Shag, Marry, Kill: Kings Edition (Live Show Recording)

Henry VIII, Charles II and Richard the Lionheart. What do all of these men have in common? They're incredibly eligible bachelors! Well, if not that then they are all former kings of England. At this live show in London we asked our audience which of these men they would shag, marry or avoid, keeping in mind style, syphilis and sex appeal. This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. The producer was Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

  Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:55Kate Lister?

  Oh, we've got a treat for you. Three eligible bachelors for your Perusial. Well, they're not exactly eligible at all, really. They're accessible, but they're not eligible. They're kings. Last year, we did our first live show with 400 of you glorious people, and it was so much fun, though we thought it would make a great gift for everybody else. So here's the recording, and we hope you enjoy it.

• 1:27Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely Betwixters! It's me, Kate Lister, and you are listening to the first ever live-recorded episode of Betwixt the Sheep. But before we can go any further, I do have to say it with me: This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering adult subjects of youth, me, and adult too! Live!

• 1:55Kate Lister?

  Hello!

• 1:59Kate Lister?

  It's so nice to see you all! Oh, we have some very attractive listeners, look at you people! It's... It's so nice to see you! Before we can go any further, I've got some housekeeping. Can we make sure that everyone's got their phones turned off? Or at least have it turned to loudspeaker so whatever happens, we can all hear. So the other thing we need to do is thank you guys a lot, because they put us in one of the smaller rooms and you guys went, "No!" Bigger room! And you sold it out and you blew up the waitlist, and then you did the same thing to the next room, and now look at the room that we're in!

• 2:41Kate Lister?

  And the other thing we need to thank you for is that we just hit a million listeners a month.

• 2:48Kate Lister?

  And only about half of that is my mum, so... Thank you. So we are... this is your live-recorded episode, and we are going to be playing a game of shag, marry, kill. I believe you've all been given some cards on your way in? Oh, fabulous, fabulous. You're going to introduce you to three monarchs from UK history, and then we will all decide together to shag, marry, or kill. And the bar is low, but we're all gonna... We're all gonna try our absolute best, but obviously, I can't do this by myself, so I have to have a guest with me. And who else could I possibly have asked to this apart from the one, the only, the absolutely wonderful, Dr Eleanor Yonnega!

• 3:41Kate Lister?

  Well, hello!

• 3:42Speaker 01

  It's pretty big. I guess.

• 3:45Kate Lister?

  Fancy seeing you round these parts?

• 3:48Speaker 01

  I know, well, I mean, I do leave the pub sometimes.

• 3:51Kate Lister?

  Sometimes! Shall we introduce you and our audience to the three monarchs?

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, please.

• 3:59Kate Lister?

  All right, it was, it was tough picking.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  The trouble is that there are so many trash men throughout history. And, like, really trying to limit that and pare it down, that was actually the issue.

• 4:12Kate Lister?

  I think so. The first one, obviously, I don't think we could have done this without him, could we?

• 4:17Speaker 01

  No.

• 4:17Kate Lister?

  It's Henry. Henry, Henry, Henry, Henry the Eighth.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  This fucking guy.

• 4:24Kate Lister?

  This fucking guy.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:27Kate Lister?

  So, first up, we have Henry, born in 1491, a divorcee and widower.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  So that's a way of putting it, yeah.

• 4:38Kate Lister?

  From London, who has an array of interests and hobbies. He's a very keen sportsman. He likes his food, he's a gastronom.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Kind of a sooty.

• 4:51Kate Lister?

  He's a sooty?

• 4:52Speaker 01

  That's what I think of when I think about Henry the Eighth. Yeah, yeah.

• 4:56Kate Lister?

  He's always got a lot of palaces.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:59Kate Lister?

  He's got about 50 palaces. Yeah, likes falconry. Things that he doesn't like. That's quite extensive. He doesn't like being told what to do an awful lot. He doesn't like the church by the end of What Happens. And he doesn't like quite a lot of his wives.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  It's funny, it's funny how he seems to have a problem with women.

• 5:22Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  I think we could characterize it as such.

• 5:26Kate Lister?

  Yeah. And we'll get on to the finer details, but that is contestant number one for the Tudor fans amongst us.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Mmm.

• 5:35Kate Lister?

  Right? Right, give it up for Henry, what a unit. Next contestant, number two, I think.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Now, now we're talking, here we fucking go.

• 5:44Kate Lister?

  Now we're talking. Born in 1630, this is Charles II, beloved of horrible history enthusiasts the world over, but we're gonna be going a little, a little deeper than that, I think. What can you say about Charles? Okay, he likes hot chocolate. That's a thing that he brought in, apparently.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 6:03Kate Lister?

  Yeah?

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:05Kate Lister?

  He didn't like monogamy very much.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Just like me, for real? Yeah, great. Cool.

• 6:10Kate Lister?

  And if there were to be believed, he had a huge penis. We'll, we'll, I was gonna say touch on that, but that's not. We will cover, that didn't sound right to you. We'll get to the penis.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:23Kate Lister?

  We will get to the penis. Things that he didn't like, didn't like monogamy, didn't... Oh, he was a bit of a sneaky one when it came to Catholicism and Protestantism and sneaky fibs, and he had syphilis. So that's contestant number two.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  I just want to make it clear that those two things are not usually related. It's just like, it's more of a correlation and less of a causation in this instance. Yeah.

• 6:44Kate Lister?

  And an excellent wig collection, I think.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  All right.

• 6:49Kate Lister?

  I am gonna look to you to introduce contestant number three.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Well, have I got a catch for you.

• 6:57Kate Lister?

  Hey!

• 6:58Speaker 01

  It's only Richard the First, AKA The Cour de Lion, AKA, you know, The Lionheart, for everyone who speaks English, which doesn't include my boy. So, born in the year of our Lord, 1157, he likes poetry, travel, and his mother.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  He dislikes coming to England, doing his job

• 7:29Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  and family time, other than his mother. You know, he's so... Let me tell you this about him. If you go to his court, there's probably gonna be some good music. If you go to his court, there's gonna be some great wine. I cannot stress how much his court is in France and not here. So, it's gonna be a long-distance relationship, but one that does involve good wine.

• 7:56Kate Lister?

  I could be down with that. I've heard worse than that. All right, so those are our three contestants, so...

• 8:04Kate Lister?

  Just spoil your choice. So, when everybody thinking the whole way through this, how would you categorize these three hulking figures of masculinity and monarchy? Would you shag them? Would you marry them? Or would you just put them in a big sack and kick them in the safe?

• 8:19Speaker 01

  They all looked just like this.

• 8:21Kate Lister?

  But if you had to, like if you, if you had, if you had to, to choose, that's what we're going for. And I was thinking backstage, I think that it, it would be fair for us to say, like, at their peak.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, I think.

• 8:33Kate Lister?

  Because that's, that's, like, they're very different kings at, Henry, at the start and then at the end.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:41Kate Lister?

  Even that's fair?

• 8:41Speaker 01

  I think that that is fair, you know, we're not necessarily talking about decrepitude.

• 8:46Kate Lister?

  No.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Although it comes into it, I mean, some of them don't make it that far. But, you know, I think that what we're saying is, peak era.

• 8:54Kate Lister?

