reverts to the Roman Curia.

* DrivenToSuicide: Wolsey and Elizabeth, the lady in waiting of Katherine d'Aragon.

** Katherine of Aragon, grimly dressing for the Legatine Court.

* MoralMyopia: Really, Henry? You're upending the Catholic Church and trying to get an annulment on spurious grounds because your latest fling won't give it up to you, never mind who or what you're hurting in the process, and you're calling ''Katherine of Aragon'' heartless? That's more than a bit rich!

* NiceMeanAndInbetween: of the first three wives, Jane Seymour is nice, Anne Boleyn is mean and Katherine of Aragon is inbetween. Of the second trio of wives, Anne of Cleves is nice, Katherine Howard is mean and Katherine Parr is inbetween.
* NiceHat: Anne of Cleves. Henry has his moments too. As does Katherine of Aragon. And Mary Tudor in the Season 4 trailer.

* PlotParallel: This supercut[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiClYk6dqOA&ab_channel=CathleenMonroe]] shows astonishing similarities between Henry's elevation of Anne Boleyn over Katherine of Aragon and his subsequent elevation of Jane Seymour over Anne.

** Katherine of Aragon personally gave alms to the poor after Easter mass.

* UnfinishedBusiness: In the last episode, Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, and Jane Seymour all come back to give Henry a piece of their mind.

** Jane Seymore also counts. She is almost universally loved both in England and by most of Europe.

** Thomas Moore. John Fisher. Katherine of Aragon. Jane Seymore. The peasant revolutionaries, just to name a few based on their portrayals in the show.

* NiceMeanAndInbetween: of the first three wives, Jane Seymore is nice, Anne Boleyn is mean and Katherine of Aragon is inbetween. Of the second trio of wives, Anne of Cleves is nice, Katherine Howard is mean and Katherine Parr is inbetween.

** In Season 2, this has definitely turned into DeadlyDecadentCourt.

* TheScrappy: Anne Boleyn, Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer.

* MaleGaze: Constantly, thanks to all the MsFanservice characters. Perhaps most frequently with Katherine Howard who is highly serialized in the show. Most interestingly, in [[https://youtube.com/FZV5nubiGyY one scene,]] Katherine dances in the rain whilst Henry and Thomas Culpepper watch her from their windows, where she dances in the rain: in Henry’s gaze, Katherine‘s dance is innocent and childish, almost ethereally so (Henry envisioning her as a “perfect jewel of womanhood”) whilst in Culpepper’s, her dance is a lot more sexual, with camera close ups on her breasts and legs— both men dehumanizing her and seeing her as an object, but in different ways.

[[caption-width:250:"You think you know a story, but you only know how it ends."]]

** The worst example is probably the treatment Marguerite de Navarre received. In reality, she was a very intellectual and brave woman, who was a gifted writer and also traveled tirelessly to get her brother Francis freed when he had been taken captive at Pavia. Anne Boleyn was greatly influenced by her, and would as queen write that seeing her again was her greatest wish next to having a son. In the series, Marguerite is portrayed as TheDitz, who sleeps with Henry right after meeting him.

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* GreatOffscreenWar: The war of the roses.