Literature / Wolf Hall

Following

Wolf Hall is a novel by Hilary Mantel told from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell, one of Henry VIII's favourite advisors in the 1530s. It portrays him much more positively than most fictional depictions of Cromwell tend to, as a generally nice guy with extraordinary talents and a good sense of humour who just happens to occasionally do some morally ambiguous things to keep favour with his king. It won the 2009 Man Booker Prize, as did its sequel, Bring Up The Bodies, in 2012. A third book, The Mirror and the Light, was published in March 2020.

The entire trilogy is widely considered to be both a modern classic and some of the best historical fiction ever written. The first book was ranked 3rd on a 2024 list of the 100 best books of the 21st century compiled by The New York Times👁 Image
, while Bring Up The Bodies came in 95th. Any of the three books would probably be a reasonable paperweight, if you're going to abuse them in such a way.

The first two books were adapted for the stage in 2013 as Wolf Hall Parts 1 & 2 and transferred to Broadway in 2015, where the plays were nominated for 8 Tony Awards, winning one (Best Costume Design). The trilogy has also been adapted into two television series: Wolf Hall in 2015, which adapted the first two books, and Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light in 2024, which adapted the last one.

This book has examples of:

• Abomination Accusation Attack: Cromwell takes nothing more than a report of Anne and George Boleyn having played cards together one night alone and George having kissed his sister in a sibling-like-way and turns it into an accusation of incest to get rid of both of them. He argues that as siblings raised apart, they lack the natural instinct against Brother–Sister Incest and the similarities between them become more intriguing so they "cross the frontier". This is enough to convince the Kangaroo Court.
• Abusive Parents:
  • The book opens with young Thomas Cromwell getting the stuffing kicked out of him by his father, Walter. It's not the first time and he's so beaten up his sister and brother-in-law are amazed he doesn't have anything broken. Since everyone in town is too frightened of Walter to do anything about it, Thomas leaves to seek his fortune outside the country.
  • Henry isn't physically abusive to his daughters, but he treats Mary very callously when she refuses to agree that her mother's marriage was invalid and she herself is a bastard. He dotes on Elizabeth at first, but when he turns against Anne and her downfall begins, he starts to doubt that Elizabeth is even his child and calls her awful names.
• Adipose Rex: Henry VIII's getting there. Hans Holbein at one point wonders whether it would be more appropriate to paint Henry as he was five years ago, or ten. Cromwell: 'Stick to five. He'll think you're mocking him.' By book three, Henry is well and truly this trope, and his doctors anxiously ask Cromwell if there's any way to convince the king to maybe lay off the giant dinners. Cromwell is doubtful.^note Henry would get so fat in the last seven years of his reign after Cromwell's death that he needed an elevator to get to the second floor of his palace because he couldn't climb the stairs.
• All for Nothing: Henry’s decade-long crusade to rid himself of Katherine and marry Anne ultimately achieves nothing for him personally. All he gets out of it is another daughter to be considered a bastard while isolating himself from the people around him and the other rulers in Europe. To add salt to the wound, Katherine ends up dying barely two years after Elizabeth was born, so in hindsight the better decision would have been to just wait her out.
• Ambiguous Situation: Despite its focus on the fall of Anne Boleyn, Bring Up The Bodies never makes it clear whether or not Anne is actually having a physical affair. Cromwell's position on the matter swings back and forth several times: he knows Anne is a strong-willed, intelligent woman who fully realises the implications of adultery, but she's also a rampant egotist who thrives on the attention of men and she's becoming increasingly tired of being treated as a doormat during sex. Smeaton claims to have had sex with the queen while chatting with Cromwell, but there's a possibility that he was just bullshitting and indeed he says just that when he realizes that their casual chat is actually an interrogation; besides which he's barely a blip on Anne's radar and when she does register his presence, she treats him like a pathetic pet. The ambiguity is at its clearest during Cromwell's interrogation of Weston. He seems to be on the verge of making a genuine confession of adultery, but a troubled Cromwell decides to leave the room at that moment for reasons he can't parse even to himself. In the end, of course, Anne's guilt or otherwise is irrelevant—Henry wants her gone, and making her out to be unfaithful is the simplest method.
• Anti-Hero: Cromwell. Or Anti-Villain. Or Villain Protagonist. It gets more and more difficult to tell as it goes on.
• Armor-Piercing Question: When Thomas More defends his silent refusal of the Oath by saying that he thinks none harm and does none harm, Cromwell's reply is "What about Bilney? What about Bainham?"
• Artistic License – History: Mantel meticulously researched the time period while writing the series, but even meticulously researched historical fiction is fiction and thus she took some minor liberties here and there. Each book has an afterword where she explained some of the liberties she took and why she did so, and she even occasionally recommended nonfiction to get a fuller perspective:
  • Mantel acknowledged that her version of the downfall of Anne Boleyn misses some historical points that people familiar with the period would notice, and stressed that her purpose was to focus on Cromwell's point of view and present not a fully accurate depiction of what actually happened, but rather a proposal of how things might have played out.