  Peak era, yeah, yeah, at their absolute prime, at their absolute best, I think that's probably.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:01Kate Lister?

  That's probably fair.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  You know, like, please think of me that way, you know, so.

• 9:05Kate Lister?

  Right, Henry, first category that we're going to investigate is, was he attractive?

• 9:15Speaker 01

  I don't know who said that.

• 9:16Kate Lister?

  You can, you can decide, one thing we do need to say is that the perceptions of beauty do change. People will look at pictures of us in a few hundred years from now and wonder, what the fuck were we doing?

• 9:30Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 9:31Kate Lister?

  They will, they'll be like, what's with the eyebrows, what's with the, it'll look very, very peculiar to them. So this may have been as hot as it got.

• 9:42Kate Lister?

  It might, but I will say this for Henry, he was hot in his youth, that's what they say, that's what a lot of people say.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I mean, don't get me wrong, partially it is because he is a homicidal maniac. So like, you have to, you have to put that into the, the equation.

• 9:56Kate Lister?

  But even before he became a homicidal maniac.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Before he was a homicidal maniac.

• 10:01Kate Lister?

  Before.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Remember the before times? You know, it's like, this man is kind of like the equivalent of, when you look at these, it's like, you know, when someone who does like a family obliteration is then like shown on a jet ski in the news.

• 10:11Kate Lister?

  Yes.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  It's like, that's basically what we're showing you now, it's like a beloved, beloved family man.

• 10:17Kate Lister?

  Yeah, but with lovely hair, I think.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:20Kate Lister?

  I think, right, so when he was a young man that came to the throne, at a wee teenager, I often think like, what were you doing when you were 18 years old, for God's, like, were we trusted with an entire country? No. I don't think it's particularly difficult to look very attractive when you're 18. I think that most people are beautiful when they're 18. But he was a particularly fine specimen. He stood at over six foot two. Because that kind of thing's important. That's what they say on dating profiles. You know, that when men...

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah.

• 10:51Kate Lister?

  Because that's important.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:52Kate Lister?

  He would definitely have done that by tapestry.

• 10:58Kate Lister?

  Over six foot two, which is considerably higher than the average.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:02Kate Lister?

  The average Tudor height.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's higher than the average today. So, you know, shout out to a real one.

• 11:07Kate Lister?

  Yeah, a hoping man.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  But on the other hand, I would really like to stand next to him because it's hilarious how many men here will be like, "I'm six foot." And then I'm like, "Oh, that's cute." Usually people who are six foot are one inch shorter than me, not four. So that's wild, but okay, cool, yeah, yeah.

• 11:24Kate Lister?

  Well, if we got you side by side, I think he would. He'd pass the Ellen attack.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true, yeah, yeah.

• 11:29Kate Lister?

  He was Orban haired, red haired in color. According to some of the people at the court at the time, he had a very beautiful face, like almost feminine, it's described as, as being so beautiful, he's almost feminine. The handsomest prince in all of Christendom. And they're all crazy about his legs.

• 11:50Kate Lister?

  You'd be surprised how much that turns up in the records when people are talking about how good looking someone is, the legs.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Do you know what? Bring it back. Bring back pervin' on men's legs. This is what I say. Do you know what it is? It's the tights, right? Like, it's because since what we're doing, like, I'm actually being serious. Like, it's a bit of dress history that we say, is that we tend to find shapes more attractive if they accord to what fashion is doing at the time. So, you know, the more leg men are showing, the more important leg will be.

• 12:21Kate Lister?

  Well, he showed a lot of leg. And he did this thing, you can see it in his big "mya ma man" one over there. See those garters around his legs? It has been suggested that it was those garters that he tied to, like, make his muscles pop.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, it's cursy, Ben.

• 12:38Kate Lister?

  Don't you laugh at Henry's legs?

• 12:42Kate Lister?

  Those garters that might have actually really damaged the veins in them, which led to his not-so-hotness later in life, I'm afraid.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  OK, well, look, I've got to say, as someone who used to wear a lot of heels, it's like I can't go around making fun of people who damage themselves for fashion.

• 12:57Kate Lister?

  No.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  And it'll happen to you, young people. So, yeah.

• 13:04Kate Lister?

  So, as a young man, six foot two, red-haired, really into sports, like, think of him as like your jock, your rugby player. He's wrestling, he's playing tennis, he fucking loves jousting, he can't get enough of it. But the reason that I've said that we should pick him at his finest is because for Henry, that changes rapidly. He's really, really hot, and then he has this jousting accident, I think it was 1536, breaks his legs, and then something happens. The scholars have been rowing about this for hundreds of years. For the purposes of this, we'll just say they were fucked. That's, I think, that's fair. Whatever it was, whatever happened to him, it caused ulcers to open up in his legs that were infected,

• 13:48Kate Lister?

  and it went right down to the bone, and it would have been unbelievably painful and really, really smelly. You could apparently smell him from several rooms away, which, it's grim, isn't it?

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Well, it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, to be fair.

• 14:01Kate Lister?

  I knew I wasn't going to win you with that one. The other thing that happens to him, legs are fucked, is he doesn't stop eating the way he was eating when he was, you know, running, jumping, climbing trees, all that stuff. So, he does put on weight quite rapidly, and we looked this up, didn't we? He was 300 pounds, or for those in old money, 21 stone? Yeah. I don't think today that that's actually that big. That's how our perceptions have changed. And then we were trying to find people that were of the same frame, and we came up with Dwayne The Rock Johnson, not a good comparison.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  No.

• 14:35Kate Lister?

  That's not, and then the other one was Harvey Weinstein.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  It's like so, it was like same height, same weight. And I was like, there you go. There it is.

• 14:47Kate Lister?

  So, hold that image in your mind. Bless him. And apparently his willy didn't work as well, according to some, according to some documents.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, that really helps as if people start writing about it. His dick is broken.

• 15:02Kate Lister?

  His dick is broken. He used that in the court trial when he was trying to get Anne Boleyn out.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  See, that's wild, because it's usually the other way. It's like, you're not supposed to say that. That means that she can divorce you.

• 15:12Kate Lister?

  Yeah, like, they wrote it down. Apparently she'd said, oh, he has neither a passion nor a pussyance, I think was the expression. And then Henry joined in, my god, yeah, and she slept with like 100 men. It's like, Henry, shut up.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  God forbid women have hobbies.

• 15:28Kate Lister?

  Okay, right.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  All right, okay.

• 15:31Kate Lister?

  That's Henry. I think if we're considering him at his peak, quite hot.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, to be fair, like, that, like, that's a man.

• 15:40Kate Lister?

  That, yes.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  You know, and I like those, so, okay.

• 15:43Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, all right, yeah.

• 15:45Kate Lister?

  And he dresses well, too. He spends a lot of money on, on looking like that.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I really like that necklace that he has on there. Like, I absolutely would. Little garnet pearl number, yes. Okay, come on, queen.

• 16:04Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Eleanor after this short break.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Hi there, I'm Dan, host of Dan Snow's History Podcast. And I can imagine on these dark winter nights, all you're gonna do is curl up with a cup of tea and get lost in an amazing story. Well, I can help you with that. Twice a week, I tell you the most dramatic and extraordinary stories from history with details I can guarantee you've never heard before. Feel the frostbite of that grisly, failed American invasion of Canada in the dead of winter. Imagine every clash and blow at the Battle of Bosworth. Follow Eleanor of Accretaine, one of the most powerful women in the medieval world, as she goes on crusade to the Holy Land with 300 handmaidens in tow.

