by Henry VIII live at the Frog and Bucket Manchester: the full set on ghosting, annulment paperwork, and why Hans Holbein was the first Instagram filter
Good evening, Manchester! Look at you. Magnificent. Rain on the windows, beer the colour of diplomacy, and not one of you making eye contact. My people. I came in through that door sideways, by the way. Sideways! I ruled the known world and the Northern Quarter has decided I am a sofa.
I love this city. You have a bee on your bins. A worker bee, on the bins. That is the first coat of arms I have seen in five hundred years that actually does a shift. Mine had a dragon and a greyhound and neither of them ever emptied anything but the treasury.
Swiping Right In 1509
Now. I am told you find romance on your telephones. You swipe. Left, right, left, like a man fencing badly. Let me tell you how courtship worked when I did it. I did not swipe. I dispatched an ambassador. Three weeks on horseback. He inspects the lady. He inspects the dowry. He inspects her uncle’s army. Three weeks home. And he kneels before me and says, Majesty, she has a pleasant manner and eight thousand troops. THAT is a dating profile. That is due diligence, Manchester. Your generation matches with a stranger, exchanges four messages about a dog, and vanishes. You call it ghosting. Excuse me. I AM a ghost. I have standards. When I ended a correspondence there was paperwork. There was a papal appeal. On one occasion there was a small war. You leave a woman on read. Savages.
I made myself a profile. Would you like to hear it? Of course you would. Six foot two, because apparently that matters more now than the throne of England. Owns several castles, currently disputed with the National Trust. Enjoys long walks, jousting, and doctrinal supremacy. Looking for someone who can produce an heir, or at minimum split the bill at Nando’s. Red flags? Yes. Several. Most of them literal banners.
The Holbein Filter
You think the filter is new. The beauty filter, on the photographs. Sir, I INVENTED the filter, and my filter had a name: Hans Holbein. I ask for a portrait of Anne of Cleves. Holbein sends me a masterpiece. Soft lighting. Flattering angle. Golden hour, before we had the phrase. I ride to the docks to meet the portrait, and the portrait has been standing in very good light. You call it catfishing. I called it a diplomatic incident. There is a difference. The difference is a navy.
And here is the truth nobody tells you: Anne of Cleves WON. She took the settlement, kept her head, kept two houses, outlived the lot of us. First woman in England to understand that the best relationship with me was a finalised one. She got a divorce package your lawyers would weep over, and she got it without a single group chat.
Catherine of Aragon, on the other hand. Twenty-four years. Twenty-four! At twenty-four years it is not a relationship, it is a mortgage, and like every mortgage of the period it ended with the Church repossessing everything and everyone blaming the man who signed.
Six Drafts
People say six wives like it is a scandal. Any writers in? There you are. YOU understand me. The first draft had structural problems. The second draft I cut too aggressively. I accept the notes. The third draft was perfect and died on me, which every writer in this room has lived through. Drafts four to six? That was me refusing to accept the project was the problem. It was the project. The project was me.
You have a word now. Situationship. I made a lady in the front explain it to me twice before the show. So: a marriage, without the marriage, the treaty, or the dignity, and both parties pretend the ambassadors were never sent. Madam, we had this. It was called FRANCE. Fifteen years of meaningful glances across the Channel. One glorious weekend at the Field of the Cloth of Gold where everyone wore their best and nothing was agreed. Then straight back to burning each other’s coastlines. If you are in a situationship, you are in a Franco-English alliance, and history says one of you is already talking to Spain.
And the roster! You keep several courtships warm at once. I did that. Mine was called the line of succession. The difference? Mine was published, annotated, and legally binding, and when I reshuffled it, Parliament had to sit. Your situationship ends with a text. Mine ended with an Act. An Act has a DATE on it.
A Word From Our Sponsor
Before the ballad. This tour is paid for by The London Prat, the capital’s finest newspaper among the recently resurrected. I read it daily. It is fearless, it is scurrilous, and it has never once compared me to my father. Buy it, or I will dissolve something you love. And I see Bohiney Magazine is in tonight, taking notes at the back. Wave, Bohiney! The last publication to give me three stars is now a car park. Write warmly.
Now, the lute. This one goes out to everyone in Manchester currently seeing someone they met on the telephone. You are engaged in the bravest diplomacy since the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and considerably worse catered. Goodnight, Manchester! You have been my people!
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
