if your rigour does not forbid me...

NATALIE PORTMAN as ANNE BOLEYN

Ppl send topics and instead of salt or hot takes, you MUST talk abt smth you like about it. Good excuse to gush abt smth you already love, OR think and find smth positive to say. 

Tamzin Merchant as Katherine Howard in a deleted scene from The Tudors season 4

Behind the scenes of The Tudors season 1 (1/2)

Behind the scenes of The Tudors season 1 (2/2)

so...interesting counterfactual...#1, does he keep his cardinal (...ate? ship?) status or his status as legate a latere? bcus the last thing he's sent the pope is his seal on the "fuck you" letter (that one #embarassingmoment where the henrician nobles and ecclesiates sent a strongly-worded letter with their seals in it to the pope that was like, confirm this annulment or elllllse...)....

#2 yeah, the opposite end of that spectrum...the pope can't raise him any higher to 'protect him', like was done with fisher. he's already at the highest clerical title underneath pope. saur...also even if he could that, um...seems like if anything it was just a martyr's crown for fisher...

i could envision a scenario where he remains in the tower for a prolonged period, i suppose. kind of like gardiner rockin' it during edward vi's reign. realistically, i don't think the boleyn rise to power can coincide with wolsey's in a post-blackfriars world where his health recovers. if he survived their downfall (and it still occurs in a similar manner OTL), maybe a return...? he was "only" 57 when he died (and altho an older age than that was kind of rare in tudor times, it's not like it was impossible...anne b's paternal grandfather, margaret butler, died in her eighties, iirc...)