• 16:51Speaker 03

  She leads her own army. Everyone goes gaga for Eleanor.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  And trace the voyage of the first Vikings as they arrive on Iceland's lonely shores.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  For the best historical stories to get lost in, check out Dan Snodgrass history here.

• 17:21Kate Lister?

  Okay, all right, so, Charlie Boy. Was Charlie Boy fit?

• 17:25Speaker 01

  I mean, like, my man is a fashion icon. Like, category is silks girl. Yeah, uh huh.

• 17:33Kate Lister?

  I think that's a face I'd sit on. I think that's...

• 17:39Kate Lister?

  Yeah. Quote, Dr. K. Lister.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 17:43Kate Lister?

  I think so. You can hold on to the wig. Stop it. Right, okay, stop. Stop, stop. Another tall fellow, over six foot tall.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Okay, all right.

• 17:53Kate Lister?

  Yeah, if that's important. Dark features, a lot of people comment on his dark features, and bling. He's the king of bling. But he didn't actually have that much money. He was a bit skint, but that hasn't stopped him.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  But he spent it in the right places, and that's what's important. You know, the poor, who are they? The pearls, right there, baby. Right, yeah.

• 18:14Kate Lister?

  He knows how to accessorize. Okay, the penis. Oh, you all want to know. We all want to know.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Can I just say something?

• 18:23Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  All right, okay, so here's the thing about, like, the big penis thing. Like, again, like, put this on the jacket cover of a book. That doesn't impress me. Like, don't point that at me.

• 18:32Kate Lister?

  You are the Shania Twain of big dicks.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you got a big dick? That don't impress me. Et cetera. Like, no, like, uniformly, okay, and especially, especially if it's a king. So, A, like...

• 18:45Kate Lister?

  How many kings with big dicks have you folk? Come on.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Okay, I just want to say this. You know, as a proud working-class woman, king don't get to have sex with me.

• 18:55Kate Lister?

  Oh, no, okay.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  So, they wish they did. No, thank you, I'm constantly saying to kings, I'm like, get out of my inbox. I don't, I don't want to hear it, I don't want to see it.

• 19:06Kate Lister?

  No.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  But, okay, here's the thing, the owners of big dicks, right? So what they do is they're like... Congratulations.

• 19:13Kate Lister?

  That is true.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  And you're already having sex with a king. That this guy is a generous lover. Like, who is like, "What I'm all about is her pleasure." No, he's gonna flop it out.

• 19:25Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  And just because it's big, is it pretty? And you know what I'm talking about.

• 19:30Kate Lister?

  I do know what you're talking about, I do. Yes, just because it's big doesn't mean that it's gonna be a lot of fun, does it? But you can feel quite overfaced by it, I find, if it's too big.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  And he's gonna be like, "Oh, Charles, that's so big."

• 19:44Kate Lister?

  He doesn't have to, but do you know?

• 19:46Speaker 01

  "Oh, it's bigger than your dog."

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Like, that's what he's gonna want, you know?

• 19:52Kate Lister?

  Yes, he is. But do you know how we know he has a big penis?

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, how?

• 19:56Kate Lister?

  Someone wrote a poem about it.

• 19:59Kate Lister?

  That was Rochester, the naughty reg, everyone's favorite scallywag. Rochester writes a poem called, I think it's called "Satyr to King Charles," where he talks quite explicitly about how big his penis is. He says it's as big as a scepter, and at one point he says it's the sauciest prick that ever did swive.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Okay, all right, okay.

• 20:18Kate Lister?

  And he got thrown out of court for that. The king threw him out of court.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  No, I love that, it's like, he's like, "Oh my gosh, can you believe it? He wrote a poem about how big my monster hog is. We better throw him out right now."

• 20:33Kate Lister?

  Don't do that again.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  I can't, wow, did you hear the king threw Rochester out?

• 20:39Kate Lister?

  It's so bad.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Because of the big dick poem?

• 20:41Kate Lister?

  So...

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Which he doesn't like, yeah.

• 20:44Kate Lister?

  Rochester knows that because he was friends with a number of his mistresses, but in particular Melquine, who we all know.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Come on, Queen, all right.

• 20:51Kate Lister?

  We all know, and if anybody would know a big member, it's Mel. So, that's the reason that we think he might have had a penis that you could use as a draft excluder. If that is important to you, maybe it's not. I know, as you've said, he is the king. I mean, you know, how much does this stuff really matter? Do you want to take it away for your boy?

• 21:13Speaker 01

  I have a quote for you.

• 21:15Kate Lister?

  Oh, OK.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  Just a really normal way to talk about Richard the Lionheart. He was tall.

• 21:21Kate Lister?

  Excellent.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Of elegant build.

• 21:23Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  The color of his hair was between red and gold.

• 21:27Kate Lister?

  Another redhead.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, important for medieval people.

• 21:29Kate Lister?

  OK.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  His limbs were supple and straight.

• 21:34Kate Lister?

  Straight.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  So, yeah, again, like more leg talk. This is like leg chat.

• 21:37Kate Lister?

  They're all about the legs.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He had long arms suited to wielding a sword. OK. His long legs matched the rest of his body.

• 21:51Kate Lister?

  Is everybody changing their Tinder profile as we speak? My legs match my body.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Many people are saying. So what we do know about him is he definitely kind of has light eyes.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  For me, I would guess, because they don't say specifically what his eyes are, that probably means they're blue. Because if he has gray eyes, medieval people would be like, oh, my God, write it down, because they think gray eyes are really, really hot. So what you tend to find with descriptions of medieval people is you get more of it if they match the beauty standard and less of it if they don't.

• 22:26Kate Lister?

  OK.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Some people have said that he was 6'5", but like a girl. I just don't believe it. Like, I mean, like 6'5" in medieval money, that's like quite a lot. That would be like saying he was 7'2", you know, like it's a... So, but he was probably quite tall, and I wouldn't be particularly surprised if he was like, you know, 6'1", 6'2"ish, something like that. But let's also remember that Edward Longshanks, he was like 6'2", and everyone was like, is this a giant?

• 22:58Speaker 01

  What's going on? And so it's like, we have like a couple of times when they say, oh, he's 6'5".

• 23:02Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  And then it comes up. You know, it's also kind of weird because we... Another thing that people say is that his brother, King John I, was like 5'5". So like, that would be... I just feel like there isn't like a foot...

• 23:17Kate Lister?

  I think there might be some exaggeration going on there.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:19Kate Lister?

  That's my thoughts on that.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  Exactly, because it's like, oh, Richard's the good one, he's 6'5". John's the bad one, he's 5'5". You know, which is like defamation towards our short kings.

• 23:29Kate Lister?

  I think so. They were pretty brutal, though, the medieval people, when it came to that stuff, they were.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, it's like, they don't exactly pull punches, is the thing about them. So, you know, they loved to body shame. And you know what? If you want to body shame a king, actually, I think that's really funny, and you should. So, do that.

• 23:47Kate Lister?

  Is there any information on his penis that survived?

