The Tudors Season 2, Episode 8, Lady in Waiting, marks the beginning of Anne Boleyn’s downfall and Jane Seymour’s quiet rise to favor. The episode dramatizes Henry VIII’s near-fatal jousting accident, Anne’s tragic miscarriage, and the rumors of poison surrounding Catherine of Aragon’s death, all while blending fact and fiction in true Showtime fashion. This analysis explores the historical inaccuracies behind Jane Seymour’s portrayal, the myth of Henry’s personality change after his fall, and whether the Boleyn family truly poisoned Catherine to clear Anne’s path to the throne.

Inside This Post:

• Jane Seymour: A Political Threat
• Courtly Love & Henry VIII
• Did the Boleyns Poison Catherine of Aragon? Separating Rumor from Reality
• What if Henry VIII Died in His Fall?
• The Jousting Accident: Did Henry VIII Really Change After His Fall?
• Anne Boleyn’s Miscarriage: the Beginning of the End
• Minor Historical Errors

Episode 8: Lady in Waiting

Henry courts Jane Seymour in secret while he attempts to repair his relationship with the Holy Roman Emperor. The Pope calls upon King Francis of France to invade England and restore the Papacy. After a devastating accident in which Henry is struck with a lance and left unconscious for several hours, Anne miscarries… and with it goes her hope of a “golden world” for the Boleyn family.

Jane Seymour: A Political Threat

There is a lot to talk about in this episode, as it introduces us more fully to Jane Seymour, her brothers, and her ambitions. She’s depicted as sweet and naïve, but with a hidden edge to her motivations, since whenever Anne tries to intimidate her, she stands her ground.

Thomas Boleyn is fearful of the Seymour influence, because he told Anne to find a mistress for the king they could “control,” and he knows they cannot control Jane thanks to her powerful family and Henry’s affection for her father, one of his favored knights. He (rightfully) sees her father and “two brothers” as a threat. Historically, Thomas Seymour had four sons and three daughters, a fact which “proved” to Henry that Jane came from a fertile bloodline that could produce multiple male heirs.

Courtly Love & Henry VIII

Henry courts Jane by giving her family rooms close to his own, seeing her in the presence of a chaperone, and favoring her male family members. This behavior seems strange (and adulterous) to modern audiences, but back in “ye olden times,” the idea of “courtly love” was popular. (It happened more in myth than in practice, but Henry was a romantic idealist and gravitated toward it.)

Courtly love was romanticized as being socially acceptable, provided the love between the two never became physical, which was part of its allure. Another attraction was its secretive nature. A (usually married) knight revered a single lady at court and favored her with his attentions. These men were in marriages arranged for convenience or political advancement, and courtly love allowed them to discreetly “flirt” without consequences. He “had to” direct his love and devotion towards her through obedience and humility by performing acts of service or chivalry in her honor. The lovers exchanged messages and tokens of their affection but could also dance together and hold conversations in public. Part of the attraction was the idea that their love was unattainable and could never be consummated. (Thing is, Henry always consummated it.)

Courtly love took the form of favors, poems, letters, writing music, receiving “favors” (ribbons from the lady of your choice, to wear in battle or at a public joust), as well as financial gifts. All visits between them were supervised to avoid improprieties.

Henry started off his “courtly love becomes my wife/mistress” early on; he shared secret letters and gifts with Catherine of Aragon outside of his father’s knowledge, and longed to rescue her from her “imprisonment” and raise her up from poverty (which he did by their union). He styled himself as “Sir Loyal Heart” in the court jousts. He pursued Anne in the same manner, and now he is doing the same with Jane… but because Anne has “been there, done that,” she sees all his moves and knows where they’re headed.

Did the Bolyen Poison Catherine of Aragon?

Catherine of Aragon died of cancer, which caused a growth on her heart. She inherited this trait from her mother and passed it on to her daughter; both of them died from a similar problem. But Chapuys is spreading around the rumor that the Boleyns poisoned her. In an ambiguous scene, Anne remarks Mary is ill with a “fever and constant vomiting,” and George answers they “may not have to meddle with her after all.”

There were rumors about this because it was convenient for Anne to have Catherine dead. With Catherine dead, no one could claim Henry was still married to her. In the previous episode, an unhinged Anne was ranting about her survival and demanding to know, “Why can’t she just die?” She threatened to order her death if Henry ever left her as regent. So, this insertion is deliberately shady. Does it mean to imply they DID poison her to get her out of the way, but have not had access to Mary to do the same? Possibly. Given how much Michael Hirst hates her family, it is probably a deliberate framing device to implicate them.

What if Henry VIII Died in His Fall?

Sir Henry Norris knocks Henry from his horse in a joust, and he’s out for several hours, leading to widespread panic in the court. George and Thomas Boleyn speculate about his death and how marvelous that would be, since as regent for his granddaughter, Thomas would be “king.” Anne spends hours prostrate in the chapel begging for his life, aware that Mary is a genuine threat. Cromwell makes sure Mary is under heavy guard and arranges for an instant coronation for Elizabeth.

Historically, we’re not sure who knocked Henry off his horse, but the animal “fell on top of him” (leading to the comment by Madge to Anne that “the king fell from his horse and has been crushed”). We also don’t know how long he was unconscious, but it was at least two hours, time enough for everyone to panic and leap into action.

