The_Face_of_Boo wrote:
Trueno wrote:
Used to happen in England hundreds of tears ago... Henry VIII was pretty good at topping people who didn't measure up (including wives who didn't produce male heirs).
My view is that it's a result of absolute and unchallenged power vested in one individual. Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Vlad the Impaler, Caligula, Saddam Hussein... and a long list of others. I haven't mentioned the Austrian guy... Adolf somebody or other because I don't want to be accused of Godwinism.
It would make an interesting area of study how they end up like that. Henry VIII started out as a shining renaissance prince. It's possible that constant pain from a jousting wound made him a little bit... grouchy. He even claimed that some of the things he did were forced on him by external pressures and circumstances... like the execution of Thomas Cromwell.
Kim, on the other hand was born into it... maybe inured to it at an early age... who knows?
King Henry VIII was so insane for power to the point he changed the Kingdom’s religion and founded a national church, and appointed himself as its head.
Shah Islamil I did the same by converting his entire empire from Sunni to Shiism in order to isolate it from the Ottoman influence.
What interests me, though, is that Henry VIII didn't wake up one morning and decide to do all this. It happens in small steps over years and one thing leads to another. But at some point he had turned into a monster.
One of Henry's bitterest enemies was Cardinal Reginald Pole. Henry couldn't get at Pole... he was in Rome... so he had Pole's mother executed. She was a little old lady. Vindictive or what?
_________________
Steve J
Unkind tongue, right ill hast thou me rendered
For such desert to do me wreak and shame
05 Jun 2019, 7:51 am