• 23:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, very little, sadly. You know, like, I just... And I just feel like medieval people should be writing that down for me, so... But they're not, sadly. So, light on the penis information, heavy on the legs.

• 24:07Kate Lister?

  Okay, okay. It's something to work with, a snappy dresser?

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So, like, pretty well-turned-out. I mean, my man is often at court in Oceta, and like, you know, in "You Need to Like Show Up".

• 24:18Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Like, they do... They do not play in Poitiers. Right, you know, so it's like, you gotta like, you gotta come up. You know, it is a very fashionable court.

• 24:28Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  What people tend to talk about a lot is, he's got a really great voice, he's a good singer.

• 24:32Kate Lister?

  Oh, okay.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  He composes his own poetry, much in the way that his great-grandfather did.

• 24:40Kate Lister?

  That's...

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Listen, they're French, you know?

• 24:44Kate Lister?

  Yeah, but like, is it like, good singer-songwriter, or is it like that twat at a party who just turns up with a guitar and starts...

• 24:50Speaker 01

  I mean, he's a king, so I would assume the latter. But, I mean, to be fair, what is going down in terms of like the troubadour vibe?

• 24:58Kate Lister?

  Oh, he's a troubadour thing?

• 24:59Speaker 01

  He's a troubadour, so it might be like, "Girl, that dress is so scandalous." You know, like, that might actually be what's happening.

• 25:07Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  So it could be like, you know, fucking music.

• 25:12Kate Lister?

  All right, okay.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Which would be kind of cool.

• 25:14Kate Lister?

  Okay, okay, he's creative.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, you see, you know, so it's good for men to have hobbies.

• 25:19Kate Lister?

  I think so.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  And so it also kind of keeps him busy. So he doesn't fall down the kind of a Henry VIII, "I'm a big jock, look, I go jousting" thing, which his older brother, Henry the Young King, did kind of fall into. He was just like a party boy out on the jousting circle, you know, the entire time. So to Richard's credit, he's at court, he's writing his little songs. And so, I don't know, like, I guess he's artsy?

• 25:46Kate Lister?

  Artsy, crapsy, okay.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  An artsy boy?

• 25:48Kate Lister?

  Yeah, yeah, okay. The next talking point we've got is slightly more graphic. Were they good in bed?

• 25:55Kate Lister?

  So we'll start with Henry.

• 25:59Kate Lister?

  This is tricky, because we have an alarming amount of information about this man's sex life, because he kept killing his wives and putting them on trial.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:07Kate Lister?

  And like, he tried to, he tried to get, well, he didn't try, succeeded. He got Amberlin beheaded, because apparently she'd been shagging everybody and laughing about his penis and his manhood. So we've got quite a lot of this nation.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  So women can have hobbies, yeah, no, I get it, right, okay.

• 26:23Kate Lister?

  Would he have been, do we think that Henry would have been a kind and generous lover?

• 26:29Kate Lister?

  Oh, he might have been, he might surprise you.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  Here's my thing, right? And I've already said this to you, and I will keep saying this. The thing about Henry is you can tell he had a lot of sex, but that man does not fuck.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Henry VIII never fucked in his life.

• 26:45Kate Lister?

  He had intercourse.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, he had intercourse and was like, you know, just like thinking about getting an heir the entire time.

• 26:52Kate Lister?

  He was actually quite prudish. He's got this reputation in sort of modern cinema and the imagination of he was this really, like, wenching, hulking guy, like, eating red meats. He was actually quite prudish. He was worried, he didn't know about germs, but he was like really fastidious with cleaning. And he didn't, he was really worried about getting ill all the time. So he didn't want to be around, well, people a lot of the time. And I'm not sure that he would have been that crazy into sex. In fact, when he had sex with Anne Boleyn for the first time, apparently he was quite surprised by her technique. We don't know anything more than that. Like, Anne, what were you doing, girl? Doing something. But whatever it was, it took him by surprise.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Hmm, yeah, but I just feel like that could be like anything.

• 27:36Kate Lister?

  Yeah, it could be.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  It's like, you know, she was breathing.

• 27:39Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  And which, which I didn't like.

• 27:42Kate Lister?

  I'll be on top.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, that kind of a thing, right? You know, he just, he just gives me the vibes of like the sort of guy who's gonna like cry after. You know?

• 27:52Kate Lister?

  Yes.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  And again, you know what I'm talking about.

• 27:55Kate Lister?

  I do, I do.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's just like.

• 27:57Kate Lister?

  The other thing that we do know about Henry is that there seems to have been some sexual dysfunction going on. We know that because when he gets married to, oh, who was it? He said smelt bad and was ugly. I had names for him.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  Anne of Cleves.

• 28:11Kate Lister?

  Thank you.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  Like, just for Anne of Cleves. Like, what a queen, actually. Like, I love Anne of Cleves. Like, she's my, like, I'm like ride or die for Anne of Cleves, actually, because she's from a really cool part of the world and also shut up, Henry.

• 28:22Kate Lister?

  Shut up, Henry.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Just shut up, like.

• 28:24Kate Lister?

  Well, when they got together and he refused to have sex, so that obviously everyone's freaking out because it's unconscathed and rumors start to swirl that maybe Henry can't do the job. So he has his physician announce in Parliament that he's still having wet dreams.

• 28:40Kate Lister?

  How weird would that be if Keir Starmer's GP turned up?

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Any day now, it's part of the reshuffle, so...

• 28:49Kate Lister?

  Actually, I don't know, like, with the state of politics at the moment, would you even notice? That's just a slow Tuesday.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  I invite the public to go further. Et cetera.

• 29:00Kate Lister?

  So, he gets his doctor to announce this, and then apparently we're all supposed to go, "Oh, he's so manly." Obviously, the problem is with Ann. So, there's some sexual dysfunction, there's mention of that in his, well, Ann Boleyn's trial. I don't know how great Henry would have been in bed, but he was tall.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  They're all the same height when they're lying down, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know.

• 29:24Kate Lister?

  All right, I don't think I've done him much justice here, but he did have, he had a few mistresses. Not as many as you would think, actually. Mary Boleyn, we know that one, and there was, I think it was Bessie just before that, but he certainly wasn't...

• 29:39Speaker 01

  I love the name Bessie. It's like, you know Bessie shagged.

• 29:42Kate Lister?

  You know Bessie shagged.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, Bessie knew what was up, and then she probably just moved on. Like, you know, every Bessie's a good time girl.

• 29:48Kate Lister?

  I think so.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  I think that's nominative determinism.

• 29:51Kate Lister?

  So, that's Henry. All right, let's, we've only got a limited amount of time for this one, but let's do Charles.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, so let me just tell you, Charles fucks. All right, like, absolutely, that man, like...

• 30:06Kate Lister?

  You try and stop him.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, there's just like, you know, a number of members of the court the whole time were like, "Put the monster hog away." "You can't hang dong, this is the throne room." Like, he absolutely loves it, and that's the difference. Do I think he's necessarily good in bed? I don't know, but I know that he likes to shag.

• 30:27Kate Lister?

  And he was having the best time. Like, you'd know that he would have been doing that. His reputation for womanizing starts pretty early on, before he's king, when he's in exile, sulking about not being king, and Cromwell is doing his thing. He's getting a reputation for it already, to the point where his advisers and ministers are actually quite worried about this, because if he gets to be king again, he's just this big, philandering sex maniac.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  What a breath of fresh air after the British, though, you know?

