10 Good Things About Henry VIII | Was Henry VIII All Bad?

From History Calling

Was Henry VIII ALL BAD, or did he have some redeeming qualities? That’s the question which inspired this Tudor history documentary from History Calling in which I’ll take you through my list of 10 good things about Henry VIII. We’ll consider what Henry VIII looked like (most especially in his youth), the love life of Henry VIII, including how he treated his mistresses and wives when he wasn’t having their heads cut off and what Henry VIII was like as a father. I’ll share primary sources with you written by people who actually saw and interacted with the most famous Tudor King and show you some of his own love letters to Anne Boleyn. Henry is often presented as an old, bloated, murderous King, a cookie-cutter villain if you will, but he was a multi-dimensional person who had his good qualities as well as his bad and who could inspire great love and devotion in his family and subjects. The question of ‘was Henry VIII a good king?’ is very much open to debate, but I’ll demonstrate that the question of whether he had positive personality traits is more easily answered. As we go through the video, we’ll also be looking at the six wives of Henry VIII and at the childhoods of Mary I, Elizabeth I, Edward VI and their half-brother, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond and Somerset.