‘As glad a father as ever was King’: The Reformation counterfactuals of Henry VIII's children
The frustrations of Henry VIII in his search for a male heir are well documented in historical research and in popular culture, with everything from soap operas to mnemonics tracing his destructive relationships with his six wives (The Tudors and the ever-unsettling ‘divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived’). Such attention is justified, as Henry's decision to break away from the Roman Catholic Church in his quest for his first divorce was the catalyst for decades of religious and political strife, domestically and internationally. But what if his first son had lived? What if one of his daughters had been a boy instead? This essay puts forward several counterfactual situations based on the sex and health of Henry's male and female children that could have had profound implications for English policy and the monarchy, and explores a facet of counterfactual research – biological chance – that has previously been underrepresented.  An earlier version of this essay was handwritten and presented...