• 30:56Kate Lister?

  And also, he didn't need to worry about that, as we've learned. You can be a philandering sex maniac and still be president. Sorry, king.

• 31:05Kate Lister?

  That's fine. So he has a reputation for that and he's, they are genuinely concerned about it. And the number, we only know his official mistresses because he got them pregnant and they had, they had his children. But that doesn't include all the one night stands, the quick flings, the up against a wall, that, of which I'm sure there would have been many.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  You know, good for him. Right, like, I, I think that that's actually like a good use of time.

• 31:31Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  And, and money, I don't know, like, keeps him busy, doesn't it?

• 31:36Kate Lister?

  What he does is, that it is new, the way that he does it. He stuffs the royal palaces full of his mistresses, all at the same time, right? And even the French had rules against this. So it was the French that brought in this system called the maîtresse entière, the official mistress, right? Like, that's a job you can apply for. Tell your career adviser at school that's what you want to do. That's the proper job. But they, even they were like, it's one at a time. It's one at a time. Like, when Madame de Montespan became the official French mistress, no, she wasn't, there was someone else who was the official mistress. And it was considered really quite shocking that he was cheating on the woman he was cheating on his wife with. He was have to do these things properly.

• 32:18Kate Lister?

  But Charles just stuffed his palaces, full of them, all at the same time, just a revolving door of them, and not to mention his wife.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  Gee, what, women in STEM? I don't know where I'm going with this.

• 32:29Kate Lister?

  No, no, I mean, I like to think that they all kind of, you know, there was a sisterhood, but there's actually quite a lot of competition about it, because you think that how, you know, like, look, look back at your love life and think of all the people that, for a brief while, you were like, ride or die, but I love them. And your friends were just going, oh. And now, like, you look back at me, like, I have no idea what I saw in that person. Like, that's what the royal mistresses have to contend with, is that's how quick it can change and they have to keep this guy's attention.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I mean, I guess that one thing I will say about this particular period, though, is that'll be fun, because it'll be like, the, like, how much lace can you wear? You know, he's gonna be like, wow, look at her floppy dress. Love that. You know, you could put like a boat on your head. And, you know, that kind of thing, like, I'm really, you know, it's one of the worst times to be alive, I think.

• 33:20Kate Lister?

  Really?

• 33:21Speaker 01

  Oh, god, yeah. Like, I would, I just think that, in terms of, you know, like, the oppression and the bad times and the blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's some of The best fashion.

• 33:32Kate Lister?

  Oh, we've got some good fashion.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Everybody's wearing heels. They've got a bird on their head for some reason. Everyone's just wearing too much powder. It's like the aesthetic is on point. They're all gonna die of lead poisoning.

• 33:45Kate Lister?

  Yep.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  It's like...

• 33:47Kate Lister?

  Actually, that brings me to another point because the thing that they do die a lot of, his mistresses, is complications from venereal disease because he was handing out syphilis like it was a bag of toffees. Like, they all... Nell Gwynn died at 37 and a number of them die really quite young and it's probably complications arising from syphilis. And we do know that Charlie Boy had that and he died quite young as well. That may be something to factor into your decision making going forward. And condoms were not great at the time.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:20Kate Lister?

  Yeah, cheap, reusable, good. And you wouldn't use them with the king anyway, I don't think, because you'd want to get pregnant and damn quick.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's the thing, isn't it? Like, I'm not here just because of the monster dong.

• 34:31Kate Lister?

  No.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:32Kate Lister?

  Huge penis has syphilis.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Ah, yeah.

• 34:35Kate Lister?

  So, and he has lots of mistresses, so he's experienced, I guess.

• 34:50Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Eleanor after this short break.

• 34:57Kate Lister?

  Hello, betwixters. I am jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right, it took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there and the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.

• 35:39Kate Lister?

  Richard the Lionheart moving swiftly on. Good in bed?

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Okay, so, he's got one illegitimate son, who is a...

• 35:49Kate Lister?

  Small potato.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, Philip of Croydon.

• 35:50Kate Lister?

  Charles had like 14.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly, right. So, we know that he's at least messing around enough to knock some women up. The bad news about Richard the Lionheart is that there is some source material that says that he was a bad lad, and that there were some, what I would classify as, sexual assaults.

• 36:17Kate Lister?

  Oh, that's not good.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Which is like, it's bad news, but also I'm not gonna lie to you.

• 36:20Kate Lister?

  Why am I surprised? Like, I was like, "Richard!"

• 36:25Speaker 01

  What I would say that is important within this, though, is a lot of those are antagonistic sources. Do I believe them? Yeah. But, you know, people don't like Richard the Lionheart. Richard the Lionheart, a uniquely disliked individual throughout Europe. So annoying that he gets arrested by the Holy Roman Emperor on the way back from crusade, and they're like, "We gotta lock this motherfucker up." Like, "I hate this guy." And then eventually, when his mom ransoms him, and she's gotta schlep all the way over to the Holy Roman Emperor, she's gotta be like, "Yeah, here's all of the money that we have in England, please, let my son out." And he's let out. It's written about him.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  "He is out, the devil is free, you must look to yourself." So, like, people don't... Richard is not popular.

• 37:19Kate Lister?

  Really?

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Like, he's a uniquely unchilled dude. So, our records that say that he may be sexually assaulting women might just be like, "I hate Richard, me and all my homies hate Richard, Richard sucks."

• 37:35Kate Lister?

  Yeah, okay.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  But it's also a difficult one to say, because it is not as though kings don't do that all the time.

• 37:42Kate Lister?

  All the time.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  It's just that, especially if you are a common woman, you are not fit to even enter the record. And, you know, we have a lot of stuff about this, for example, in De Amore, or The Art of Courtly Love, which is a difficult document to work with, because maybe it's satire. But even if it is satire, the point is that this stuff is happening enough that they're like making fun of it, right? And you know, there are, it's essentially a pickup manual. It's like a, this is how to be a pickup artist. And what they say is when rich people come across peasant women, you should just feel free to sexually assault them.

• 38:15Kate Lister?

  That's no...

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, because peasants are...

• 38:17Kate Lister?

  I can't get on board with that. That's not good.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you know, he might just feel like, oh...

• 38:20Kate Lister?

  It's good to have a boundary, isn't it? You know, when you've reached it, yeah. You're like, yeah.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  So it could just be that like, he's behaving like every other member of the nobility.

• 38:28Kate Lister?

  Was he gay? I've heard he's gay.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Well, he's at least a black king. So like, okay, look, all right. So one of the pieces of evidence that we have about this is that he was often sleeping in bed with King Philip II of France.

• 38:43Kate Lister?

  And to be clear, they could afford two beds.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, they could.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  There were options. Now, to be fair, oftentimes in the Middle Ages, kings just like to hang out with their guys. Just hanging out with my buddy in the bed.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  And everyone's like, I think that's fine. But I think that one of, this is kind of an important thing to talk about because there's this assumption then that, oh, well, it must be just like a thing that straight guys do, like while they're being straight. But medieval people don't even have a concept of being straight. Like, there's no such thing as being heterosexual in the medieval period. You know, you either have sodomy or you don't. And sodomy, as I will never tire of saying, is any form of sex that cannot result in procreation. So if Richard the Lionheart had ever had sex with his wife, which he did not, you know, and within that, she gave him a handjob, he would be a sodomite.

