Michael Farquhar is a writer and editor at
The Washington Post
specializing in history. He is coauthor of
The Century: History as It Happened on the Front Page of the Capital’s Newspaper
, and his work has been published in
The Chicago Sun-Times
,
Chicago Tribune
,
Dallas Morning News
,
Reader’s Digest
, and Discovery Online.

Henry VIII

PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published in Penguin Books 2001

Illustration credits
Frontispiece (ii), pages 28, 54, 100, 126, 172, 202, 260:
The Granger Collection, New York.
Page 2: © Leonard de Selva/CORBIS.
Page 222: © Christel Gerstenberg/CORBIS.

eISBN : 978-1-101-01039-6

CIP data available

http://us.penguingroup.com

This book is dedicated with love to my grandmother, Claire O’Donnell Donahue Courtney. What a life!

All I say is, kings is kings and you got to make allowances.

—Mark Twain,
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Introduction

The twentieth century was a slaughterhouse for European monarchy. Across the continent, scores of kings and queens were swept from their thrones in a frenzy of war and revolution. Those managing to cling to their crowns, meanwhile, have been rendered either faceless and bland, as in, say, Norway, or, as in Britain, regarded as little more than inane tabloid fodder.

Maybe the decline of monarchy is for the best. After all, the notion that one individual—no matter how stupid or depraved—should by some fluke of birth hold dominion over all others is ridiculous and well past its prime. Still, there’s a void now. People with unlimited power and an inbred sense of their own superiority tended to misbehave. Royally. Democratically elected presidents and prime ministers—not to mention constitutionally constrained monarchs—simply can’t compete. Consequently, things are a lot duller these days, and what passes for scandal is almost laughable.

So what if Charles and Diana were miserably married? He never slammed the doors of Westminster Abbey in her face, or buried pieces of her boyfriend under the floorboards of his palace. That was behavior typical of a bygone era celebrated in this treasury—a time of lusty kings and treacherous queens; of murderous tsars, insane emperors, and unholy popes (once the supreme monarchs in Europe). Toe sucking aside, Fergie and the rest of this generation’s royals can’t hold a scandal to their forbears. Not one of them has delivered anything worthy of the name, and are thus excluded from this collection.

Some of the stories that do appear here are no doubt familiar to readers of history. But they are classics, and no anthology of royal bad behavior would be complete without them. Others have been mined from the past, largely unexposed. All of the stories showcase the rich assortment of scandals that once flourished across Europe. And, thanks to the generations of royals who unwittingly created them, they remain immensely entertaining.

Family Trees