Posted on 03/03/2011 12:38:11 PM PST by decimon
lol
I loved the Tudors. I watched it every Sunday night on Showtime when it was new. My hubbie loved it too. It was like “Dallas” of the Middle Ages.
That was the only reason I subscribed to Showtime.
Great show even though it was not totally historically accurate it was just amazing. T
Thank you, I couldn't, for the life of me, remember what it was called, but I had that with my two children. I received a shot after the first one which prevented any problems with the second.
;)
Thank you, Uri’el-2012!
Hank and his wives (and mistresses) have always fascinated me. A Tudor trainwreck.
I’m not too much into his history but how much inbreeding was going on then? Like the Tsar’s of Russia? Hemophilia in there perhaps?
During Henry's reign, roughly 70,000 of his subjects were executed for various offenses, most of them petty. England's population at the time was a mere 2.5 million, meaning roughly 3% of its people died doing the Tyburn jig or the cold block chop.
However, these conditions are NOT autosomal recessives which have a better chance to express themselves in a smaller population where there are fewer marriage choices.
The other big thing was the French nobility, in general, made valiant, though not always successful efforts to marry no closer than four degrees of consanguinity away. This was pretty much the case with other ruling families.
There were also NEW HIRES (as we might call them) who married in. Christopher Columbus married a Braganza Princess (for example).
That's roughly like having Princess Ann of England marry a chauffeur.
(I take it you are no fan of this evil tyrant either.)
I think that I read somewhere that most historians are now saying he probably did not have syphillis. Coincidentally, the king of France while Henry was king of England did suffer from syphillis and they shared at least one mistress (Mary Boleyn Carey Stafford).
I’ve read every book that I can find that deals with the wives of Henry VIII, but I think my favorite wife has to be Anne Boleyn.
Fascinating - thanks.
Could blood group anomaly explain Tudor king’s reproductive problems and tyrannical behavior?
I don’t know about “blood group anomaly” but rampaging syphilis certainly could explain his behavior.
I think it was Ruhesus Negative, producing one healthy and then no more healthy children. No matter how many times she got pregnant, Anne still continued to miscarry.
Interesting read. Thanks!
“Something happened; he went from vigorous, dashing and (relatively) sane and benevolent ruler to a deadly tyrant, supposedly in a short period of time.”
During the last year or so of his marriage with Anne, Henry got into a major accident at a joust that rendered him completely unconscious for hours on end, literally comatose. He woke up, got better, and then seemed to go on a rampage, killing his wife and members of her fmaily and friends. Add in the NEED for a son to succeed him and he then went off the rails.
People were executed all the time back then. The first guy to translate the Bible into English was executed in Belgium. It seems it was always best not to p*ss off the authorities.
ML/NJ
Likely. it could be that Henry VIII, like Kennedy visited brothels and slept with half the women there. Kennedy slept with Marilyn who slept with who knows who else.
Yeah, lack of authority. Bummer.
The problem could not have been low sperm count. He impregnated women 13 times. The problem was that the babies died, most of them.
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