• 39:46Kate Lister?

  That's some weird small print, isn't it?

• 39:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, like it doesn't, it just doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. So like, there is, if you ask nerds, like St. Thomas Aquinas, who spent all of his time like, creating like a hierarchy, like, I think this sex is worse than that sex. Like, he'll tell you that he thinks that like two dudes getting down is like slightly worse than stuff like rape. Because it's, it is illogical because no one can get pregnant.

• 40:13Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  So like, but that is like one theologian. 100 years after this, like being weird with it. So that's not necessarily how things are happening. And we also know that Richard's got a lot of good friends. He's just got buddies. You know, he and his buddies.

• 40:33Kate Lister?

  They go to the theater a lot.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Do you know where else they go is on crusade? And what goes on, on tour stays on tour. Way lads, lads. Yeah. And when you're on tour, you're under plenary indulgence.

• 40:48Kate Lister?

  That means that the Pope will let you off.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:50Kate Lister?

  Whatever you do, it's fine.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  It's fine, just, and it's a long way to Jerusalem, my friends.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Oh, that's crazy. There's only one bed on this ship in the bedroom. Uh-oh, this is some kind of mix-up. You know, so, yeah, there's a lot of that happening with Richard. So I feel like very many other important medieval scholars that were dealing with at least a proud byman.

• 41:19Kate Lister?

  Okey-dokey. That might impact your choice going forward.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:23Kate Lister?

  That's, that's might. Okay. Did they smell good? I think we do need to address this one, right? Because I think that actually smell is, is an extremely important sexually arousing feature. I think if someone doesn't smell good, it's just all over, right?

• 41:40Speaker 01

  That's the ick, yeah.

• 41:41Kate Lister?

  I think so.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:42Kate Lister?

  Henry did not smell good. Towards the later stage of his life, he had these awful ulcers. But when he was in his prime, I think he might have smelled okay. Because he was really fastidious about cleaning. And we know that he imported lots of oils. He would have smelled quite musky, like civet and these kind of new things that are coming in from the Americas.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Henry VIII rubbing a weasel on himself.

• 42:06Kate Lister?

  Just weasel, he smelled like weasel. And amber grease, whale vomit, I'm not helping him at all. But I think, as a young man, I think that he would have smelled quite good.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that that's fair.

• 42:16Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think that, like, fancy lads, they love that stuff, don't they?

• 42:20Kate Lister?

  They do.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  And we have the literal receipts for this. Like, he's spending a lot of money.

• 42:24Kate Lister?

  We do.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  On, you know, bathing accoutrement.

• 42:27Kate Lister?

  Charles, I don't know, because this is the point in history where somebody came up the idea of that you don't need to wash, you just need to change your shirts.

• 42:37Kate Lister?

  That's, and there was like a big thing.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  And medieval people get blamed for this. It's not medieval people, it's modern people. It's modern people who do this. Leave the Middle Ages alone. Jesus Christ, I'm so tired of you people.

• 42:52Kate Lister?

  See, like, just if you wanna upset a lot of medievalists, just run into a conference and go, "They didn't bathe!"

• 42:57Speaker 01

  Like, literally, you will catch blows. So, I wouldn't recommend it, yeah.

• 43:03Kate Lister?

  I don't know how good, I mean, he's the king, he can afford things. He does, he washes himself semi-regularly, but they are doing this horrible shirt thing.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  And so, I've talked to some experiential archaeologists, who are some of the best people in the world, right? And what they do is, they go around and they dress up and they put on all the things and they try it out to see what it does. And it is alleged that if you like change your shirt 12 times a day, you don't stink that much.

• 43:26Kate Lister?

  No, I'm just, no, no, just wash, just wash.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm not gonna.

• 43:30Kate Lister?

  This sounds like something a teenage boy would've come up with. I don't smell, mum, I'm doing experimental archaeology. I don't need to wash myself, this is history. I'm not having, Richard the Lionheart.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  He's gonna be fine, you know, like medieval people love a little bath. Like, that's their whole deal. They love a little bath.

• 43:52Kate Lister?

  They do.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  They love a little bath, and like especially the kings and stuff, because they're like, "Oh, have you seen my bath? Big bath in there." Gentlemen, that's why, you know, Richard is like, "Oh, that's crazy, there's only one bath in here, Philip." We'll have to bathe together.

• 44:08Kate Lister?

  Oh, look at that.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Which, you know, is, is an interesting thing, so, right? Sometimes when you hear occasional stuff from the Middle Ages, when people be like, "He bathed too often", literally what they're talking about is that guy is in there and he's fucking.

• 44:23Kate Lister?

  Ooh.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  So, it's like for...

• 44:25Kate Lister?

  That's interesting.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, for example, the Emperor Frederick II, one of my favorite emperors, who was hanging out down in Sicily, he's refusing to go on crusade, like, an absolute legend. He's got a really big hammam, and he's just like in there with sundry women at any given time, just like going at it, right? And so, as a result, the papacy is like, "Get that man out of the bath!", and...

• 44:50Speaker 01

  People now think that that meant that like people didn't bathe. But like what that, that is a roundabout way of being like, this man fucks. And the papacy doesn't like it. So you will often have like, for example, in bathhouses here in London, and you'll know this. Like a lot, it's really difficult.

• 45:09Kate Lister?

  Why will I know this?

• 45:12Kate Lister?

  I've spent my time going around bathhouses. Although I did, I did, I was once the maid of honor for my maid. She said she wanted to go to a spa and I booked her into a late night spa in Leeds City Centre. And it turned out that it was, it was a bathhouse and yeah.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 45:26Kate Lister?

  It was not the party we thought it would be, but everyone had fun.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, we all had a good time, didn't we? Yeah, like, so, you know, here, you know, if you go down to the equivalent of the red light district in Southwark, you can visit the stews and it can be really difficult for us to tell whether that's just a bathhouse.

• 45:43Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Or if it's a brothel cum bathhouse, I shouldn't have put it that way. So, you know, and it is one of these things where it's like, it could just literally be the place where everybody goes to bathe. Because, you know, there isn't indoor plumbing, water is really heavy, heating it is really annoying. So if you can professionalize that out, everybody does. But sometimes there are professionals of like varying stripes. So the point is like, everybody likes having a bath. It could be sexy, it couldn't be, you know, it depends. There is this thing also sometimes where people will talk about how crusaders smell though, which is a...

• 46:17Kate Lister?

  Not good, I'd imagine.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:19Kate Lister?

  I mean, I know that like, you know, they washed, but that, if you walk into Jerusalem.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  If you walk into Jerusalem and you're wearing like mail armor, you know, it's like, and you're wearing a bunch of metal in the middle of the desert and now you're like locked outside a city while everyone goes boo, go home, white boy, you know, and things of this nature, then you are not going to have access to bathhouses. And then you are going to be suffering, right? And this kind of gets brought up a lot in crusader stuff as well. Because again, they'll be like, oh, and no one could bathe and everyone really stunk. And you're supposed to understand that as like, oh, they're suffering for God, right? You know, like they're, they're, they've put themselves in this terrible situation where they can't even get a bath. So doesn't that mean that they love the Lord, right? And that comes up over and over again in medieval literature.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  Like if a saint wants to prove they're super holy, they'll be like, so I gave up bathing. And because the point is like, and that sucks. It sucks to smell, it sucks to not have a bath. And so sometimes it'll just be a discussion about how holy they are. And sometimes it'll just be like, ew, those white boys stink. You know, and like, it's, but it's situational and it has to do with, you know, being in an army.

