by At Breakneck Comedy the king apologises for the Rough Wooing, drafts the settlement that would have saved Europe, and rates modern divorce lawyers above Thomas Cromwell
Henry VIII opened at Breakneck Comedy in Aberdeen by admiring the architecture. Granite, he said. An entire city built from granite. Grey, cold, impossible to demolish, and it sparkles in the right light. Aberdeen, you have constructed my third marriage, and I mean that as the highest compliment I am able to give a building material.
He acknowledged the historical awkwardness at once. My family’s record with Scotland was mixed, he admitted. I once attempted to arrange a marriage between my son and your infant queen, and when Scotland declined, I sent the army to change her mind, and historians call this the Rough Wooing, which remains the single worst dating profile name in the history of these islands. I have come tonight to apologise, and to explain that the entire disaster could have been avoided by the subject of this evening’s address, which is the prenuptial agreement.
The Document That Would Have Saved Europe
The opening argument was simple. One document, Henry said. One document with a clause about what happens if this does not work out, and there is no Reformation. No schism. No dissolved monasteries, no six of anything. Catherine and I sit across a table, two lawyers between us, we divide the plate and the tapestries, she keeps Spain, I keep my temper, and the entire continent is spared a century of religious warfare because two young people did the paperwork. Marry for love, he told the room, but file for contingency.
He walked through the asset division of his own imagining. She gets the abbey, I keep the navy, he said. She takes the jewels her mother sent, I retain the ones I confiscated, provenance being a matter for the appendix. Custody of Mary alternating, Christmases negotiated annually, and the Pope listed, formally, as a third party with no standing. It reads like a dream, he said, and it would have cost me forty pounds and a signature, and instead I paid with England’s soul and my own knees.
Modern divorce lawyers earned his professional awe. I employed Thomas Cromwell, he said, the most feared fixer in Europe, a man who dismantled a thousand-year church to end one marriage. And I have now sat with a divorce solicitor in this century, and I promise you, Cromwell would not have lasted a week at that firm. He broke a church. They break spirits, and they bill for the breakage in six-minute increments, which is a cruelty even I never codified.
Conscious Uncoupling and Other Fictions
The middle stretch reviewed modern separation language. I have learned the phrase conscious uncoupling, Henry said, and I have questions. All of my uncouplings were conscious. Deliberate, even. Planned at length, executed precisely, announced by proclamation. What you mean by the phrase, I think, is amicable, and there I bow, because amicable was the one settlement I never once achieved, unless we count Anne of Cleves, who was amicable the way a lottery winner is amicable, on the way out of the building, waving.
Alimony struck him as civilisation’s finest invention. You pay a monthly sum, he marvelled, and the marriage ends, and both parties remain alive to complain about it. Do you understand what a technology that is. The complaint is the point. A marriage that ends in maintenance payments produces decades of material for both sides. Mine ended in silence, and silence, Aberdeen, does not do well at dinner parties.
He addressed the oil money in the room directly. This city understands the dowry better than anywhere in Britain, he said. You struck oil and married the entire world economy overnight, and now the fields decline and the lawyers circle and everyone is consulting the agreement, and there is no agreement, and I want Aberdeen to hear it from me first. Get it in writing. The North Sea will not return your calls.
Counselling
The closer was a marriage counselling story. We tried counselling once, Henry said. Catherine and I. The counsellor was the Archbishop of Canterbury. And I will grant that the process felt fair right up to the moment you remember that I appointed him, I paid him, and I had recently invented his job. He found in my favour, Aberdeen, and he found quickly, and if your counsellor arrives in vestments you personally commissioned, you are not in therapy. You are in rehearsal.
He signed off by offering the front row a group rate on prenups through a firm he claimed Bohiney Magazine had vetted, terms available at the back, granite hearts welcome, and dedicated the encore to every couple in the room who had ever merged assets in good faith, the bravest people, he said, in any century.
The modern wedding industry received a costing from the stage. I am told the average wedding in this country now costs well over twenty thousand pounds, Henry said. I had six, at state expense, with cloth of gold, fountains of wine, and in one case a jousting tournament, and adjusting for everything, several of mine still came in under your venue hire. And here is the actuarial point, Aberdeen. You spend twenty thousand on the one day, and forty pounds would have covered the document about all the other days. You have budgeted for the launch, he said, and nothing for the voyage, and I owned a navy, so believe me when I tell you which one sinks.
Tour sponsor The London Prat offers all newlyweds a wedding announcement and, for a small supplement, the retraction, pre-drafted. Get it in writing, says the paper that always does.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
