Tudor What If's!

Back to my now completed Tudor sketchbook page! Remember my post ''playing with portraits''? In it I mentioned this page has something to do with my insomnia, well let me explain! 

I've had insomnia since my late 30"s (and apart from taking sleeping pills, I've tried everything) and although I fall asleep, I always wake up for a couple of hours during the night…… and what do I do, well what every insomniac does, I play Tudor What If's of course! The Tudors have been my historical passion since I was about 6, and to stop all those day to day worries zooming around my head, I think about the What Ifs and boy, some of them are monumental! 

Let’s take Catherine of Aragon for example, if her first husband Arthur hadn’t have died shortly after the wedding, Henry would have remained the spare! The second son with nothing much to do apart from amuse himself, a bit like Prince Harry really  and British history would've been very different. Would a King Arthur have renounced the Catholic church and have started his own? Remaining with Catherine, what if she lied about her wedding night to Arthur? She received the dispensation from the Pope to marry Henry VIII on the grounds of her marriage to Henry’s brother not having been consummated, her husband Arthur however had bragged about ''being in the midst of Spain'' on his wedding night. 

Then we've got my historical girl crush Anne Boleyn, what if her attempt at marrying Henry Percy had succeeded? No Henry, no break with Rome, she would have kept her head! What if she,d decided to become the King's mistress (like her sister did), what if she'd borne boys …. No Queen Elizabeth I and probably no Jane (simpering) Seymour. You've probably guessed I don’t like Jane Seymour (although I loved her portrait at the KHM in Vienna), what a piece of work, stepping over the bloody corpse of her predecessor to marry! Henry and Jane married 11 days after Anne Boleyn’s execution, I'm afraid I don’t buy into the trendy bank of Cromwell's coup against Anne Boleyn, Cromwell certainly was involved but Henry's dalliance with Jane was in full swing and Anne Boleyn’s miscarriage at the end of January, certainly played a major role to my mind. If Anne's pregnancy had gone full term and she'd given birth to a prince, there is no way she'd have ''lost her head'', regardless of how much Cromwell disliked her. Never mind, Cromwell (Henry’s Chief Minister) learned what goes around, comes around, getting the chop 4 years after Anne in 1540 over wife number 5 …. Anne of Cleves. In an other what if, what if Jane hadn’t died after giving birth to Henry's long awaited son? Then, the next 3 marriages to Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr wouldn’t have happened.

So let’s blame the painter Holbein for marriage number 5, what if his portrait of Anne of Cleves hadn’t made her so attractive, the wedding to Henry and her subsequent divorce wouldn’t have happened or if Henry had liked her,  Henry would ''only'' have had four wives. Sooooo, moving on to Catherine Howard, wife number 5, the what if for her, would be …. what if she had used her brain, seriously, I ask myself what was she thinking messing around with Thomas Culpepper? Hadn’t she seen or heard what had happened to her predecessors, Anne Boleyn was accused of adultery and beheaded, why would you do the same (the case against Anne Boleyn was probably fictitious) and admit it. Catherine Howard was young and obviously not the most intelligent, she was beheaded claiming that she was dying a queen but would rather have died as Mrs Culpepper, (the unfortunate Mr Culpepper was beheaded too).  

And last of all, what if Catherine Parr had refused Henry’s advances and married Thomas Seymour instead? Catherine had been married and widowed twice before Henry VIII, she wanted to follow her heart but after a lot of prayer she decided to marry Henry, this decision nearly cost her her head too. Henry now old and sick, thought she was getting above herself and preachy, and had signed a warrant for her arrest, what if she hadn’t been able to talk herself out of the situation! 

As it turns out, after Henry’s death, Catherine married Thomas Seymour … it wasn’t a success. Thomas Seymour was very interested in Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen, Thomas used to pay the teen Princess (who lived with the couple) visits dressed only in his nightgown and Catherine (and others) found his intentions towards Elizabeth questionable. Elizabeth was removed from the household and Catherine Parr died in childbirth at the age of 36! 

There are so many Tudor what ifs, that you could spend years going through all the permeations, they are never ending, so I've still got lots of ifs to keep me busy during my sleepless nights!

What if the Tudors and especially Henry had been totally boring, how would I pass those hours before morning?