    • She admitted that the characterization of Jane Boleyn as someone who hated her husband and was involved in the downfall of her sister-in-law comes more from legend than actual history. The latter is mostly from her involvement with facilitating Catherine Howard’s (a cousin by marriage) extramarital affair a few years later. Although Jane and George aren’t known to ever have had children, there’s no evidence that their marriage was unhappy or abusive; recent research — which Mantel did seem to nod to by having Jane say that it would be the official story — suggests that she gave her testimony under intense questioning (which wouldn’t be admissible in court today) during the terror of a palace coup, rather than freely accusing her husband and sister-in-law out of spite and cutting a deal with Cromwell to help destroy them. Mantel noted that she gave Jane the role as point man in Anne’s downfall to save the reader from having to keep even more characters straight, and she was given some aspects of Bridget Wingfield, Anne's Lady of the Bedchamber, who (while having died in early 1534) might have had something to do with the rumours that began circulating against her mistress due to a letter that Anne had written to her. Mantel recommended reading Julia Fox’s book about Jane to get a better grasp on the real woman.
    • During Cromwell's preparations to take down Anne and the arrest of her and the men accused of being her lovers, there's no mention of Richard Page, a courtier who was arrested at the same time as Thomas Wyatt but was never charged or tried for anything and was released along with Wyatt; since he played no part in the story otherwise, Mantel felt justified in leaving him out.
  • While Cromwell did have an illegitimate daughter that Mantel found in some municipal records, the one in The Mirror and The Light is fictional. Jenneke, as she’s known, was born to a Dutch woman Cromwell met on his travels before he returned to England permanently, was raised in a convent, and is an adult when she tracks down her father. Cromwell’s real illegitimate daughter was named Jane, but not much is known about her; what scant information we have is that she was born shortly after Liz, Anne and Grace died and that she was living with Gregory at the time of their father’s execution. Her mother might have been a woman named Elizabeth Gregory who worked in the Cromwell household, given that she was listed as a family member and left a surprisingly large sum of money in his will despite having no other known relation. Mantel decided to fictionalize the character as Jane, who would have probably been 9 or 10 by the end of the story, was too young to feasibly have any role to play (plus it obviously saved her having to explain why Jane and her mother didn't appear or were even mentioned in the previous novels).
• Asshole Victim: All the men accused of being Anne's lovers in "Bring Up the Bodies".
• Awful Wedded Life: Harmonious marriages are few and far between in this story; basically the only consistently happily married characters are Cromwell and Liz before her death, Cromwell's subordinates, Cranmer and Margarete and (by her account) Mary Boleyn and William Stafford. Catherine and Anne's marriages to Henry devolve into nightmares and it's increasingly clear that Jane takes no pleasure in having to sleep with him; Thomas More married Alice Middleton essentially so he could have a housekeeper and a stepmother for his children and frequently mocks her in languages she doesn't understand; Henry Wyatt regrets pressuring his son Thomas into marrying a girl who quickly turned out to be unfaithful; the Duke of Norfolk lives separately from his wife and abuses her; and George Boleyn and Jane Rochford openly despise each other, as do Harry Percy and Mary Talbot.
• Bait the Dog: Henry is initially shown in a much more positive way — still dangerously tempermental, but not the debauched tyrant history remembers him as. Cromwell has a genuinely favorable opinion of him, and Henry still worries whether or not he's a good enough king, whether he is right with God, and is actually quite charming and even caring at times. But More's comparison to the tamed lion is apt; the claws appear more and more. His affection is highly conditional and easily turns to hatred, he has old friends executed for mere disagreement, and when he turns against Anne he sends for the executioner even before her trial.
• Because You Were Nice to Me:
  • This is the clear implication behind Jane's promise to treat Cromwell kindly when she becomes queen—he was one of the few people at court to talk to her like a human being.
  • Cromwell is the only person who manages to get through some of Mary Tudor's stubbornness, because he was polite to her when they first met. Cromwell remarks that her life must be incredibly bleak if she considers things like offering a seat to be kindness.
• Best Served Cold:
  • One interpretation of Cromwell's role in Anne Boleyn's last days is that, although he managed to hide it well, he never forgave Anne for her part in Wolsey's downfall. He allies himself with her and aids her in becoming queen while benefiting from her rise himself, but when she proves to no longer be useful he takes his chance to get her back for it. Similarly, he makes sure to note all the people involved in the "Sending the Cardinal to Hell" masque and conveniently chooses them to be executed for committing adultery and treason with her.
