List of The Tudors Characters - Characters

Determined that Anne will be his wife and will provide him with the legitimate son he so desperately craves, Henry separates himself from his wife and the Catholic faith causing friction with the pope and a clash of religious opinions.

Henry is presented as a spoiled and indulged ruler who after his marriage to Anne will not allow anyone to contradict him, having tasted an intoxicating sample of absolute power. So when he fails in his attempts to have a son with her, he is quick to lay the blame at Anne's door and then by chance meets Jane Seymour, a sweet, shy girl, and falls in love with her.

Convinced that his future lies with Jane, Henry takes the chance to be rid of Anne when his longtime friend Charles Brandon tells him rumors suggest that she has been unfaithful. Anne is quickly brought to trial, found guilty and executed.

Although Henry's personal life improves with his marriage to Jane Seymour, who helps reunite him with his daughters, his position is threatened when Catholics in the north start to rebel against him. He crushes the rebellion and brutally punishes all those involved. Finally Henry's wish comes true when Jane gives him the one thing that his last two wives could not: a son. But his joy is short lived when Jane falls sick and soon dies from childbed fever, leaving Henry in a deep state of depression.

He remains a widower for three years until Cromwell pushes him into a fourth marriage with the German Anne of Cleves. With promises of her beauty, he agrees to wed her but is disgusted by her when he finally meets her. Unable to escape the betrothal, he marries Anne but starts divorce proceedings soon after. He then notices the extremely young and seductive Katherine Howard and decides to marry her because she makes him feel young again. The marriage to Katherine Howard did not last. She was executed once her hidden past relations with Francis Derham and her adulterous affair with Thomas Culpeper came to light. Henry later marries his sixth and final wife Catherine Parr, a wealthy widow closer to Henry's age. She was a loving wife and stepmother to all three of Henry's children and was made Queen Regent during Henry's absence at Boulogne. Some suspected Catherine Parr of heresy and she was almost arrested for it (by Bishop Gardiner).

The second season sees Anne reach the peak of her power. She is created as Marquess of Pembroke and is taken to France to meet the French King, Francis, as the future Queen and sleeps with Henry and thus conceives a child who she is confident will be a boy. Anne and Henry's hopes are dashed when she gives birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, which sets in motion the Act of Succession. She is more or less manipulated by her father to do everything to win Henry's love (which becomes evident after her miscarriage of her second child). She allows Henry to disinherit his daughter Mary but tries to establish ties with her conditional upon Mary accepting her as queen. Mary rebuffs this offer.

Anne becomes desperate to conceive a son but miscarries and is accused of witchcraft and adultery. Henry removes Elizabeth from the line of succession, convinced she is not his daughter, and sentences Anne to execution by beheading. Anne re-appears in the final episode of Season 4 in the dream sequence alongside Elizabeth, proclaiming her innocence that the crimes she was killed for were of false witness and defends her cousin Katherine Howard.

Because of her seeming inability to give him a son, along with the onset of menopause, Henry worries that England might face a reversion to civil war in the event of his death. With the War of the Roses still a recent memory, he was determined to have a legitimate son to whom to pass his throne. He therefore preferred to believe that Katherine lied when she swore that her previous marriage was never consummated and that therefore his marriage to her was incestious and illegal. Katherine was very lonely at court, her only friend was the ambassador of Spain, as Cardinal Wolsey dismissed her Spanish ladies-in-waiting for fear that they were spies for the Holy Roman Emperor. Nevertheless, she always does her duty as Queen of England admirably, even mingling with and donating to the common people after church services, and she is loved by the English people despite her Spanish background. She is banished to spend her final days at the house "The More", without any contact from the king's staff or her daughter Mary. She is last seen dictating her will on her deathbed, read both aloud and, intercutting with, by a mournful Henry VIII; Anne smiles upon hearing the news and states that "Now, I am indeed queen." Katherine re-appears in the final episode of Season 4 in the dream sequence alongside Mary, confronting Henry about how Mary should have been married and have children of her own a long time ago, and that she was always his wife no matter what.

Boleyn is instrumental in ensuring the rise of Thomas Cromwell as one of the king's closest advisors but this backfires as Cromwell's ambition and loyalty to the king were greater that his alliance with the Boleyns.

Cromwell is depicted as being ruthless and calculating, but also as a hard-working and able minister. His historic role as a talented administrator and reformer eventually comes into conflict with Henry's ambiguous commitment to the Reformation; the series portrays Cromwell as a committed Protestant who sees the Reformation slipping away, with the Church of England, despite its break from Rome, retaining Catholic tradition and ritual. An attempt to strengthen the King's ties to Protestantism through a German marriage to Anne of Cleves (though couched as a political alliance) backfires. Because of his commoner origins Cromwell is resented by nobles such as the Duke of Suffolk and frequently abused even by Henry. His beheading is a brutal, botched affair because the executioner is drunk.

He is deeply loyal and devoted to Anne Boleyn but, despite his devotion to her, he is forced to relinquish the mutual desire for a reformed faith when Anne falls from favor. He takes her last confession in the tower and breaks the news to her that Elizabeth is to be declared illegitimate but promises her that he will endeavour to keep her in the King's "good and kind graces". Cranmer would outlive Henry, but would not survive the Catholic Mary I.