The Mirror and the Light (Light)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00263cs/wolf-hall-the-mirror-and-the-light-6-light?seriesId=m0024ywj

I missed The Mirror and the Light on Sunday night because I was drunk as a Lord. Last episode, ‘Light’ takes us into the darkness. We all know that the commoner Thomas Cromwell, the power behind the throne of Henry VIII, will reach a dastardly end. He’s seen too much and knows too much. And there can only be one king. It’s in the title.

The real question would have been whether he’d be racked and tortured to admit his treason. As Earl of Essex and Lord Chamberlain this would be a breach of protocol. But the King makes the rules. The King makes the laws. The King is head of the Church. Cromwell has been reduced to the position of commoner. There’s a kind of in-joke when he has a visitor from the Royal Court (best to stay away unless on official business unless you too be regarded as treasonous) who suggests Cromwell should fall on the King’s mercy. Let the King best him in the kind of rhetorical debate the King likes winning so much and let his majesty’s great wit and knowledge bring him back into the fold.

Cromwell reminds him of the heretic the King last bested in debate. The King had him burnt at the stake. The King must not only win but to be seen to be winning.

Cromwell is a reminder of the dirty work done behind the scenes. Most poignant scenes involve betrayal. Women are involved, necessarily. The King has divorced Anne of Cleeves before they have been properly married. His latest young flame is we know a gonner, too. It’s the women we remember. The women Cromwell remembers best. Those he had murdered. The greatest triumph isn’t there deaths, but we side with a mass murderer and the enabler of a narcissistic psychopath with no redeeming features. Any similarities between the moron’s moron Trump and those running dogs doing his bidding are purely coincidental. A sixteenth century Tudor court cannot be commensurate with King Trump from which nothing good can come?       

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