Doc and I watch the Tudors and talk about the Reformation

Connie sent me this header today, so I couldn't wait to see how it looked, as Doc plays the cowboy so well in costume and play, even though he was only on a horse twice in his life and said the horse did not like him either time!
He and I just finished the first year of the series the Tudors in which both of us took a deep interest. He was raised in a profoundly religious Lutheran community which he left at the age of 25 or so when his marriage to a Lutheran minister's daughter caused him so much upset. So when Martin Luther started his break from Catholicism and King Henry the VIII began to hear about it in England and take an interest, Doc is gripped by the past. I am also taking a tremendous interest in a story about how a King went from devotion to the church to the reformation in England during his reign. A woman, Anne Boleyn, was instrumental in bringing to his attention the writings that had been printed departing from the idea that Kings should bow to the Pope. We have not yet seen the second year of the series which will no doubt cover the King's eventual turning away from Anne Boleyn which lead to her dreadful beheading, a historical act that has always filled me with dread because it seems like the ultimate in punishment for a woman who was perhaps too ambitious for her own safety.
Since I was raised in a state, Utah, where the Mormon Church is so dominating, I have seen first hand how a church can stifle the examining of certain issues that had meaning for me. I can see that it does take centuries for change to come, sometimes. So in an odd sense the Reformation in England gives me hope that wrongs in the name of religion could be addressed by men powerful enough to do it. The Catholic priest Henry placed in command to take the place of Cardinal Wolsey who had fallen from grace has just finished burning a man responsible for printing a reformation interpretation of the laws of God. He would not recant. The King has not found out about it yet, but I am sure he will. Then this man he has elevated to the most powerful Catholic official in England will come under fire for burning a man writing the very defiant ideas the King is now taking such an interest in, as inspired by the books Anne Boleyn has shown him.
What drama! This burning of the heretics had to be stopped by powerful men as well. I am very curious to see what will happen next.
It has been a long time since I have been so interested in a drama on TV or in the movies as in this one. Henry is shown in all his faults and extremes. In a series the conflicts can be examined in more detail than in a movie. This series is certainly doing justice to one of the most powerful dramas every played out in history. Doc has been a very interesting companion to watch this with.
I see him as having such serious flaws along with such a powerful intellect, like Henry, like these religious figures. I just can't understand why he committed himself to self destruction. I wonder if anything can touch him. Or if he is just going to keep on, inexorably, until he dies of alcoholism. So I am studying him, the former Lutheran, as I watch. He went through his own rebellion when he left the church and refused to think about reforming himself again. He is in defiance of Luther. I wonder what Martin Luther would say to a man like Doc.
The women battle the men, Queen Katherine who would not abandon her marriage because divorce was regarded as a mortal sin. Henry keeps trying to explain to her but she does not get the point that he simply does not love her any more and thinks he should be able to leave her if he is unhappy and dissatisfied. As a young man, he could only marry royalty, and she was his older brother's wife who would have been the King had he lived. His older brother was in poor health and the marriage was not consummated, so the Queen is not willing to accept Henry's reasons for wanting an annulment or divorce, anything that will allow him to marry his new love, Anne Boleyn.
He is trying to say to Queen Katherine who was from Spanish royalty that there is no sense being King if he can't have what he wants in this regard. I tend to agree with him there, so he was going to figure out a way to continue to be King and marry for love. I remember when the Prince of Wales abdicated the throne to marry Wallis Simpson. He lost the love of the people by abdicating I thought, instead of fighting to marry a commoner who was divorced. For if Kings with all their power won't fight for what they want, who else can we expect to do it?