Do people on this subreddit forget that Henry VIII didn't start his reign as an ailing, obese man but was once handsome and charismatic?

I was just reading today about how he was one of the first intellectual, humanist royals and was extremely handsome, charming, and well-educated. It makes him so much more complex and interesting to consider how he was once perceived, versus how his image and reputation changed as he aged and made poor decisions. I always wondered if he was one of those really vain guys who are likeable when they're beloved, but when particular choices and negative consequences begin to stack against them and age starts to bear down, they become mean and spiteful and quick to blame others for the way life is disappointing them.

I also get that sense in his need to continue remarrying and in his obsession with sons which increased with age. It's like he was trying to hold onto his youth, where he'd been so loved and so charming and things were easier. I know there were obviously practical reasons he wanted sons, but to leave what had been a stable marriage to KoA and go on as he did just strikes me as a man in a perpetual mid-life crisis, trying to reclaim some lost feeling. I'm in my late 30s now and I have seen this happen with a couple men I've known. They just get lost, in general, like they can't find their way amidst the tides of life and get washed about. I don't have sympathy for Henry but I do find him much more interesting than the "fat and stupid and smelly" commentary allows for.

I can’t speak with certainty, but I would be very surprised if anyone who cares about Tudor history enough to join this sub, was unaware that Henry VIII didn’t start out looking like he did at the end.

I think that when you see the jokes about his appearance, you’re seeing people express their deep dislike of Henry as a man and as a king. In general, he’s not a popular guy within this sub.

I think it could also be argued that the gluttony that created his 54 inch waist is directly relevant to conversations about the rest of his reign. He didn’t want a couple of palaces, or a few mistresses, and some nice clothes. He wanted and demanded everything in excess.

I think we are all captives of the most common portraits we've been able to see.

There are far fewer well known and well distributed portraits of Henry VIII as a young man compared to the ones from the 1530s when he was doing his most historically significant stuff.

Likewise, Henry VII was only 28 when he became King; but all we can ever picture is that grey, gaunt, sharp featured and tired looking man in his 40s that was on the front of those Access to History A Level textbooks.

We think of the Elizabeth in her 30s or 40s because the most famous and common portraits were from then (and even in her 60s they painted her looking ever younger) and we rarely see the ones when she was in her 20s.

I keep thinking that what happened to Henry in 1536, could easily happen to anyone of us, today. Not the jousting, obviously, but a fall from a ladder, staircase, a bad slip while hiking, and both a leg wound and a head bonk could VERY easily happen. Even to young people, in their teens. The fact that we have much more advanced medical treatment today doesn't necessarily mean it would cure the injuries, especially brain injuries. Even wound care can be more treatment than a cure, particularly if diabetes is involved.

💯, also, even if he’d always been overweight, it’s a classless thing to mock. 

Tl; dr

“What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.” - Leo Tolstoy

Henry VIII used to be a handsome, athletic man who would have been known as Prince Charming except he was crowned king at 17. His weight is nothing either way - I agree that mocking him as fat is tasteless.

However, Henry's capacity for making bad decisions based on being a spoiled brat who thought he was entitled to anything he wanted because he wanted it, did not begin when he had a head injury at a tournament or because he had a midlife crisis.

He fucked off for a war in France he didn't need to mix into when he was 22, when his nearest male heir was James IV, King of Scots, married to his older sister Margaret - whom Henry had just provoked with a number of extraordinarily stupid breaches of the peace treaty his father had set up and sealed with marriage to Margaret.

Katherine and Henry had a great relationship at first. He was very good looking, very charismatic and very well educated. I think one of the dangers of having that much power is most of the people around you are just kissing your ass and agreeing with whatever you say. So it's hard to correct any flaws you may have.

Then Henry gets badly hurt and most likely sustained some brain damage. A blow to the head can cause extreme personality changes.

I think everyone forgets that, this sub or not. It ain't like he was born fat and old.

People also forget that Katherine was a lovely woman of 23, only 5 years older than Henry when they married; it was a love match. And then Henry was still considered an attractive man when he met Anne Boleyn. He hadn't yet started his steep decline.

I'm not sure how anyone can spend time in this group and think there are people here who don't know Henry was athletic as a young man

How was Katherine plucked from obscurity? She was from the most powerful dynasty of the time period and had a better claim to the English throne than the Tudors.

It really was that jousting accident that changed him. I do believe he had a traumatic brain injury. And with the leg wound also he was just never the same. But yes he was a young, smart and tall handsome King. Like Russel Crowe you can’t be Gladiator hot forever.

honestly what are we doing with AI if it’s not creating a method to crunch all the available descriptions of historical figures and come up with a plausible calculation of how hot they ACTUALLY were in different eras of their lives according to contemporary and modern standards? like truly what is the point???

The myth is that he was ever charming or charismatic. He was a psychopath from day one. His first official act was to have his father's advisors executed. He was always delusional about how brilliant he was. Who was going to tell him otherwise? Have you actually read his writings from his earlier years? His defense of Catholicism was shallow at best, and simply parroted back the talking points the church expected of him. He was no great scholar. Sure, he was well educated compared to the average citizen or even the average noble, but he was no Erasmus or Moore. There is a reason Erasmus cultivated a closer relationship with Catherine of Aragon and why Moore disagreed with Henry when he broke from the church. Henry was a blowhard surrounded by yes-men.