  • Anne and Harry Percy swear to bring Wolsey low for seperating them, robbing Anne of a chance at power and forcing Percy to marry a woman whom he hates; they take immense satisfaction in Wolsey's downfall. Ironically this puts them in Cromwell's line of fire; he has his revenge on Anne, as detailed above, while he humiliates Percy, threatens him into swearing that he and Anne were never contracted, and when Percy refuses to cooperate during Anne's own downfall by retracting his former oath, Cromwell forces him to sit in judgement upon her instead.
• Big Brother Is Watching: This is, after all, the era which coined the word eavesdropping...
  • Call-Me-Risley is a spy for Gardiner and it's not a secret. Cromwell keeps him around because Wriothesley is genuinely useful, he knows who the spy is (keep your enemies closer, after all!), and he has hopes that he'll be able to turn Wriothesley to his own side. He doesn't manage that last one; Wriothesley is involved in his downfall.
  • Cromwell himself plants his small army of intelligent young wards and apprentices as servants in the household of Henry's rivals. When the Poles and Courtenays plot to use Elizabeth Barton's prophecies to take the throne, they're all being watched.
    Cromwell: I wonder what you discussed.
    Lady Pole: I'm sure you do.
    Cromwell: Actually, I don't. The boy who carried in the asparagus, that was my boy. The boy who cut the apricots, he was mine too.
• Big "SHUT UP!": Wyatt after Anne's executions starts musing about her fate and his own relationship. Cromwell bluntly tells him to shut up before he says anything stupid.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family:
  • The Boleyns are grasping and ambitious, more or less selling their daughter Mary to powerful men in hopes of increasing their own standing. Anne takes a lesson to be flirtatious but not actually promiscuous. Her brother and sister-in-law have an awful marriage, and when Anne loses Henry's favor, most of her relatives turn on her like piranha, happily assisting in her downfall.
  • The Seymours have problems too. John Seymour had an affair with his daughter-in-law, leaving his son Edward in serious doubt about who her sons belong to, not to mention enraged. Edward and his brothers Henry and Tom both talk about Jane as a commodity. She and her sister, who are both basically reasonable, don't really like to spend time at home.
• Bilingual Backfire: While they're both still working for Wolsey, Mark Smeaton speaks his native Flemish to discuss unsavory rumors of Thomas Cromwell's past. He wasn't trying to hide it specifically (as Cromwell was outside the room at the time) but he still surprises Smeaton by addressing him in Flemish years afterward and reminding him of that conversation.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
  • Harry Norris, one of Henry's oldest friends, is called "Gentle Norris" for his manners. Cromwell's use of the nickname is always sarcastic because Norris only behaves this way towards his equals in rank and manages to snap up all the most lucrative posts of the Privy Chamber while behaving as though he's doing everyone else a favor by taking them.
  • Thomas More is depicted as this; at first glance, he is a pious, humble and intelligent man, the ideal Rennaissance scholar. Beneath that, he beats his servants, publicly humiliates his family, and tortures Protestants...while still claiming he has never caused any harm. Cromwell despises this about him, remarking bitterly that because More and his friends write the history books, history will remember him only as he chooses to portray himself. More hangs an enormous painting of his family in his home, and Cromwell notes that it's set up so that you see the impressive, painted version of the family before you see the real thing. He decides that prefers the painted More.
• The Bluebeard: Henry apparently gains this reputation on the continent after Jane Seymour dies in childbirth. When Cromwell bluffs to two ambassadors from France that Henry is close to making a match with Christina of Denmark, one of the ambassadors says that he's heard Christina is afraid and begging to not be made to marry the king of England; he wonders to Henry's face how he'll find any lady to marry him at all, since he kills his wives.
• Blunt "Yes":
  • In a flashback in The Mirror and the Light, a friar named Robert Barnes is brought before Wolsey for criticizing the cardinal's lavish lifestyle.
    Wolsey: So what do you want me to do, Barnes? You want me to leave off the state and ceremony which honours God, and to go in homespun? You want me to keep a miser’s table, and serve pease pudding to ambassadors? You want me to melt down my silver crosses, and give the money to the poor? The poor, which will piss it against the wall?
    Barnes: Yes.
  • During their first real conversation, Henry and Cromwell get into a spirited debate about war (which Cromwell is infamously against). At one point, Henry angrily demands if Cromwell would prefer a king who never fought, who hid away like a sick child. Cromwell responds, "That would be ideal, for fiscal purposes." Luckily, Henry finds this to be Actually Pretty Funny.
  • Thomas More, who is busy torturing and burning Protestants, says he suspects Cromwell is a Protestant (he is) and that Cromwell is in contact with other Protestants. Cromwell asks if More is threatening him and More says "Yes, that is precisely what I am doing."
• Brain Bleach: When Lady Rochford says that George would mount a terrier if it wagged its tail at him, Cromwell's first thought is that he'll never be able to get the image out of his head.
