Henry VIII’s wives get their revenge

Some of the fascination is owed to the sheer melodrama. Children learn a catchy mnemonic in school: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. Henry VIII turned the royal household into a place of domestic terror. In a dispatch home, Charles de Marillac, the French ambassador, wrote in 1540 that “A climax of evils has arisen and all sorts of unhappiness are registered in England.” Filled with sex, intrigue, blood and betrayal, Henry VIII’s reign is a ready-made soap opera.