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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24408 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 15, 2026

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I never mentioned monogamy or equality in my post. I really wish Melania Trump would film a porno with Elon Musk (or, whoever, maybe some hibristo badboy model with some dark blood and hunter eyes who is 25 years her junior) to help you see that the sexual revolution did, in fact, screw over all men. She could, you know. Maybe she is just of too virtuous character to do it. But eventually something like it will happen, and unlike Anne Boleyn, she'll be praised as a powerful girlboss and the geriatric demented king she cheated on will just sit there looking like a cuck.

I don't know what to do with this comment, because you want a married woman to be unfaithful so that... you can prove the sexual revolution harmed men? So you want cheating in order to demonstrate that it's all cheating? If she is faithful to her marriage, that's no good to you?

I don't know, this and the boast about your 135 IQ makes it sound less like "this is my analysis of the problems of modern manhood" and more like "The world owes me a living, I'm superior, I should be getting the promotions and sleeping with all the hot chicks!"

You can't argue that young men are not getting faithful women and want a woman to be unfaithful. Do you not see how you're cutting off the branch you're sitting on?

And Anne Boleyn did not cheat on Henry, she just over-reached and made the wrong enemies so when they saw an opportunity to bring her down, they took it. They used accusations of sexual infidelity because they knew that was the one thing Henry would not forgive and was the one thing that would motivate him to get rid of her (he may have tired of her by then, but the prospect of being the laughing-stock of Europe for divorcing the wife he had turned his entire realm upside-down to get was holding him back). Unless you really do believe she was committing incest with her brother in order to get pregnant with that son which would save her?

Unless you really do believe she was committing incest with her brother in order to get pregnant with that son which would save her?

B-b-but my totally historically accurate Hollywood movie based on the highest quality romance novel smut said that was why would they lie?!?!

Oh, I haven't watched any of these shows, but the clips I see of The Tudors, for one, make me smile. They have the youthful, vigorous Henry who is still studly, not the gradually aging and sensitive about it monarch whose children all died unborn except for that one daughter (and then later another frickin' daughter which is no frickin' use) who was hyper-conscious of his need for an heir in order to stabilise the Tudor claim on the throne, and hyper-aware of time passing to achieve this. Anne failed him by not being able to produce the needed heir she had promised him (and the record of both Katherine and Anne in trying to achieve that is eye-popping, especially Anne; they spend their time either trying to get pregnant, pregnant, or recovering from miscarriage/stillbirth before trying once again to get pregnant), and by being aggressive about his wandering eye (the classic mistress's dilemma of 'if he cheated on his wife, you'll never be secure that he won't cheat again once you are the wife') so she had to go, but the problem was that he needed a reason and "she didn't give me a kid" wasn't enough, not when Elizabeth had been born. He had turned the realm and the church upside-down to get her, walked over people and waded through blood to get Anne (Thomas More's execution had shocked Europe), so now he couldn't easily dump her. Not without making himself look like a fool and proving all his enemies domestic and foreign correct that Anne was more trouble than she was worth and he had made a massive boo-boo, and Henry's pride could not abide that. So when he accepted the excuse of her adultery, even though that made him out to be that figure of fun the cuckold (something almost perfectly engineered to sting his pride and his ego about his masculinity), you can see how desperate he was to get rid of her and of course he immediately started spinning it that he was the victim. Henry did love playing the part of the tragic victim, constantly wronged by those about him taking advantage of his generosity and kindness and trusting nature.

Enter the range of enemies she had accumulated, often enemies themselves but all happy to work together once the opportunity to get rid of her presented itself.

I don't like Anne (I'm a Katherine of Aragon and Thomas More stan) and I think she was an example of riding the tiger, but the adultery charges were trumped up. The confessions were obtained through torture and were very shoddy. She had behaved stupidly and allowed the kind of courtly love flirtation in the Tudor court to go that step over the line, but I really don't think she was sleeping around, and her panic over the misstep ironically was the wedge her enemies needed:

Sir Henry Norris had amassed many offices throughout the 1530s and had been friendly towards Anne Boleyn, showing no religious differences or loyalties. Norris was widely liked at court and had been betrothed to Lady Margaret Shelton for an undetermined length of time in 1536. Margaret Shelton and her sister Mary (the pair often confused with one another, thanks to Mary and Madge looking identical in manuscripts) were Anne Boleyn’s cousins and in Anne’s privy chamber, and Henry Norris would often come to visit the queen. Sunday, 30 April was one of those days, when Anne snapped at Norris about taking too long to marry Margaret Shelton, and Norris replied that he ‘looked to tarry’ and take his time. Norris would have undoubtedly joked and flirted with Anne Boleyn in the past, as was expected, but this time, Anne was having none of the court games and told Norris (recorded in an unfortunately mutilated manuscript):

‘You look for dead men’s shoes, for if aught came to the King but good, you would look to have me’… and [Norris] said if he should have any such thought, he would his head were off … and then [Anne] said she could undo him if she would … and there with they fell out…’

This was a catastrophically stupid thing for Anne to say, especially before a group of people. It had always been treason to harm the king, but Cromwell’s 1534 update of the Treason Law made mentioning or even thinking about the king’s death a treasonable offence. Anne knew instantly she had made a mistake in snapping at Norris in such a way, and sent Norris from her rooms, to see her almoner, Bishop Nicholas Shaxton, to swear that Anne ‘was a good woman’. Norris did as the queen asked, but if Anne thought that Norris swearing to Shaxton would somehow erase the argument, she was sorely mistaken. Whether it was Norris himself who took Anne’s words down to Henry’s rooms, or Anne’s ladies discussing the skirmish (or Shaxton telling Cromwell, which would not have been a surprise), the outburst soon reached many ears around Greenwich. Norris would have known that Henry and Anne were not on good terms, and despite his support for Anne, would have always sided with Henry. Regardless, as soon as Cromwell and Fitzwilliam heard these words, they would have known they had cause to tell Henry.

Angus, Caroline. Planning the Murder of Anne Boleyn (p. 129)

Then, a few years after his victory in the struggle for power and survival with Anne, Cromwell himself is on the scaffold and the headsman's block. Henry has no gratitude and no forgiveness once he feels he has been failed. Eaten bread is soon forgotten, indeed.

Wolf Hall is another series I haven't watched, I've read the books and they are well-written and good, but Hilary Mantel was such a fan of Cromwell (and I'm not) that I can't watch the show. Ironically, Mark Rylance would be a better fit if cast as Thomas More not Thomas Cromwell, if we go by appearances and the famous portraits of the two men. I've always liked Rylance as an actor and think he could do a sensitive interpretation of the part of More.

Henry's court is a fascinating place to read about, there was such intrigue and politics and international scheming going on for decades as he squandered the money his prudent (not to say avaricious) father had left in the treasury (full and healthy at the start of Henry VIII's reign) and the plunder of the dissolution of the monasteries on extravagant building works and increasingly futile Continental military adventures.

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