In this new study of King Henry VIII and his wives [entitled The Wives of Henry VIII], Antonia Fraser sets out to dispel the historical perception that stereotypes those six women—Catherine of Aragon as the Abandoned Wife, Anne Boleyn as the Temptress, Jane Seymour as the Good Woman, Anna of Cleves as the Flanders Mule, Katherine Howard as the Bad Girl and Catherine Parr as the Mother Figure. Fraser points out that those images, while true in some measure, will not bear the hard scrutiny of history.

Anne Boleyn was certainly more than the King's goggle-eyed whore and Anna of Cleves more dignified than the cruel sobriquet that attaches to her name. Catherine of Aragon was a woman of character who bravely resisted banishment, fighting to the end for the legitimacy of her daughter, Mary. But to a greater or lesser extent, all six of Henry's wives were created or destroyed by what Fraser describes as their biological destiny—their capacity, in an age of grim infant mortality, to fructify the sovereign's bed with royal progeny, especially male offspring, and thus to perpetuate a dynasty insecure from its inception in 1485, when Henry of Lancaster killed Richard III on Bosworth Field and proclaimed himself Henry VII, the first of the Tudor kings.

It was an accession won at the point of a sword, and there were others with superior dynastic claims to the throne. Throughout his long reign, Henry VIII was constantly aware and wary of those deciduous loyalties lurking about his court. One cannot understand his marital career without taking into account this obsession to have male heirs, for the royal Tudors proved not to be highly philoprogenitive as a family. If Henry could not father a male successor, God, it would seem, could not establish His seed upon the throne of England.

The giant personality of Henry VIII has long over-shadowed the six women who shared his kingdom. With a firm grasp of her material, Fraser chronicles their lives at court triumphs as well as disasters, and admirably catches the lusty flavor of the period in this well produced and handsomely illustrated book.

Of the six women brave or foolish enough to marry Henry, only Jane Seymour retained his lasting affection, and she died giving birth to his son. Catherine of Aragon and Anna of Cleves were first courted and then cast aside for political purposes, while Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, both young and wayward, were caught in the caprice of infidelity and beheaded to assuage the King's anger.

Kingship in England reached a pinnacle of power and authority in the 16th Century. Henry was more than an absolute head of state, he also was the supreme head of the church, the spiritual as well as temporal ruler. Immortalized by the painter Hans Holbein as a Renaissance prince ruling in the image of God, Henry not only dominated the royal court, with its palaces at Greenwich, Windsor and Hampton, its tournaments and hunting lodges, but also the upheavals of the Reformation and the statesmen and princes—Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer, the Emperor Charles V and Pope Clement VII—who used the King's wives as pawns in the powerful game of politics.

If Henry was a born ruler, he was not born to be king. He might never have reigned except that his older brother, Arthur Prince of Wales, died young. Henry was 12 when he became heir apparent, succeeding to the throne six years later on the death of his father, Henry VII. He conducted affairs of state much as he approached matrimony—with an axe.

His first wife, Catherine of Aragon, the daughter of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain, actually had been his dead brother's wife for about six months. Catherine was betrothed to Arthur to consolidate an alliance of England and Spain against the common enemy, France.

Six years older than Henry, Catherine was a plain, pious woman. A man of appetite and ambition, Henry, at age 19, did not feel compelled to marry her. But he was weary of a variety of mistresses culled from the ladies at court, the imperatives of power underlined the importance of the Spanish alliance and there was the need to produce a son. They were married for almost 20 years, but Catherine, having given birth to Mary Tudor, failed to bring to life a male heir, and the marriage evaporated in serial miscarriages, still-born infants or others who were short-lived.

