Being Beheaded

For at least ten years now the reign of King Henry VIII and his children have fascinated me. I'm pretty sure it started when I bought a book about Elizabeth I the summer between 5th and 6th grade (funny enough, that very same trip to the bookstore put the first Harry Potter into my possession as well). The book was written as if it was a diary, written by Elizabeth herself. Of course it wasn't her real diary, but all the historical facts were there mixed in with the feelings she might have had about them. Included in the book were family trees, pictures, and time lines. I was endlessly intrigued, and even long after finishing the book, I would go back and look through it. Since this was before Google, probably before I even knew the internet existed, that little book was my only portal for the information I so eagerly craved about this real life soap opera.
This, along with my absorption in Greek mythology, really influenced my love of history. So many people find history dull, and impossible. I have to agree, my head for dates is wretched, especially when it comes to meaningless events (to me) like the specific dates of battles, or the dates of reigns. I don't care. I can remember order, like the presidents, but ask me when all their terms were by year... and I'd be screwed. Besides, for me, history isn't about dates... it's what happened, and in that case, history is full of things to excite. The drama. The murder. As I said, it's a soap opera. How some people can't see it like that, I'll never figure out. I guess I just have head for random, interesting, trivia. (I totally kick ASS as Trivial Pursuit)
But I digress.
Being so fascinated by Tudor England, I've learned a lot over the years. I read The Other Boleyn Girl (and I own the movie), and a year or two ago I saw the first season of The Tudors. Last night, while trolling around on Netflix, I noticed the second season was available to watch instantly, and for some reason, I went for it.
I started on the first episode and just couldn't stop until I'd reached the end. I think knowing what happens makes everything so much worse. I hate it when I'm watching movies like Romeo and Juliet, and for a little while I hope that this time it all goes differently. Romeo gets the letter and is there by Juliet's side when she wakes up, smiling, and they run away together. But of course that never happens, they always die, and I'm always upset by it. That's exactly the same feeling I got when I was watching The Tudors. "Please let everything go right for once, so no one has to be executed."
You know it's coming, but somehow that doesn't make it any easier.
They spent two whole episodes on the executions of Anne and the men she supposedly slept with (a gay man, her own brother, and a man who despised her). It was some kind of agony for me. I can't stand it when Anne watches her brother, George get his head chopped off, and she loses it. She was supposed to be killed on the 18th of May at 9am, but the special swordsman they had brought in from France to do the deed got lost/was prevented from making it on time. So there's this poor woman, preparing herself for her impending death all day, only to be told it's been postponed until the next day. Dear god!
The whole idea of execution deeply disturbs me. Waiting, knowing death is so near, walking to the scaffold, the heckling, having to stare out into the crowd of people who will live past this moment while you won't. I would be shaking. I shake whenever I'm even slightly nervous or upset. So I can only imagine the kind of shaking I would do if I were about to be executed. My heart would be in my throat or in the pit of my stomach, definitely reaching tachycardia levels. I don't know how I'd be able to walk without tripping all over the place, because I get clumsy when I'm anxious. In the Tudors, Anne Boleyn (and in real life I might add) she says to the constable, "I heard say the executioner was very good, and I have a little neck," and then starts laughing uncontrollably. That would be me. When I get stressed, or haven't slept in a long while, I start finding things funny which shouldn't be funny, especially about my condition. I'm sure I'd be hysterical, in all sense of the word, screaming and crying one minute, then laughing like a crazy woman, cracking jokes, the next. For some reason beheading is particularly horrible to me. I have no idea why. There are worse ways to go, I know. I mean, getting your head chopped off was actually preferable to other methods such as burning, stoning, slow hanging, being boiled alive, disembowelment, impalement, being buried alive, etc. However, something about beheading just upsets me. If there is such a thing as past lives, I'm certain I was beheaded in one of them, because I can't really make sense of it, unless the idea of my head being detached my body is that completely distressing to me in some weird psychological way.

I know, I'm weird.
I watch entirely too much History Channel, it's warped my imagination.

Anyway, I cried when Anne was up there on the scaffold. I always cry.
Henry could care less about her. He's off having a merry time with his fiance. Her own father, the man who set them all up on this train to disaster was set free from jail and didn't even stick around to be there for his children, didn't see them die (George Boleyn was also beheaded). But everyone there, watching, was really sad... especially her little lover-boy, that poet guy, Thomas Wyatt, standing off to the side losing it. He still loved her. If only her father's ambition hadn't sent her on this tragic course, maybe they could have been happy together.
I just cried and cried.
It makes me sick that we can degrade our fellow human beings to this suffering. Is is really worth all the human life standing between you and your materialistic desires? Sure, it made them all infamous. Here it is, nearly five hundred years later and we are still talking about them. But I doubt this was how they wanted to be remembered when they made their choices.