Saw this on Facebook…
Should we all get rid of Roman numerals and instead replace with numbers? So, rather than Henry VIII we would have Henry 8th, or even Henry 8!!
Henry has become known as the “miser king” who hated parting with cash. He taxed the nation and placed punishing fines on his nobility.
But he has also been called the best businessman to ever sit on the throne. He took over a kingdom with shaky finances, and ended up increasing revenue and the overall stability of the realm.
While Richard uses violence to suppress the voices of the vulnerable, the Queens use the power of bearing witness and ritualised grief to ensure the moral truth of his crimes is 'retailed to all posterity.'
Is Shakespeare presenting the Queens’ grief as a form of historical resistance? I’m curious to hear your thoughts!
You can read my article, where I write about the politics of memory here: https://open.substack.com/pub/adiakesserwany/p/rewriting-history-the-politics-of?r=4sesf9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Image: Richard III and Lady Anne by Edwin Austin Abbey, 1896
The entrance was bricked up in the 19th century due partly to the rising water levels of the Thames.
Portrait of the older Henry VII, years after his triumph at Bosworth and having consolidated his authority and cemented the new Tudor dynasty.
“I’ve been wondering about this lately. Edward and Mary had a pretty good relationship until he became king, and after Edward Seymour’s death, his regency council tried to stop her from attending Mass in Latin. So did she know he was being raised as a Protestant? It also seems kind of counterproductive for Bishop Gardiner to hunt down Protestants if he knew the next king was being trained as one. That wouldn’t exactly be a smart way to keep his head.
Henry VIII went back to war against France in the early 1520s, after a few years of attempting peace. The invasion in 1523 was largely unsuccessful, primarily due to the Habsburg alliance failing.
But what if the Habsburg alliance remained strong, and supported the English into Paris. Would this mean that Francis I would sue for peace or abdicate in favour of Henry? For how long could the English hold Paris?
From humble beginnings, Wolsey rose to power as Henry VIII’s key minister in the 1510s and 1520s. Wolsey was seen as a “second king” and oversaw legal reforms, foreign policy, whilst also becoming a cardinal and papal legate.
He had an ultimate ambition of becoming pope, but his failure to obtain an annulment for his king led to a sharp downfall. Wolsey was stripped of power in 1529, and died a year later on the way back to London to face a likely execution.
