Elegy for Francis, Duke of Dukes | An Alternate History

What Happened to Henry

THIRD STANZA, VERSE IV

 Ever since the conclusion of the war and our entrance onto the world stage, Henry was in a sorry state. The poor soul was blind as a bat. While I was away in Upper France on a diplomatic mission, his sanity declined and slipped away from him. A sickness spread in his mind that slowly tore it asunder. Each year, he grew more depraved. Some have laid the blame on his defeat at Breton hands. I suspect that was only the tipping point that finally drove him over the edge.

Dozens if not hundreds of people were publicly executed under Henry's reign of terror, earning him the title of the next Richard the Black. He hated more than anything else to be compared to that perpetrator of biological atrocities. Anyone caught uttering such blasphemy was quickly put to the sword. Ironically, this only made the outcry louder than before. Rather than trying to appease the masses he simply enacted further purges of religious and cultural minorities. For the first time in centuries, the population of the kingdom began to decline.

Thousands fled for their lives, mostly into Normandy and Lower France. Many Protestants saw it fit to settle along the coast while Catholics usually opted to continue further inland. Some even tried to rebuild their old lives in the New World.

At times it appeared as though the madness had gone and England was saved. But in those moments his clarity bordered on blind arrogance. He called himself Henry the White, lauded himself as savior of the realm when in reality he was playing the part of tormentor. Eventually it became too much, and he took his own life in 1536.