Reflections on the Tudors

And doesn't this sound like something you want to read?  No, really....

I've been watching The Tudors on BBCAmerica for the past two days.  They're running the series now (much sanitized, I'm sure, since it originally aired on Showtime), and it was inevitable that I would be snared by anything to do with Henry VIII and his messed-up life.  I know this is a soap-opera, so they've taken what was already "soapy" enough and amped it, but I find some of their slants and character portrayals interesting.

Anne Boleyn always comes off as a scheming temptress.  I'm not sure she wasn't, but I find her in this series sort of particularly horrible.  Selfish, grasping, deliberately cruel....I think the viewer is supposed to think this so when her inevitable fall comes, we'll be happy about it.

She got me thinking about how bad relationships with manipulative partners can mangle the people they're involved with.  Henry never sees Anne for what she is.  All his friends, people he's known and trusted for years and years, people he grew up with, prized for telling him the truth disapprove, and he refuses to listen.  I've seen that happen again and again with people I know personally right before the entire thing goes up in flames or violence. 

I know the great cliche is that love is blind, but why do lovers always assume that all their friends are wrong?  If everyone you love and trust tells you that your current amor is stepping out on you, playing games with your mind, being abusive to you, making you into some other person than you used to be (and not in a good way which you, let's face it, probably needed), then isn't there the slightest possibility they might be right?

I guess what Earl Derr Biggers says is true, "Every man must wear out at least one pair of fools shoes."  It would just be encouraging to me if people didn't keep going back to that same shop for this season's latest style of that same old fad.