• Broken Pedestal: In the second book, it's implied that Wyatt realizes the extent of Cromwell's scheming to bring down Anne, and that Wyatt himself is only not among the number of her accused lovers because of Cromwell's personal affection for him, not because he is any more innocent or the men accused of adultery with her any more guilty. He's also obviously shocked and hurt that Cromwell tries to turn something Wyatt said to him during a casual conversation several years ago into evidence against Anne, and unmoved by Cromwell's excuse that he can't separate personal life from his professional duties. His attitude toward Cromwell notably changes afterwards.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Henry argues that since Catherine is his brother's widow, they are siblings in the eyes of church law and their marriage is invalid. Catherine puts up a masterful defense for herself, saying that she and Arthur's marriage was never consummated and even if it had been, she has a dispensation with slightly different wording that renders it a moot point. Anne and George Boleyn are accused of this with Cromwell saying since they were raised apart, they lack the natural instinct against this but it is largely a a cynical ploy to get rid of both of them.
• Brother–Sister Team: Anne and George Boleyn. It doesn't go well for them.
• Call-Forward:
  • Cardinal Wolsey, morose after he has been pushed out of power and exiled to his diocese in York, starts talking about 'prophecies, and the downfall of the priests of England", which he says will come soon. He's right, as the Reformation is around the corner.
  • Cromwell takes a look around Calais, England's last foothold in on the continent, which at that time had been held for nearly 200 years since it was captured by Edward III. He sees the city's dilapidated defenses and concludes that with "one hard push" either the German emperor or the French king could take it. This happened a little over 20 years later during the reign of Henry's daughter Mary.
• Central Theme: Romanticism Versus Enlightenment. Mantel uses Cromwell and The Reformation as metaphors to explore the idea that the world will always march towards progress over the old ways, no matter how willing the world is to partake in this endeavor. Henry is an anachronism in a world that has rapidly changed in a very short period of time, which was out of necessity in England's case. Only one generation removed from a bloody, 30 year long civil war that hollowed out the nobility, he doesn't seem to realize the world of his grandparents' generation is gone and will never come back. With his designs to go and restart the war with France, he thinks he's living in his warrior king grandfather's England rather than the more meritocratic, market-based England his father rebuilt more or less with his bare hands. He is also very much religiously conservative by being against the English Bible and reformers with his inevitable break from Rome being framed as a cynical move to get his divorce rather than due to a change of heart. Cromwell, who’s a well traveled, well read, business minded closeted Protestant represents the new world; he muses that the end of the old ways are not bad because wars are costly and destructive and that rising literacy rates will help raise people like Helen Sadler out of poverty. His outlook on the world is best summarized by his exchange with Harry Percy who threatens him with an army, only for him to turn it right around and threaten Percy with creditors.
• The Chessmaster: Cromwell is extremely skillful in moving people around and makes a point of finding out the levers to make them tractable (most often debts), and he places spies with some care—he's unsurprisingly shown to be quite good at the game of chess itself. Wolsey is also shown to be pretty good at it, but underestimating Anne's determination and circumstances beyond his control (the war between the Emperor and the Pope) prove to be the trick he fatally misses.
• Clean Cut: Averted with Anne's accused lovers. It takes three swings to remove George Boleyn's head, but the rest come off in one. Anne herself is executed by an expert from France who uses a specially-designed sword and a technique to misdirect the condemned so that they'll be best positioned for the strike. He does tell Cromwell that even he can't guarantee it if they aren't steady in position.
• Composite Character:
  • Jane Rochford is given the role of supplying Cromwell with much of the 'evidence' against Anne and George Boleyn, in order that the reader doesn't have to cope with yet more characters.
  • In-universe. Henry informs Archbishop Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell that the French are now reporting on the activities of "Dr. Cranmuel." Then the narration shortly thereafter reads "Dr. Cranmuel left the room."
• The Consigliere: Appropriately enough, since Cromwell is following a maxim he learned in Italy about choosing one's prince. He first gets Henry's respect by holding to his opposition to war in France, and when Henry says there are some who say he should consider the marriage with Katherine dissolve, Cromwell replies "I'm one of the others." That said, he has to be extraordinarily careful about when and how he presents disagreement to Henry, noting that it's better to phrase it with 'yes, and' rather than 'no, but', but he is one of the only people who can do it.
• Conspicuous Consumption:
  • Cardinal Wolsey was known for his lavish style. Cromwell tends not to dwell on it because of his love for him, and the two of them had a game where Cromwell would price him by the yard—although Cromwell eventually admits to himself that it was a bit much. Others are quick to point out how expensive Wolsey's tastes were.
  • Cromwell enjoys being wealthy and shows it off particularly with the women of his household, all of whom are turned out in high-quality and expensive fabrics. (As a former wool merchant, the fabrics they wear have their price by yard noted in his narration.)