• 47:31Kate Lister?

  Okay. That's, thank you for that. That's, I will factor this into my decision-making process. And the final point that I think we need to try and touch on is, is, is whether they're a good king. Like, would that, would that help you make your decision? Um, Henry VIII, was Henry a good?

• 47:48Speaker 01

  Jesus Christ.

• 47:49Kate Lister?

  Hey, he might have been. There's, there's people there that thought, in the beginning, but he was doing all, he was, okay. Like, he tries to go over to France, tries to have some battles, and he's like, eh! And he's read all these stories about chivalry, and he really fancies himself as this chivalic knight. But as a lot of kings, he, so, no. He kind of...

• 48:09Speaker 01

  At the plus of the live show, it's not a visual medium right now, so I can make jack-off symbols.

• 48:13Kate Lister?

  You can do whatever.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  All day long, yeah.

• 48:16Kate Lister?

  He was doing, in his early reign, when he was with Catherine of Aragon, and like, they loved each other. And he seemed to genuinely love her, and he was, you know, I'm gonna go to France and nick this bit of it. And people were quite impressed. And then it just all got derailed, didn't it, by Henry and his wandering willy? And his just obsession with it. So I don't know, could we call him a good king?

• 48:36Speaker 01

  No.

• 48:36Kate Lister?

  Henry?

• 48:37Speaker 01

  No.

• 48:38Kate Lister?

  That's, are there any diehard Henry fans here?

• 48:42Speaker 01

  I just wanna talk.

• 48:45Kate Lister?

  Okay, all right. And definitely by the end of it, he's completely lost it.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Oh, god, yeah, like...

• 48:50Kate Lister?

  Yeah, like, he's, he killed more people, I think, than, had more people executed than any monarch. Like, not like crusades executed, but you know, like, passing the orders for it, very violent. Yeah, all right, we're not getting him. Okay, Charles? He's kind of okay. Yeah. Yeah. Like, the thing about Charles is that he doesn't really want to be king. He wants to have fun, and he wants to play, and he wants to amuse himself. That's what he wants to do. He has far more fun doing that. When it actually comes to the administrative tasks of running, he's just a bit like, whoa.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  He's just like me for real.

• 49:24Kate Lister?

  He is.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:25Kate Lister?

  But he's interested in science. He makes some progresses there. He reopens the theaters. He does sneaky things with France, like pretend that he's not a Catholic when really he was definitely going to convert to one of those deathbeds. Sneaky, sneaky.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  Hmm, I love that.

• 49:39Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  I love a little deathbed Catholicism. Like, that's right, y'all come crawling back, you know?

• 49:45Kate Lister?

  All right, before we make our decisions.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Wait.

• 49:48Kate Lister?

  Yeah, I know, I'm gonna ask you. What did you think of Richard? Was he a good king?

• 49:54Speaker 01

  It's like, in many ways, he's one of the best sort of kings because he didn't do anything and never came here.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  So, like, so I love that personally.

• 50:04Kate Lister?

  I think we could all get a point of that.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  You know, what is hilarious about Richard's first is he's like, England, that's some form of bank account, right? Excellent, great. And it's like, I mean, basically, the minute he becomes king of England, he was never supposed to be king of England, right? He was supposed to be the Duke of Aquitaine. That's what he was supposed to be. And the minute he gets made king, he's like, great, I'm off to the Holy Lands. See ya, suckers. And what I will say in his favor is that he gives his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, a lot of power, and that's good. Like, that is the correct thing to do. That is the canonically correct thing. He could have given her more, in my opinion. He leaves too much to, like, other secretaries and these sorts of people who fall to squabbling.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  And he doesn't, I think, wring off his brother enough. Like, he should have given John something to do in Normandy. And been like, okay, now you, like, get out of there, that sort of thing.

• 50:58Kate Lister?

  But is he a good king?

• 51:00Speaker 01

  No. Like, he doesn't fucking do anything. He came here three times, bro.

• 51:05Kate Lister?

  And didn't like it.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he didn't like it, and he was like, ew. And then like, left immediately. Like, it's, it is, it baffles me that he is talked about in any like, sort of reverent tones in this country at all, when he like, hated you people. And like, and it's all because of Robin Hood, I think. It's literally, this is Sean Connery's fault.

• 51:27Kate Lister?

  Yeah. I mean, it was, it was before Sean Connery.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's, I mean, like, if you watch like, uh, the, the, like, Disney Robin Hood with the little foxes and everything, and you know, he comes in in the end, and he's the big lion. Just like, I, I, you know, lodged a thousand furries, that kind of thing. Um, so, you know, like, he's, he has this folkloric thing, which is like, oh, all the problems with England are just because like, the nice king isn't here. And if the nice king was here, he would come and sort it all. And he's like, he's not.

• 51:56Kate Lister?

  He's not nice.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  He does not, he is not nice. Uh, he is not a good king. He was a pretty okay duke of Aquitaine. But, you know, but that's because he liked it there, you know? And he was like, quite interested in, in court culture. But he's like a completely absent king. But, you know, I suppose that there's an argument to be made that that's kind of like, better than being Henry VIII. Like, you know, at least he wasn't like, touching it.

• 52:21Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  You know?

• 52:23Kate Lister?

  That's, yeah.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:25Kate Lister?

  Are you, are you ready to make your choice?

• 52:27Speaker 01

  I am, yeah.

• 52:27Kate Lister?

  Shall we turn it over as well to you, fine people? Have you, have you made your decisions?

• 52:36Kate Lister?

  All right.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  Okay, good.

• 52:37Kate Lister?

  Okay. So what we're gonna do is, we've got, have we got a roaming mic somewhere? We've got our, our microphone? We're gonna come and ask some of you lovely people why you have made the choices that, that you have made. We go, let's have, all right, so first up, Henry. Shag, marry, kill.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  That's right. Kill his ass. Kill his ass. No, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

• 53:06Kate Lister?

  Oh, guys, it's not even close.

• 53:10Kate Lister?

  It's not even, that's overwhelmingly death to Henry.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

• 53:17Kate Lister?

  Let's ask.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, eight people are marrying? What is wrong with you?

• 53:23Kate Lister?

  Who's marrying Henry?

• 53:25Speaker 01

  You, absolute.

• 53:26Kate Lister?

  Where's the mic? We need to speak to someone who wants to marry Henry. And there at the back.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  You absolute weapons, you absolute weapons.

• 53:35Kate Lister?

  Chop there, holding that up. Explain yourself to the audience.

• 53:42Speaker 04

  There's nuance.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, Henry VIII, big on nuance, yeah.

• 53:48Speaker 04

  I can chin chin, I can.

• 53:52Speaker 04

  If I have an Anne of Cleve situation.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, all right, okay.

