When ‘The Tudors’ Season 4 Episode 1 opens, it is a hot time indeed in Merry Old England, and not just because of the temperature and the lack of rain. His Majesty King Henry, Eighth of that Name, has a new Queen, Katherine Howard.
Spoilers surely follow.
King Henry, now a middle aged man, has married the 17-year-old Katherine Howard and thinks himself a lucky, happy man indeed, more fool he. We see Katherine laying naked under some rose petals, an obvious homage to “American Beauty,” another story of a doomed obsession of a middle aged man for a teenage girl.
Katherine may have a lovely body, long, blond hair, and the sexual appetite of a Messalina, but she seems in this episode of “The Tudors” to be a complete bimbo. She giggles nervously all the time and that horrible habit seems to have infected most of her ladies in waiting. Personally, this writer wonders why King Henry took so long to have her head lopped off.
However there is a snake in paradise, as it were. Katherine was a very naughty girl, in more ways than one, back before she met King Henry. An old friend from those days not so subtly uses the knowledge of that misbehavior to worm her way into the Palace.
Princess Mary is not impressed and unfortunately cannot avoid showing up. Princess Elizabeth can avoid showing her distaste. Prince Edward, though, is all for his new step mom.
Indeed, the court of King Henry has more than its share of pieces of work courtiers.
There is the Earl of Surrey, Katherine’s Uncle, who seems quite put out by the presence of all of those “new men,” men of “vile birth” whose only credential seems to be a law degree from Oxford, and not a noble linage that stretches back to Crecy or even before. The Earl of Surrey is ambitious, not only to advance himself, but to get rid of all of these upstarts, like the Seymour brothers.
But the Earl of Surrey is nothing compared to Master Thomas Culpepper. Those Culpepper is a fellow, alas, who thinks more with his loins than with his brains. He can think of nothing else but setting about Queen Katherine, a thinking that is dangerous indeed. To cool his adore he rides out with his buddies and rapes the wife of a Park Keeper, then murders the Park Keeper to keep him quiet. One thinks something bad should happen to Master Culpepper and one will not be disappointed.
Meanwhile King Henry is happy as can be. He has a girl less than twice his age to share his bed, new palaces to build, recalcitrant nobles to execute, and the prospect of glorious war in France. What could possibly go wrong?
Source: The Tudors, Season 4, Episode 1, Showtime