The marriage might have endured, however, had Anne Boleyn been a harlot. Instead, having bewitched the King, she demanded marriage and the throne. It is said that the length of the siege is a woman's glory, and Anne Boleyn resisted the rampant war-lord until he made her queen. Young and attractive, she had grown up in France and was wise in the ways of the coquette. In the end, there was no divorce. Henry's marriage to Catherine was simply annulled, she was pensioned off as the Dowager Princess of Wales, wife of the late lamented Arthur, and England acquired a new queen. The first child was a girl, christened Elizabeth; the second was still-born, and the whole tragic litany of conjugal mis-carriages began again. Naturally flirtatious, Queen Anne had many admirers at court and many enemies who envied her position. Quick to become jealous and suspicious, the King began to believe the pervasive whispers about the Queen's capacity for dalliance circulating throughout the court. Arrested and put on trial, she went to the scaffold, in the words of one witness, looking "as gay as if she was not going to die."

Henry, who liked to combine betrothals with beheadings, secretly married Jane Seymour, a lady-in-waiting at court, two days after Anne's execution. The Seymours were landed gentry with sound aristocratic connections, but what appealed to Henry was that they were a prolific family. The new Queen died giving birth to Edward, Henry's first legitimate male heir to survive, (Edward would die at age 16, of tuberculosis.)

Henry, now an aging, corpulent man, was once more without a wife. New political alliances were explored without much success. Mary of Guise and Christina of Denmark spurned the King's overtures, and eventually, on assurance of his advisers, Henry decided on Anna of Cleves, a petty princess from the lower Rhineland. The marriage would provide England with the support of the North Germans, from Scheldt to the Zuider Zee. The Low Countries would be his, and beyond the North Sea, Henry would possess a people who, like himself, had cast off the Pope and who would also prove invaluable to trade.

Anna was 34, prudent, unprepossessing and bored. Marriage to the English King would be an escape. Amid considerable pomp and ceremony, she arrived in England. But she was no beauty, and Henry recoiled. (Fraser cites Anna's "slightly bulbous nose" as "one explanation of the King's disappointment.") In vain he tried to rescind the contract but was finally persuaded to go through with the ceremony.

Henry found Anna dismal and could not bring himself to consummate the marriage. Instead, he sought distractions among the ladies of the court, among whom was 18-year-old Katherine Howard, who bore a faint resemblance to her cousin, the ill-fated Anne Boleyn.

At age 50, King Henry had not lost his taste for a pretty face and flashing eyes. Queen Anna was informed that the King was divorcing her because their marriage had taken place under constraint. He assured her of his affection and hoped for her compliance. Tired of virginal matrimony, the Queen readily agreed, with certain conditions—she would remain in England and be provided with a suitable residence and income. The King was generous, and the Lords, the Commons and the clergy, bidden to obedience by their royal master, quickly pronounced the divorce.

Henry neither wished for nor expected a child from Katherine. She was like a child to him, and he rejoiced in her youthful radiance. But in less than two years, the serenity of the aging satyr was savaged by ugly innuendoes concerning the Queen's chastity. When she was 15, a music master had tried to seduce her, and, in the words of Katherine's confession, she "suffered him at sundry times to handle and touch the secret parts of my body." There were rumors of other, later amatory audacities. Arrested, put on trial, Queen Katherine was decapitated as a lesson to ladies of loose morals who trifle with kings.

An ogre of obesity, ulcerous, spent in spirit and slipping into melancholy, Henry now contemplated his sixth marriage. Catherine Parr, a consolable widow of excellent breeding, was in her 30s and less than good-looking. Sensible and intelligent, she had already outlived two husbands and was adept at caring for and pleasing elderly men. She was not enamoured of the King but resigned herself to becoming queen.

While his nights may have been prosaic, Henry was at last at peace in the companionship of a woman. He died after a series of strokes, having reigned for almost 40 years. Two weeks after the funeral, Catherine quietly married a handsome man of minor nobility, Thomas Seymour.

The final historical irony would be that, out of the wreckage of all Henry's marriages, the female child at whose birth he had winced would take the scepter, meant for the sons he lacked, and, as Queen Elizabeth I, become the greatest Tudor monarch of them all.