He was not well loved, he was feared. Many historians agree that the apex of English absolute power was during his reign. He was a tyrant who killed anyone who injured his fragile ego. This resulted in the deaths of at least 70,000 of his own subjects.

As to how handsome he was, again, how can you really believe the pandering lies of his courtiers and ambassadors? His youthful portraits show an average looking man with the classic wonky Plantagenet eye. HIs gaze is rather unfixed and dim-witted. Contemporaries did say he was handsome, though honest ones admitted that Francis, King of France was the more handsome of the two. The fact that so many fixated on his calves tells me that they had to find something to compliment.

Henry's look was average, but he was a monster from his very first act. If you need his contemporaries to write that out in clear language to understand that, then you need to spend more time learning how to decipher between the lines of primary source documents. Contemporaries claimed that Anne of Cleves was ugly and horse-like because the person who paid them wanted to hear that. The same is true of people who said Henry was handsome. He paid their bills. Of course they would flatter him. The fact that they felt they needed to flatter him says a lot about their fear of him. Read between the lines.

Jonathan Rhys Meyer’s is a nice reminder of that fact

Henry is often depicted by historians as athletic and well-dressed during his prime. However, his later indulgence, health issues, and stress led to a different portrayal. It's worth noting that prior to Holbein's work, the paintings available to us were insufficient for forming a reliable contemporary opinion.one portrait

I think it's because much(certainly not all) of Henry's mayhem was committed when he was no longer the golden Renaissance Prince. It therefore becomes easier to make the connection between his grotesque physical AND mental decline...the loss of his once perfect physique becomes a metaphor for his later cruelty.

I don't believe it's just a matter of fat shaming. If so how come no one makes a big deal(no pun intended) about how hefty Queen Victoria became?A pair of her bloomers were put on public display once and it was....a sight.

George IV is also an example of a slender handsome prince who became corpulent and unpopular with age.

I don’t like the disgust people openly express around his physical being at any stage of his life. If you’ve spent any time in healthcare or with a physical disability you will know that sometimes disabilities cause really nasty things to happen to the human body. I have close family members who have severe disabilities with digestion and one who has a colostomy bag. It’s not pleasant to experience, but my reaction has never been “eww you’re so DISGUSTING how could anyone bear to be around you.”

People get very prejudiced and ableist very quickly when it’s a person they don’t like who behaves inappropriately. I don’t like Caitlyn Jenner but I’m never going to be transphobic towards her. I don’t like Candace Owens but I won’t make a racist comment about her. The hatred for Henry’s behaviour is fair, particularly through a modern lens. Expressing that hatred as “ew he was so disgusting and fat and disabled how did his wives not throw up” is still gross to me.

Henry was a monster. He was a monster when he was handsome and would have been if he stayed handsome. He killed two of his wives for egotistical reasons and pride. He is not a monster because he had an untreated leg ulcer prior to modern medicine and got fat.

I think we dull down some aspects of history because when it was originally recorded, people didn’t have the terms and knowledge that we have today. You would probably get a different response from a reader if instead of Henry having a bad jousting accident, it was “Henry suffered a traumatic brain injury from the jousting accident.”

Henry VIII, McLeod syndrome and  Jacquetta’s curse: Paper from the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh

Direct link to PDF

I think people everywhere forget this. I once, ill-advisedly, told a guy at a bar that he looked like a young Henry viii (because he did), and he responded extremely badly. All my tipsy 20-year old self could say is ‘He could jump onto a horse in full armour when he was young. It’s not my fault you’re not aware of that?’ 🤦‍♀️

His leg and the smell must have been pretty horrible later on.

And I assume most jokes are just jokes. But people ought not to joke too much on appearance even if it’s with people you dislike. I notice it a lot on fashion gossip circles too that if some celebrity is liked them they are always commented on look good and if disliked then their appearance is just picked apart.

Also Catherine was married to Henry for long time. It is the later period that people really care about here and not the earlier for most of time. So that’s what people are commenting. 

People are aware and lots of them said that in my most recent thread where I celebrated his birthday and asked people to say something nice about him. 

Not totally related to the OP’s comment, but this is a really interesting book about what people in Tudor England ate and how it was prepared. There is an episode on Not Just the Tudors featuring the author as well. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/131086131-eating-with-the-tudors

From what I've seen on social media, nobody has forgotten this. The stereotype of Henry as a perpetually obese, foul smelling and dull man was there more in the 2010s than it is now.

I deeply dislike Henry, but there's no denying that him and Katherine were once the definition of "golden Renaissance Prince and Princess".

I agree. Both Henry VII and Henry VIII are my favorite monarchs.

Handsome is subjective. Have you really looked at his early portraits? I would never say he was ever handsome.

Just like robert baratheon then

It’s the Americans calling him “Hank” or “Hal”. They aren’t British nicknames, just putting everything in the American context- dumb stereotypes all round.