• Corporal Punishment: One of the nasty things "Saint" Thomas More does; when a child servant in his household, Dick Purser, is heard denying that the Communion Host is the body of Christ, More has him whipped on the bare buttocks in front of the whole household. Cromwell then takes Dick into his own household, and even takes him to More's execution. Dick tells Cromwell that the physical pain from the whipping barely hurt, but the humiliation was excruciating. When Dick cries after telling Cromwell this, Cromwell comforts and actually embraces him.
• Corrupt Church: The Catholic Church and its involvement in the political squabbles of Europe. Cromwell is also unimpressed with the local aspects of the Church and even under Wolsey is stringent in pursuing cases of corruption in abbeys and monasteries, institutions which he considers to be corrupt by default.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: During one of Cromwell's meetings with the abandoned Katherine of Aragon when she rails against the executions of Thomas More and John Fisher, he points out that if she had caved to Henry's demands, peacefully agreed to the annulment and withdrawn to a convent, they and many other people would still be alive, and Henry wouldn't have broken away from Rome. Chapuys, who visits Katherine at her sickbed (which later turns out to be her deathbed) reports that Katherine talked about having caused More and Fisher's deaths, showing Cromwell's point weighed heavily on her.
• Cunning Linguist: Cromwell knows Italian, Latin, French, Spanish, German, and Flemish. As a boy he picks up Welsh from his brother-in-law (and surprises him by giving the traditional Welsh goodbye), but he loses fluency in it when he's older. It all proves quite handy in his advancement since it increases his usefulness and makes him harder to deceive.
• Cut Himself Shaving: Young Cromwell explains his bruised face to the priest running the church school as having walked into a door, and privately adds that it was a door named Walter.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: The Duke of Norfolk enjoys making threats of this kind, starting with saying that if Wolsey doesn't leave pronto, he, Norfolk, will tear the Cardinal's bollocks off with his teeth. (Cromwell sardonically asks if he can substitute "bite" for "tear" and is told to substitute nothing, but he uses that modification later when threatening Harry Percy with Norfolk's retribution.)
• Damned by Faint Praise: After returning from a long day working, Cromwell tells Liz that she's sweeter to look at than the Cardinal. She laughs that it's the smallest complement a woman has ever received, such a shame because he was working on it the whole ride back.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Early in Cromwell's employment, Wolsey jokingly makes to grab him. Cromwell instantly backs into the wall and has to pull himself into the present from Tomasso, Thomaes, Tomas, and the other variants of his name he's been called in his twelve years of rough living, in which a shadow on the wall held a knife. It creates a rather awkward moment between the two of them, but the Cardinal's sincere apology also establishes him as a Benevolent Boss in Cromwell's eyes.
• Death by Childbirth: Jane Seymour dies after giving birth to Henry's son.
• Death by Despair:
  • Cardinal Wolsey's sudden, fatal illness is portrayed as this, a not implausible conclusion given that it happened after he was abruptly charged with treason on the way to his exile in York.
  • Harry Percy collapses when Anne Boleyn is found guilty and prematurely declared dead. He'd already started drinking himself to death after Anne's marriage and did pass about a year after the trial.
• Death Glare: Cromwell is able to knock people back just with a look.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • Marriage among royalty and the nobility is a business contract and a means to form alliances rather than because of any feelings on the part of the bride and groom; when Anne Boleyn and Harry Percy try to marry for love (on his part, at least) it doesn't end well as their families and Wolsey quickly separate them. These attitudes clash horribly with Henry's far more modern desire to actually be in love with his wife from the start — he quickly turns against the idea of marrying and being physically intimate with Anna of Cleves when she (understandably) rejects him without knowing who he is, and Henry's councillors are left confused and annoyed about why he can't just tolerate the situation for the sake of an important alliance. It's more relaxed among the lower classes, but while Liz's father did ask for her opinion and wouldn't have made her marry Cromwell if she didn't want him, he basically offered his daughter to Cromwell as thanks for turning his business around and so that she could have a new husband and children, and was left bemused when the two wanted to at least get to know each other before they wed; meanwwhile Cromwell has to plead Rafe Sadler's case to his father so that he won't be disowned when Rafe marries without his permission.
  • Henry's bastard son Fitzroy gets into an argument with Cromwell over why he's not allowed to "live with" his new bride. Both of them are fourteen. Cromwell tries to claim that it would be inappropriate as they are too young, but Fitzroy reminds him that Charles Brandon (who's older than Fitzroy's father!) has married and regularly sleeps with his fourteen-year-old bride, and Henry's grandmother gave birth at thirteen. (Cromwell counters that it did neither her health nor her temper any favors, but Fitzroy doesn't particularly seem to care.) He's right, of course; nobody cares about their ages or wellbeing, they just don't want Fitzroy to have a legitimate son before Henry has one, and Mary Howard's family wants to easily be able to marry her somewhere else just in case Fitzroy gets pushed out of royal favor by legitimate heirs.
