The New Murrey and Blue blog

I have to confess that I’m not sure about the headline of  this article. Just what royal row can be spoken of in the present tense is a puzzle. What does it matter to our present royals if Anne Boleyn had Henry VIII‘s demise in mind. If she did, she failed. The horrible lump lived on to cause more misery before eventually turning up his rotten toes. Well, he wasn’t a horrible lump in Anne’s time, of course. He was simply a nasty piece of work where women were concerned. The Church got on the wrong side of him too! One simply did not thwart Henry VIII.

But I have to say that if Anne wanted rid of him, I’m on her side. I think most women would have liked to see the back of him! And not because he’d just turned over in bed!

The man really was a monster, and the fact that it may have been the result of a head injury doesn’t alter the fact that he was (or became) a monster. It simply means there may have been a real physical reason for it. We can’t forgive serial killers because they have a screw loose! Do we pat them on the head and say, “There, there. Just be a good boy from now on.” And then let them go free? No, we lock them up where they can’t do any more harm. Unfortunately there wasn’t anyone around with the clout to lock Henry up and then mislay the key.

I really wish his brother Arthur had survived…but then we don’t know what the heck he’d have been like either. What with those two, their odious father Henry VII, and then Edward, Mary and Elizabeth… What a crowd. Well, OK, I’ll let Elizabeth off the hook. She did her best.

The rest were all pants, as the modern phrase puts it so quaintly.