If only we got to draft a prenup with our leaders before we climbed into bed with them. If only we were allowed to set out what was expected of them. Perhaps if they let us list some ‘no-no’s’ in over-sized block capitals towards the back of the document we might have avoided some of history’s more effluent sodden moments.
Then maybe, just maybe we’d have had fewer tyrants.
For Americans, the word tyrant is inextricably tied up with the persona of George III, that perennial villain in the three-act play of American history. His opposition to enlightened thought, his refusal to concede to perfectly reasonable demands. The sheer pomposity of the man.
Easy guy to despise really.
To be fair, Europeans don’t care much for George III either. The entire line of Hanoverian monarchs had far too much in common with the understudy cast of a canceled amateur dramatics musical.
Feckless, indolent and possessing the kind of fat-thumbed self-obeisance that tended to make the common man wretch. They were, to a man, not so much a waste of space as they were a misuse of carbon atoms.
Still, in England at least there remains one man who dwarfs all others when it comes to the misuse of executive power. King Henry VIII.
Tyrantosaurus Vex
There is now less than a month before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in as the next President of the United States. We won’t be watching of course. We won’t be watching in part because it hurts. Because we can’t bear to see the White House pass from a man of integrity to a man of iniquity.
But mostly we won’t be watching because we know that Trump will pour over the viewing figures.
And we want that needy bastard to feel our contempt for him when he does.
Trump is all of the things that the Founding Fathers worried over when they embarked on the bold American experiment. The demagogue, the sophist, the populist snake oil peddling son of a racist plutocrat; a man unfit for office.
Kind of sounds like our Henry.
Heir Assumptive
The similarities between the two men born 437 years apart are actually quite striking.
Both were second sons thrust into the limelight by the tragic death of their elder brother. Henry’s brother, Arthur died at the age 16, just six months into his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, the woman destined to become Henry’s first wife. Trump’s brother, Fred Jr. also predeceased their father. As the older brother, he was the one in line to inherit the family empire.
Donald got it instead.
Parallel Wives
The most striking thing about Henry’s life is that he got through six wives in just 56 years of life but a closer examination of that headline number reveals a slightly different story.
One of his wives, Jane Seymour, died in childbirth. Henry’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleaves was the renaissance equivalent of a tinder date gone wrong. The portrait Henry was shown of his bride to be was apparently a little too flattering. When they met in person Henry was deflated, perhaps literally so; they never consummated the marriage.
Since Henry’s last wife Catherine Parr outlived him, we are left with the fact that Henry technically only abandoned three of his wives. Still, he did have two of the three executed…
Whilst Trump is yet to execute any of his wives, his troubled past with marriages is well documented. His first wife, Ivana Trump was granted an uncontested divorce in 1990, on the grounds that Trump’s treatment of her had been ‘cruel and inhuman.’ His second marriage to Marla Maples lasted only six years (four, technically, as they separated for two years prior to the actual divorce).
His current wife Melania has been the subject of much controversy ranging from plagiarism to her status as a former illegal immigrant.
She also never seems to blink.
Papal Bullshit
By 1525 Henry had become infatuated with the woman who was to become his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Henry’s attempts to get rid of his first wife rested on a fairly obscure text from the Bible that prohibited a man from marrying his brother’s widow. Unfortunately for Henry, Catherine insisted that her first marriage had never been consummated. The Pope refused to accede to Henry’s wishes.
Henry’s response was to fire the Pope, set himself up as head of the Church of England and in doing so place his entire kingdom in jeopardy.
Trump’s acrimonious tête-à-tête with Pope Francis had less dramatic consequences for world history but was no less public. When the Pontiff commented that building walls was not a very Christian way of handling things Trump immediately hit back, labeling Francis’ comments as being ‘disgraceful,’ before adding:
“No leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question another man’s religion or faith.”
Yeah, Francis, who died and made you Pope?
The Wizard Of Id
Ultimately, the thing that most firmly connects these two is the one thing that is impossible to view with the naked eye.
Their monstrous egos.
Henry led his country to near disaster for no other reason other than he liked to get his own way. His despotic reign left England in such turmoil that it would not experience any real stability until the conclusion of the Glorious Revolution some 140 years after his death.
How long it will take America to recover from Trump I remains to be seen. What we do know is that he lashes out at anyone who opposes him. That he reacts to criticism with the knee-jerk spasm of a renaissance dandy slighted at the joust.
That Trump is just a little bit too Henry for modern tastes.
Watch every single insult Trump issued in 2016:
Featured image cropped from original on Wikipedia, available in the public domain.
