One of my daughters, a medieval history scholar and expert on European royalty, recently acquired a Henry VIII mug with images of his six wives surrounding him. Appropriately, when the Queens get into hot water (e.g., tea or coffee), their heads disappear.
What she hadn’t anticipated was how fascinated her five-year-old daughter would be with the mug.
“Why do the queens disappear?” was the first question, quickly followed by, “Why did he have so many queens?”
As my daughter searched for a way to explain the pressures and consequences of primogeniture in 16th century England, she somewhat clumsily crafted an age-appropriate story to go with the old rhyme:
King Henry the Eighth had six wives he wedded:
One died, one survived, two divorced, and two beheaded.
Over the next three days, Continue reading “Henry VIII for a Five-Year-Old”