For fun, let’s speculate for a minute about what might have happened if Henry had died that day. Obviously, we would never have had the extra wives. That England rose really quickly to put Mary on the throne after her brother died suggests they would have done the same here, with Cromwell / the Boleyns trying to oppose them. She met with little resistance anywhere, since everyone believed her the rightful heir to the throne. The Catholic population had Reform shoved down their throats and wanted to be back “in” with Rome. They knew she could give that to them. Plus, they adored her mother. Catherine of Aragon won them over many times, the most notable being her request that Henry not execute a huge chunk of London’s population after the May Day Riots.

Without decades of abuse from Henry and Edward, could Mary have taken the throne from Elizabeth? I think so. Her mother’s death and mistreatment was raw in the minds of the public, who despised “Nan Bullen.” Nobody asked to be torn away from the Pope and excommunicated, and many thought Henry was damning their souls to hell with his actions. There were far more Catholics than Reformists, even if Reformists made up a sizeable chunk of the court. Many of the courtiers would not have supported the Boleyn family, and might have “sat out” any conflict or even thrown their weight with Mary. The Emperor also would have backed her, and alienation from him and possibly King Francis would have made it tough going in England. Plus, Mary was an adult and Elizabeth was a child.

So, I am guessing Anne Boleyn would have been dead in a few months regardless, along with her brother and her father. (I actually had a conversation about this once with a friend who said, “As much as I like Anne, she had no friends and no political clout, and there’s no way she could have won against Catherine of Aragon or her daughter.”) Mary might have spared Elizabeth, but who knows?

The Jousting Accident: Did Henry VIII Really Change After His Fall?

There’s a popular theory that this fall changed Henry’s personality into the tyrant we all know and hate, but it’s untrue. The seeds of narcissism were there from the beginning. First, nobody at the time mentioned a head wound; every contemporary source says he was out for several hours, but “unharmed” apart from the busted ulcer in his leg.

Trying to say this was his turning point ignores all his crimes before this.

Let’s recap them, shall we?

Right after he came to the throne, he executed two of his father’s advisors for treason to gain popularity at court and with the public, even though they were only following Henry VII’s orders.

He turned on Cardinal Wolsey, one of his closest friends and the man who ran his country for him for over a decade, because Wolsey failed to give him an annulment. Henry possibly intended to execute him, but we’ll never know, since Wolsey died before his trial.

Henry had his close friend and advisor, Sir Thomas More, executed for refusing to sign the Oath of Succession, when he could have taken his sworn silence on the matter for consent and left him alone. Henry could not stand More’s disobedience.

Last but not least, let’s look at how he treated Catherine of Aragon. The first time she uncovered one of his affairs early in their marriage and confronted him about it, he had her favorite ladies-in-waiting banished from court as punishment. When she refused to give him his annulment, he had her stripped of her property and titles and banished her from court. In her continued defiance, he kept moving her to more and more run-down castles, hoping she would catch the plague and die. He refused to grant her visitors and withheld her daughter from her, even when one or both of them were gravely ill.

He did not allow his daughter, Mary, to attend her own mother’s funeral. Nor did he honor any of her wishes nor paid her servants as she requested. Mary was told by his lackies that if she did not sign the Oath, she would be executed; one of them threatened to “smash her head in” like a rotten apple. She was forced to serve as a servant in her sister’s household, where no one could refer to her as “princess.”

That he executed Anne, George, a bunch of innocent bystanders, Cromwell, a second wife and more of his courtiers is just an escalation of the same cruel behavior he displayed all along. Henry had to be right all the time, and if you disagreed with him on this or could prove that he hadn’t been right, you were put to death. Narcissists cannot tolerate disagreement because it threatens their inflated ego and need for control. In power situations, they will “take out” anyone who opposes them or tells them they are doing anything “wrong.”

Anne Boleyn’s Miscarriage: the Beginning of the End

Anne’s miscarriage happens because she’s so upset at finding Jane sitting on her husband’s knee and kissing him. This scene is powerful, with some amazing acting from Natalie Dormer, but it’s not substantiated anywhere in history. And it doesn’t fit Jane’s personality, who was demure and chaste. The real Anne blamed Henry’s jousting accident for losing the baby. It makes for powerful television, though, to have her scream at him that this is also his fault, and to claim her love for him is so great, it broke her heart to see him love another.

Henry, unfeeling bastard that he is, marches out of the room and tells Cromwell he’s certain Anne got to the throne through witchcraft. Anne now has a death mark on her, since the penalty for witchcraft is death. This further illustrates his narcissism, because if Anne is a witch, Henry can’t be blamed for anything. She seduced him with the black arts; that makes him innocent of all his crimes since he met her.

Anne has no chance of digging herself out of this grave; she’s doomed.

Minor Historical Errors:

• This episode opens with Jane Seymour’s arrival at court and her meeting the queen, but she served Anne Boleyn and Catherine of Aragon as a lady-in-waiting.
• Emperor Charles (Catherine’s nephew) is stubborn about Henry VIII restoring his daughter, Mary, to the succession. It’s a sticking point in their forming a new alliance, but in real life, the emperor didn’t harp on it. He knew her restoration to the lineage would be inevitable, particularly if Henry had no male heir.
• Francis makes a pilgrimage to Rome, where the Pope honors him as a good Christian prince, mentions he will excommunicate Henry, and tells Francis it is his Christian duty to invade England and restore the papacy to the people. This never happened.