How accurate is the show The Tudors? | AskHistorians Archive Observer

I just finished watching it recently, so I looked into it. However, as I'm not expert on Tudor England, I'm just going to talk about a few specific things that I'm confident of.

The first, is the order of events and specifically their time. Sometimes the show changes the order of unrelated events slightly.

The show starts shortly before Henry's divorce of Catherine. It shows him as a young, vital, popular King. And certainly, this is how Henry was when he was young, and it's understandable of the show to want to show this, as most people just think of him as a fat middle-aged man. However, by the time of his marriage to Anne Boleyn, he was already 41. Henry was married to Catherine of Aragon for 24 years, but from their divorce to his marriage to Catherine Howard, it was only 11 years, in which he went through Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves and Catherine Parr.

So the show seems to be going through most of his life, from a young man to his death, but really, the first 3.5 seasons only cover about 12 or 13 years, with a few events from earlier put in.

Another thing they changed is some of the minor characters. Several characters are conflated, or swap roles, or don't fit their real personalities.

For example, Mary's sisters. In the show, Henry has one sister, Margaret, who marries the King of Portugal briefly, then secretly marries the upjumped commoner, the Duke of Suffolk. He later becomes Henry's longest serving councilor.

However, notice that in the last series, Henry several times complains about his nephew, the King of Scotland? In real life, Henry had two sisters.

Margaret married the King of Scotland, and its her son James V that Henry is referring to. Her great-grandson of course, was to become James VI/I of Scotland and England (as Henry VII had considered in case his son's lineage died out, incidentally).

The other sister Mary, meanwhile, married the aged King of France (the father of the one in the show, who is shown to rule France for most of Henry's reign in the show, but actually didn't), not Portugal. Once he died of old age, she indeed secretly married the Duke of Suffolk as in the show, and Henry banished them temporarily from court.

However, the real Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, came from a wealthy noble family that had supported Henry VII and lost his father fighting Richard III (which is why he was raised with Henry VIII, and became one of his closest friends), and didn't do many of the things he's shown to do later in the show. He was indeed one of Henry's main advisors, and often led military campaigns, but some of the things he did in the show were actually things done by the Duke of Norfolk. That's the uncle of Anne Boleyn (and also Catherine Howard, not something shown in the show, where another guy turns up to be her uncle), who in fact survived the fall of his niece, and continued to be very powerful until late in Henry's reign, when he lost favour and was thrown in prison.

So, there are lots of small details that they changed. And of course, they don't show Henry as the obese man he was in old age, especially after his leg injury.

Overall, however, I felt that while it's not up to the standards of historical accuracy that would be expected for an academic work, I don't think it's terrible. It does show reasonably, I think, the feel of the court, and of Henry's personality: how he started off as a fairly popular king, educated in the humanist way, but became more tyrannical and arbitrary over time. Also, the way the courtiers manipulate him. Finally, one thing I was pleased with is that I think, unusually for a popular history show, is that they show the central importance of religion, and how importantly people took it. For many characters in the show, religion is not just a political faction or something opportunistic, but also something they passionately, genuinely believe in. And yet, at the same time, they resist showing them as simply blind fanatics, as TV shows have a want to do with pre-modern religion. For example, Cromwell is corrupt, at times cruel, willing to compromise to keep the King's favour, but at the same time he is shown as genuinely believing in Protestantism (or, as they generally called it, Reform). Henry VIII resists going too Protestant because, as much as he wants a divorce, he genuinely believes in much of Catholic doctrine, and is suspicious of the reformers' goals. This does appear to be what Henry thought in real life.

Overall... it's not perfect by any means, but it's much better than Reign.