Dating : What Watching The Tudors Taught Me About Online Dating

Tips on keeping your wits and your head about you when you put up a profile

King Henry VIII waxed joyful and full of expectation about his upcoming meeting with Anne of Cleves, who would be the only wife who escaped beheading or premature death as his girth, irascibility and impatience all expanded with his increasingly poor health.

His primary advisor, Thomas Cromwell, was eager to expand Protestant allegiances. Henry’s Church was under ever more scrutiny and attack from the Pope. The idea was that a Cleves alliance would do the King good not only from a bedding and progeny standpoint, but also in aiding and abetting Cromwell’s reforms.

Envoys to Düsseldorf, Germany, where Anne and her sister resided, were unable to see the faces of the girls in question. Henry liked beautiful women, and he was determined not to get stuck with a dud. He also preferred educated and culturally sophisticated women, which Anne was not, but he was willing to trade those for beauty and youth.

Just like now.

Unwilling to make the trip to Düsseldorf himself (he was plagued with terrible varicose ulcers), Henry demanded a visual.

Just like now.

Cromwell engaged the services of the renowned portrait artist Hans Holbein the Younger to provide the monarch with an impression.

Just like now, although we use computer technology.

What he produced (above) caused Harry to say yes. It’s anyone’s guess as to how accurately he portrayed her. On one hand, the poor artist, quite reasonably worried about the health of his head- as in keeping it on his shoulders- wanted to please Cromwell. Cromwell had a nasty reputation for ending a great many people, and his power was considerable. On the other, Harry was just as dangerous if not more so, for if the portrait was inaccurate, Holbein might be accused of painting a lie. Talk about a lose-lose.

Cromwell, of course, was beholden to the king to secure a portrait that pleased him, so he felt the same kind of pressure to present the best possible results without actually, um, lying.

In other words, an accurate but not too accurate representation of the girl was necessary, and anything outside that could be deadly.

I’d call those high stakes.

Unfortunately, as is what has happened in nearly every case for my own previews of male hopefuls, the visual didn’t exactly express reality, at least for the fantasy that Harry’s heated imagination had generated about his coming bride.

Just like now. I’m sure many of us can relate.

Unfortunately for Harry, the political expediency of the time dictated that Henry and Anne marry. He felt trapped. Unfortunately ( or perhaps not) for Anne, the king’s suppurating ulcers caused her disgust, for they stank and she was repulsed. They never consummated the marriage. Out of desperation, Harry had the marriage annulled.

That likely saved Anne’s life, although the rejection had to have hurt.

Cromwell didn’t fare so well. Harry considered this aborted attempt in an unfortunate light, and needed to blame someone for the failure. Cromwell’s enemies conspired to make him suffer for what he’d done to others. Stories claim (and the Showtime program showed) that the executioner was drunk, and badly botched what should have been a single, painless beheading.

Moral: don’t make enemies if those enemies have access to the beheading block.

Anne kept her head in more ways than one.

Anne was a very good sport. Because she was so gracious, she was allowed to remain “The King’s Beloved Sister,” given considerable lands and properties, a coterie of servants and continued access to the King’s two girl children, whom she loved. Mary and Elizabeth would go on to become monarchs on their own despite Harry’s efforts (and his son’s) to prevent their accession.

Anne was the only of Harry’s wives to live long enough to see Mary’s crowning. Mary didn’t keep her head long either, but that wasn’t the result of a botched blind date.

Most of us don’t end up with such positive outcomes from mildly or blatantly dishonest representations on online dating. You and I, when faced with gross dishonesty, old photos, and visages don’t end up with vast wealth.

We do, as did our good and horny King Harry, end up disappointed. He buried himself in the bosom of a seventeen -year-old (a male wet dream if there ever was one) who, alas, ended up beheaded, because she couldn’t keep her bodied laced any more than Henry could keep his own pants up around his massive waist.

What’s a monarch to do?

What are we to do, when the bad habit of dishonesty about what we look like, who we are, and what we have to offer causes others considerable disgust and distress? I suspect Anne of Cleves didn’t sign up for pus-filled sores in her bed any more than Harry signed up for a woman he considered unattractive and smelly. Of course since he was perpetually in a foul mood at that point, those accusations might well have been badly overblown.

Look. Lots of us might have dreamed about the advantages of being royalty, but when other people were moving us around like chess pieces into marriages long before we hit puberty, I struggle to understand the advantages, unless of course, you were the king, and could pick largely anyone you wanted. Including a hell of a lot of mistresses. That was then. This is now, when various princes can shrug off their royal duties, marry someone of mixed blood (and piss off the aristocracy) and still keep his head if not the crown. Oh, and the titles. Oh, and the…well. But he does keep the girl. Something to be said for that.

As some 81% of us are dishonest about some fundamental aspect of our profiles, typically about height, weight, age, hair or lack thereof, earnings, jail times and most likely penis or breast size, I suggest that there be a punishment inflicted on those who are blatantly dishonest.

Hey, just saying.

Look, if the specter of having your noggin removed as a result of lying about yourself might influence your choice of photos, adjectives and claims, part of me is all for it.

Of course, if we beheaded those who lied, then Trump (in particular) and all politicians in general would be fertilizing the soil.

But I digress.

Unless you consider a campaign something of a dating game (it is) with those politicians able to retire with wealth and lands (they often do).