• 53:57Speaker 04

  Perfect.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:59Speaker 04

  There is no other way. I'm gonna have so much land, so much power, so much freedom.

• 54:04Kate Lister?

  And you never have to have sex with him.

• 54:05Speaker 04

  And I don't have to fuck him.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:07Speaker 04

  It's perfect.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:08Speaker 04

  Married.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 54:10Kate Lister?

  Well argued.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, all right.

• 54:11Kate Lister?

  Well argued.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, see, the thing about me and Henry is obviously I'm killing him. And I'm like, I am like, he's like baby Hitler to me. Where it's like, where it presented with a time machine, he's like number two. He screws up everything for source survival in this country. He ruins all the good monasteries. I can't get no good architecture around here. I hate that man.

• 54:36Kate Lister?

  I, I, you'd kill him. I would, I would shag him. I would. Hey! That's my Judas slip. Who, who else, who else would shag Henry? And explain your reasonings. Grab someone waving a yellow card in the air, you maniacs.

• 54:57Speaker 04

  I mean, if we're talking about his crime, I guess I could get it. I get it.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, all right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:05Kate Lister?

  Right, exactly. You could just, you could just be a mistress and kind of vanish yourself somewhere. Okay, but I, I think that, I think he might, no, no one's forgiving Henry. We're in a minority, okay? He's, he's killed, right?

• 55:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:20Kate Lister?

  Charles.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  Charles.

• 55:23Kate Lister?

  Hold him up, let's have a look. Or this is more complicated.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  This is more complex. We've got a few kills.

• 55:28Kate Lister?

  Who wants to kill Charles?

• 55:31Speaker 01

  This is like a real third situation, wow.

• 55:35Kate Lister?

  That's, that's shag. It's overwhelmingly shag.

• 55:39Speaker 01

  It is shag, yeah. Okay, but wait, I want, I want, I want one of each. I want one of each. So I guess I need, I need a shag, I need a marry, and then I need a kill.

• 55:48Kate Lister?

  Grab us a kill, who wants to kill Charles? And his enormous penis.

• 55:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, go.

• 55:54Kate Lister?

  Explain your reasonings.

• 55:57Speaker 05

  Unfortunately, I only have the kill one, so I'm holding on.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  All right. Come on, a proletarian king. I love to see it, kill them all. All my, all my comrades hate kings.

• 56:10Kate Lister?

  Was there anyone else that had?

• 56:12Speaker 01

  Killian.

• 56:12Kate Lister?

  No All Kings 2K25.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:14Kate Lister?

  Decided to, oh, yep, yep.

• 56:16Speaker 04

  So mine was a bit of a process. I love French wine.

• 56:19Kate Lister?

  Yes.

• 56:20Speaker 04

  Um, I like Hot Man, and No Willie's Worth, a Chunka, or...

• 56:27Kate Lister?

  I forgot about the syphilis, you are right.

• 56:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:30Kate Lister?

  You are right.

• 56:31Speaker 01

  The French disease.

• 56:32Speaker 04

  That was how I got to my conclusion.

• 56:34Speaker 01

  Fair enough, all right, okay.

• 56:36Kate Lister?

  I would marry him. I would, he was very, very generous with venereal disease, but also... But also with money, like, if you could, I know, like, we all feel terribly sorry for his wife, but she did get to, like, sit in a castle and drink tea and, like, have quite a lot of money.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I really go back and forth on this one, because I think it's a pretty good situation. You're gonna be up to your eyeballs in wigs for the rest of your life. First of all, so you, like, when you're a widow, you're gonna be having a great time. So I think that there's a lot to be said for that. And then also, you are living in the time period where you can get access to, like, coffee and chocolate. So...

• 57:14Kate Lister?

  I, I need to hear from someone who shagged him, knowing that he has venereal disease, please. Explain your reasoning and your process.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  Here we go.

• 57:24Speaker 04

  So, we're all gotta die of something.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  Come on, Queen. Come on, Queen. I know that's right.

• 57:35Kate Lister?

  Go out, go out, do him what you love. He did kind of look after them. He did, he did. He recognized most of his illegitimate children and gave them titles and stuff like that. Kind of win-win.

• 57:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, I'm Team Shag ultimately. Because I think it's the least amount of sexual contact you can have with the man with syphilis, whilst also getting the most swag.

• 57:59Kate Lister?

  That is, that is true.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  So, I'm hoping for at least like a ship headdress. Out of the thing.

• 58:06Kate Lister?

  I'd give that to you.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:08Kate Lister?

  Okay, right.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  Great.

• 58:10Kate Lister?

  So, Henry, dead. Charles, you'd like to... Was that Mary or Shag though? Was that Shag, lunatics? Yeah, it was Shag, it was, yeah. Alright, so, Richard the Lionheart.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  Richard the Lionheart.

• 58:24Kate Lister?

  No.

• 58:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, yeah, it is Team Mary.

• 58:27Kate Lister?

  You failed.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  Come with me on a journey. Come with me on a journey, no. Okay, but...

• 58:34Kate Lister?

  Why would you?

• 58:34Speaker 01

  I want, I want, I want to talk to someone because I want to see if your reasoning is the same as mine.

• 58:39Kate Lister?

  You'd marry him after all that?

• 58:40Speaker 01

  You know why? He's not fucking here.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  I love that in a man.

• 58:53Kate Lister?

  That's, yeah, that is true.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  It's like, you get everything. You get everything. I think that he maybe shagged his wife once. She didn't even have to get knocked up. She didn't even have to have a baby about it.

• 59:08Kate Lister?

  Alright, let's, who, who, who wants to marry him? Let's get some... That's me.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  Yes, my girl knows, she knows what's up.

• 59:16Kate Lister?

  See, you're very smart.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, but by then hopefully I've got enough money. I'm like, oh, that's crazy, anyway, I'm in Poitiers.

• 59:27Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 59:28Kate Lister?

  Who would, who would shag him?

• 59:30Speaker 01

  Maniacs.

• 59:31Kate Lister?

  This is Sean Connery's influence, I'm sure of it. I'm sure of it.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  Because he was good at shagging men? Because he's good at shagging men!

• 59:44Kate Lister?

  Bravo.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 59:45Kate Lister?

  Bravo, sir, well done.

• 59:48Kate Lister?

  Well, I think we got an overwhelming result there with a few outliers. Go and question your life choices. And thank you for voting so conclusively that we are killing Henry VIII. We are shagging Charles II, despite the civvies. And we're marrying Richard the Lionheart because he's never there.

• 1:00:13Kate Lister?

  Thank you so much for coming along, everybody. You have been absolutely amazing.

• 1:00:26Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Eleanor and to the audience for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and follow along, whatever it is you get your podcasts. And of course, don't forget that we have two more live shows coming to you this year. One in Edinburgh on the 23rd of May and one in London on the 25th of May. Just go to fane, F A N E dot co dot U K and search for Betwixt and we will see you there. Coming up, we are diving even deeper into the world of Hollywood's golden age and we'll be making a trip to the Emperor Tiberius's sordid island. And if you would like us to explore a subject, if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected].

• 1:01:08Kate Lister?

  This podcast was edited by Hannah Fyodorov and produced by Stuart Beckwith and Sophie G. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Join me again, Betwixt Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.