  • Several character are disgusted by 'French tricks' such as oral sex, but Henry muses at one point that the Church would regard a woman sitting astride a man during the act as worse than incest; essentially, any type of sexual act other than the missionary position, and implicitly for the purpose of having children, is seen as sinful.
  • While marrying your deceased sibling's spouse isn't exactly encouraged today, in Renaissance Europe marrying your brother's widow is outright prohibited by the Church. You can get a papal dispensation if you're rich and powerful enough, which is what Henry did in order to marry Katherine in the first place, but those of lower rank, like Cromwell and Johane, have to keep their relationship a secret.
  • The children of the rich and powerful are not only raised solely by other people, but often in houses many miles away from their parents. Anne Boleyn desperately wants to raise Elizabeth herself but is forbidden by custom; Cromwell spots her looking wistfully after her daughter as the baby is taken away to be fed.
  • One of the reasons people are so worried about the possibility of first Princess Mary and later Meg Douglas as the future queen of England is that when either one of them marries, she'll naturally be subordinate to her husband and he'll effectively become the real ruler of the country. While wives being subordinate to their husbands is still very much a reality in many cultures today, few would believe that such should be the case for a queen/woman in a position of power.
  • Higher education for most women is unusual; girls of the merchant class are usually taught their figures so that they can help with their family's business, but obviously no universities will admit women and when Cromwell is aiming to pass a law to help educate young paupers it only applies to boys, whom he assumes will take care of the girls. Certain noblewomen are highly educated, such as Margaret Roper and Lady Latimer/Catherine Parr, but the nobility find it odd that Cromwell's daughters Anne and Grace were taught alongside Gregory, and John Seymour outright says that his daughters were only taught dancing and music and no foreign tongues as "They're not going anywhere", so Jane Seymour has to teach herself French as an adult.
• Didn't Think This Through: Mark Smeaton is so eager to boast of Anne's supposed love for him and his sexual prowess that he straight-out forgets having sex with the queen when you aren't the king is treason and cheerfully says he slept with her. Only after Cromwell gets more serious and asks him for more details does Mark realize that maybe he shouldn't have said that. Cromwell even feels sorry for him, remarking to himself that a few moments of silly, immature bragging have signed the death warrant of someone who's really little more than a boy.
• Did You Just Have Sex?: Cromwell can tell by the look on the king's face, and the feather in his hat, the morning after Henry finally banged Anne Boleyn.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Cromwell carries every insult ever made to him and his. He remembers when Thomas More slighted him when Cromwell was a serving boy and More a young page, and although More gives him proportionate reasons for Cromwell's animus—namely burning some of his Protestant friends at the stake—Cromwell still thinks about that, too. He also remembers each man who took part in the "Dragging the Cardinal to Hell" masque and mentally labels each as the demon they played (left forepaw, etc) when he has them arrested on trumped-up charges of treason and adultery with Anne Boleyn.
• The Ditz: Gregory Cromwell, in sharp contrast to his father, is guileless and somewhat gullible; Cromwell admits to a friend that Cambridge has done nothing for him and he's done nothing for Cambridge. Though the completely different way their minds work makes it hard to have a conversation that doesn't "bounce off at angles," Cromwell still cherishes him and is even pleased that Gregory has such an easy, gentlemanly nature. (He does eventually find mentors for Gregory who help wise the boy up a little, like William Fitzwilliam.)
• Don't Make Me Destroy You: Cromwell's attitude towards Thomas More. He doesn't particularly want to kill him and tries to appeal to More's love of his family, downplays the importance of signing the oath by telling him to cross his fingers, sends in More's favorite daughter (that backfires since she's as righteous as he is), points out that being executed is painful, and at the end does everything short of sticking the quill in his hand and moving it over the page. More admits that he is afraid of dying, but he refuses all attempts at persuasion and maintains his loyalty to the Catholic Church.
• Doorstopper: At 672 pages, the first book in the trilogy was the longest novel to win the Man Booker until beaten by The Luminaries in 2013. Bring Up The Bodies is 432 pages, and The Mirror and the Light clocks in at 883 pages.
• Double Standard: Jane Rochford at one point comments that if a couple have a son the man takes all the credit, if it's a daughter he blames his wife, and if there are no children "We say it is because her womb is barren; we do not say it is because his seed is bad."
• Dramatic Irony:
  • All the fuss over Henry's quest for a male heir, for one thing, since little Prince Edward sadly died before he reached his majority. At one point Cromwell thinks that there's no way the "ginger infant" (read: Elizabeth) will get the throne. What's more, Anne is fixated on marrying her daughter to a French prince, and if not that then making some sort of brilliant match for her. Once she grew up and became queen, Elizabeth would be legendary for choosing never to marry.
