Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Carry on, Henry.

Henry VIII had six wives - right? Everybody knows that - and most people know the mantra "divorced-beheaded-died-divorced-beheaded-survived". But did he? It all depends on how you define a wife. He certainly went through six ceremonies of marriage, but four of those marriages were annulled (OK, a couple of them were annulled by Henry himself by virtue of his self-declared position as head of the Church of England, and are therefore not accepted as such by the Catholic Church) but whoever and whatever, in law an annulled marriage has never in fact taken place, so you can make a good case for Henry only having had two wives - Jane Seymour and Katherine Parr. Another of those interesting facts...

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