History Lesson I

As I sit on my overused computer chair, smoking with two cups of tea and numerous DVDs scattered about the place I hear the shrill cries of 'what does your blog name mean'? A clever person would have deduced that the use of 'doth' makes it a reference to the past, perhaps 14th-16th century? Well, you surprise me with your intelligence because those decades encompass the time that a very famous man penned the line 'some say youth doth rule me'.

With further skills of deduction one could perhaps deduce that this man had defiance in him in his youth, perhaps something that people thought his young and tender years couldn't handle? Maybe a point to prove.

I highly doubt you came to these conclusions but so rare is good conversation these days the only way it can be achieved is either with a small group of people or in this instance myself. (Maybe too much pretension there).

The man in question is serial shagger, ginger pubed, fat bastard and overall tyrant Henry VIII, who penned the lyric in this poem:

Though some say that youth rules me,
I trust in age to tarry.
God and my right, and my duty,
From them shall I never vary,
Though some say that youth rules me.

I pray you all that aged be
How well did you your youth carry?
I think some worse of each degree.
Therein a wager lay dare I,
Though some say that youth rules me.

Pastimes of youth some time among
None can say but necessary.
I hurt no man, I do no wrong,
I love true where I did marry,
Though some say that youth rules me.

Then soon discuss that hence we must
Pray we to God and Saint Mary
That all amend, and here an end.
Thus says the King, the eighth Harry,
Though some say that youth rules me.

He really was an arsehole in his later years. He turned from a young, handsome, ambitious and graceful King into a tyrant, who, after one domestic would play tennis and feverishly masturbate over a roasted pig on a plate while two of his wives severed heads were used as sex toys by executioners. Of course, this is a well established point of view. It makes it easy to hate a historical figure if you view that figure in only one dimension. The 'sexy' U.S. programme 'The Tudors' would have the viewing public believe that 'Harry', as his friends and interloping cocksuckers would call him, was a very handsome 30 year old with not an inch of fat. The fact that he would be over 40 when the series began and already a fat fuck seems to have been ignored. I suspect this is for the benefit of Americans, who don't have a history themselves and feel it's meritorious and beneficial to take a whole legion of artistic license with ours.

The truth is, at first Henry was a kind, noble King, somewhat over-conscious of fulfilling and carrying on his father's legacy. It also seems he was incapable of being told 'no' after the demise of Sam Neill- sorry, Cardinal Wolsey, the last man who could influence Henry.

Henry wasn't married 6 times as the popular history would have us believe either. He had 3 marriages that legally stood. Henry is of course one of the most influential monarchs who ever lived. He created the Anglican Church, was the first to make Catholicism seem a rotten, shit infested thing and wasn't really that bad. He just wanted to be Mufasa and needed a Simba to make this life-long dream a reality. If The Tudors show him watching the Lion King I highly doubt it would make the lack of historical fact in the show any fucking worse.

That post was shit but I was bored, so there.

JPH