  • Cromwell's desire to ensure Tudor stability and prevent another civil war — the War of the Roses is still in living memory and Plantagenet descendants are plotting as much as ever. In the following century, his great-great-grand-nephew Oliver Cromwell would lead the rebels in the conflict that is now remembered as the English Civil War (though to be fair, he didn't actually start it) which ended with the execution of Charles I — Henry's great-great-grand-nephew! — and would eventually lead to Oliver ruling England for years as 'Lord Protector'. What's more, throughout the books Cromwell does his best to make Henry the sole source of political power in England, while Parliament clashed and fought with Charles because he viewed himself as a monarch with absolute power.
  • Once Anne is executed, Henry muses how both his daughters are bastards now and that his niece Meg Douglas is his heir until he can produce a son. Little does he know that not only will both of his daughters end up ruling England but Meg would be his heir in a fashion; her grandson, James VI/I, became king after Elizabeth's death and all subsequent rulers of England are descended from her, while Henry's own line would die out. In addition, there's some concern about whom Meg, as the possible future queen of England, should marry; since she'd obviously be subordinate to her husband, a foreign marriage would make England simply the vassal of another country, while a marriage to an English husband would necessarily raise his house above others and create resentment. Again, Elizabeth handily solved that problem by never marrying at all.
• Dying Curse: Christophe does one of these on Cromwell's behalf at the latter's execution (and possibly on his own behalf as well, since he's dragged away by guards immediately afterwards); wishing Henry to be rotted from the ground up and that he'll die in seven years time. The afterword of The Mirror and the Light states that Henry did indeed die seven years after Cromwell...
• The End: Inverted at the very end of Bring up the Bodies. Here are the last four lines of the book, Cromwell's inner monologue, after he's been ruminating on how his enemies will probably come after him, but he stands ready to fight.
  There are no endings. If you think so, you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. Here is one.
• End of an Age: Cromwell contemplates the end of knights as no bad thing — wars are costly and destructive, especially ones where kings lead armies and possibly get captured for enormous ransoms, most displays of chivalry now happen at tourneys, and the world is run more from Antwerp and Florence than Whitehall; bankers are taking over. He demonstrates this most strongly when he successfully counters Harry Percy's threat of soldiers with a threat of creditors. Even the tourneys will soon be a thing of the past, symbolized by a Portugese jouster instructing Cromwell (in the latter's youth) on all the tricks of his trade when they're drinking in Venice, and Cromwell and some of his friends finding the man drunk, robbed and nearly drowned in a canal the next day.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Cromwell is happy to visit financial and legal ruination on people, but he doesn't like using physical violence if he can achieve his purpose another way. He visits a piece of astonishing cruelty on Harry Percy at the end of Bring Up the Bodies, but he remains seated while Harry is railing around the room because it keeps him from fetching the ill man a smack. He also finds the idea of torturing Mark akin to stamping on a dormouse and is the only one to treat Anne with some measure of dignity and courtesy — unlike her own relatives — even while he's busily setting up her scaffold. He's also somewhat disturbed at the climate of fear that he himself has created around court.
  • Henry VIII does some pretty awful things, of which having his second wife killed is only one. But he really is pious, he won't take a married woman as a mistress, and he's fussy about bad language.
  • Richard Riche didn't care much about Katherine of Aragon, but he cares very much about the law and when Henry wants Katherine's silver plate and furs after she dies, Riche points out that if he wasn't actually her husband, he has no rights to her property.
• Europeans Are Kinky: Mary and Anne Boleyn’s bad reputation comes, in part, from their time spent in the more libertine French court. Charles Brandon says with disgust that they probably preform oral sex on men because his wife told him French women like to do that.
• Evil Matriarch: Cromwell considers Margaret Pole to be one of these. He internally calls her a “papist battle-axe” at one point. He believes she’s using her sons to cause trouble for the new religion and looks down on the new upstarts like him who emerged from the shadows of the old world.
• Evil Parents Want Good Kids: More like "Morally Ambiguous Parents" in Cromwell's case, but he repeatedly talks about how he hopes Gregory won't have to get his hands dirty the way he does. He also tries to keep Gregory out of London while he's arranging Anne's demise, but Gregory turns up anyway because he wants to support his father.
• Extremely Short Timespan: Wolf Hall and The Mirror And The Light each cover several years respectively; decades in Wolf Hall's case, if you count Cromwell's childhood. By comparison, Bring Up The Bodies doesn't even cover one year; the book starts in the very late summer of 1535 and ends in May 1536 with Anne Boleyn's execution.
• Face of a Thug: Cromwell hears himself described as looking like a killer, and is troubled by and frequently thinks of this comment, including when he sees Holbein's portrait of him. Cromwell is very focused on the idea of "erasing" his past as a brawling urchin and refashioning himself as someone respectable and admired.
• Fantasy Sequence: Cromwell uses these as a tool to plot out his next moves. The second book has him twice populating an imaginary banquet with the Boleyns' adversaries as he realizes Anne is losing favor (and in the second, the Boleyns are served up as the main course). It's highly detailed with placement of chairs, dialogue, and movement of servants; probably it's related to his memory system. There's also a less ominous one when he meets Helen Barre and mentally constructs a new wardrobe to replace her worn, tatty clothes.
