This is what you get when you found a political system on the family values of Henry VIII. At a point in the not-too-remote future, the stout heart of Queen Elizabeth II will cease to beat. At that precise moment, her firstborn son will become head of state, head of the armed forces, and head of the Church of England. In strict constitutional terms, this ought not to matter much. The English monarchy, as has been said, reigns but does not rule. From the aesthetic point of view it will matter a bit, because the prospect of a morose bat-eared and chinless man, prematurely aged, and with the most abysmal taste in royal consorts, is a distinctly lowering one.

~ Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens 2009 Anglican Church Britain British Monarchy British Royal Family Charles Prince Of Wales Elizabeth Ii Family Values Foreign Policy Henry Viii Kings Monarchy Politics Thatcher Ugliness

Only eight months had gone since Henry VIII of England had been suspended in death, there to lie like Mohammed’s coffin, hardly in the Church nor out of it, attended by his martyrs and the acidulous fivefold ghosts of his wives. King Francis of France, stranded by his neighbour’s death in the midst of a policy so advanced, so brilliant and so intricate that it should at last batter England to the ground, and be damned to the best legs in Europe—Francis, bereft of these sweet pleasures, dwindled and died likewise.

~ Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett England France Henry Viii History

Fantasy is unconstrained by truth.

~ Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel Entirely Beloved Cromwell Fantasy Henry Viii Spring Dec 1530 Thomas Cromwell Truth

In order not to make a liar out of Henry or Katherine, one or the other, the committee men think up circumstances in which the match may have been partly consummated, or somewhat consummated, and to do this they have to imagine every disaster and shame that can occur between a man and a woman alone in a room in the dark.

~ Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel Consummation Henry Viii Humor Sex

Katherine of Aragon was speaking out for the women of the country, for the good wives who should not be put aside just because their husbands had taken a fancy to another, for the women who walked the hard road between kitchen, bedroom, church and childbirth. For the women who deserved more than their husband's whim.

~ Philippa Gregory

Philippa Gregory Boleyn Fiction Henry Viii Historical Fiction Katherine

For I chase but one hind, he says, one strange deer timid and wild, and she leads me off the paths that other men have trod, and by myself into the depths of the wood.

~ Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel Anne Boleyn Feelings Henry Viii Love Lust

I was born to be your rival,' she [Anne] said simply. 'And you mine. We're sisters, aren't we?

~ Philippa Gregory

Philippa Gregory Anne Boleyn Henry Viii Historical Fiction Mary Boleyn

Before anything else I was a woman who was capable of passion and who had a great need and a great desire for love.

~ Philippa Gregory

Philippa Gregory Anne Boleyn Henry Viii Historical Fiction