The Dead Guy Interviews by Michael A. Stusser

Author:Michael A. Stusser [Stusser Michael A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781440620553
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2007-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

MICHAEL STUSSER: Your Majesty, let’s go through your wives, shall we?

HENRY VIII: Good a place as any to begin, dear boy. That is, if you’ve got the bloody time for it….

MS: “Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.”

HVIII: If mnemonics help to remember my fame. But just so you know, I never divorced any of them. Had the things annulled, don’t you know.

MS: First off, Catherine of Aragon.

HVIII: Right-e-oh! Lovely gal, good head on her shoulders.

MS: And before he died, your brother’s, Prince Arthur’s wife.

HVIII: Right as rain. The poor bloke got an infection and keeled. He was only fifteen, for God’s sake. I knew if I married her, it would give us a strong alliance with Spain and make France cool her aggressive heels for a bit.

MS: Marrying for political reasons kind of runs in the family.

HVIII: Righto. My pop was no dummy. Mumsy [Elizabeth] was not only a catch, but the sister of Edward V. I only wish it had worked out with Cat as well as it had for my dear old mum and daddy.

MS: What was the problem?

HVIII: Well, her father [King Ferdinand II] was a horse’s arse, for one. Wanted to control me and England through his daughter, and I’d have none of it.

MS: Anything else?

HVIII: I needed a male heir, quite obviously. And it wasn’t for lack of trying, God bless her—we were married twenty blooming years. In fact, she was pregnant seven times, but only [Princess] Mary survived.

MS: So you ventured out.

HVIII: Jolly right! I was a king, mate! King needs a boy to follow up, carry on, and all that!

MS: Your mistresses included Mary Boleyn and Elizabeth Blount.

HVIII: I don’t bloody remember.

MS: Do you remember Mary Boleyn’s sister?

HVIII: I’m not a crackpot, chum, so don’t treat me like one. Anne and I got flippin’ married—that’s not something you forget.

MS: But you were already married.

HVIII: To a barren wench!

MS: So you requested Pope Clement VII allow you to marry another woman.

HVIII: Aw, I fancy we tried pretty much everything: annulment, legal challenges, secret commissions, and dispensations. Today I’d go to Mexico and it would be over in ten bloody minutes.

MS: You married Anne Boleyn in 1533.

HVIII: Brilliant day for a wedding, everyone had a fine time!

MS: Except Sir Thomas More.

HVIII: Wanker should have kept his mouth shut, and he’d be having high tea with the queen as we speak.

MS: You had him beheaded in 1535 for refusing to acknowledge your union to Anne and for stating that the pope was still head of the Church.

HVIII: ’Bout sums it up. We changed a few laws after that, made it high treason to refuse to acknowledge me as, let’s see, “the only Supreme Head in Earth of the Church of England,” I think we put it.

MS: Pope must have loved that.

HVIII: Ya know what hurt the chap worse than the title? That we stopped sending him money.

MS: Anne was an attendant of Queen Catherine. It’s actually been said that she suffered as a victim of sixteenth-century sexual harassment.

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