• Fever Dream Episode: Towards the end of the first book, Cromwell's narration gets rather loopy, starting with thinking he's told Christophe to do something while half-awake but soon devolving into nonsensical events as a delirious fever takes hold of him. While rambling, he blames it on the snakebite from Italy.
• Forbidden Fruit: Henry's love for Anne has a lot to do with the Church not allowing him to divorce Katharine and Anne's refusal to let him sleep with her out of wedlock. After they're married, Henry is a lot less enamoured with her (though it would have been different if they had been able to have a son). Chapuys' acknowledgement of her takes down the last barrier as it means Henry no longer has to spite the Holy Roman Emperor with his marriage and he disposes of her soon after. His attraction to Jane Seymour, who is Anne's apparent opposite but likewise refuses to have an affair, follows the same pattern.
• Foregone Conclusion: Anyone with even a basic knowledge of Henry VIII's reign knows how things will turn out. One of the most crucial appeals of the story is that the people in it themselves don't know that - as Hilary Mantell puts it, "These characters do not know they are in history."👁 Image
  
• Forensic Accounting: One of Cromwell's principal tacics when dealing with adversaries is to use their finances against them. He's well-connected with both English and European financial markets so he's both knowledgeable about who owes how much to whom and friendly enough with the whom that he can get them to call in debts at an inconvenient moment. More than once he buys off people's servants, publishers, or spies. He's also personally a lender to many members of Henry's court, which puts further leverage into his hands.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The very last line of Wolf Hall has Cromwell planning for the king to stop at Wolf Hall and visit the Seymours on his way back to London. This obviously foreshadows the next book, with the downfall of the Boleyns and the rise of the Seymours to power after Henry forsakes Anne for Jane.
  • In Bring Up the Bodies, there are hints ahead to Cromwell's fate. After Henry's public tirade Cromwell admits to himself that he can envision the day when his head will be on the block. When Anne is executed, Wriothesly opines that Cromwell could be contemplating treason against Henry for Wolsey's sake. Cromwell can feel "the dagger between his shoulders" and suspects that it was Stephen Gardiner who put the thought into Risely's head; Gardiner would indeed be one of the architects of Cromwell's demise. Lastly Anne's "lovers" warn Cromwell that Henry had went against Dudley, Empson, Wolsey, Thomas More, and now them, what makes Cromwell any different?
• Friendly Enemies: Cromwell and Chapuys - though they're not enemies per se, in that they belong to different factions but don't actively work against one another. Officially they hate each other, unofficially they send each other cooking from their households, frequently have dinner together, and Cromwell has stewardship of Chapuys' fancy Christmas hat. When Cromwell corrects Chapuys that he actually wasn't raised by pirates, Chapuys sounds disappointed, almost as if he wished it was real.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Cromwell goes from an abused urchin to an autodidact who is one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in England.
• The Fundamentalist: Thomas More, who tortures heretics in his cellars and presides over the burning of six Protestants during his tenure. More is also said to practice self-flagellation and wears a hair shirt, practices that make Cromwell (who knew several of the condemned men) to wonder who even makes such instruments.
• Freudian Excuse:
  • Implied for Cromwell, though not belabored. When Harry Norris says that he'd rather just die than endure trial and execution at the word of a king he's spent his life in service to, Cromwell privately thinks that it's not that easy and that after all his losses—his sisters, his daughters, his wife, Wolsey—your heart doesn't stop beating as you wish it would, it just turns to stone.
  • Henry is never excused for his behavior, but it is acknowledged that having a painful and occasionally festering permanent open leg wound is an understandable reason for bad temper.
• Genius Bruiser:
  • Cromwell was a brawler in his youth and spent some years as a mercenary in Italy, and while he no longer likes to solve problems using violence, he easily still could (and other people who interact with him know it). When people poke him in the chest it bounces off, and he's capable of dragging a large, half-armored man out of a room.
  • His nephew Richard is also portrayed this way. He's intelligent enough to become one of Cromwell's most trusted instruments, but he's also quite physically strong and imposing, making him both an indimidating opponent in the tilt-yard and useful whenever his uncle requires some high-ranking muscle.
• Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: In the third book, Henry’s niece Meg Douglas gets the bright idea that she’s going to marry Anne Boleyn’s uncle Thomas Howard behind his back. She decides to do this even though she’s his closest legitimate relative at that point since both Mary and Elizabeth have been deemed bastards. Through sobs about how her uncle loves her and has let her live in his household for years and would never kill her, she notes thar her mother sent her a letter saying she needed to apologize and let the relationship go for good. Cromwell tells her in no uncertain terms to shut up, listen to her mother, and go apologize right now because, as his sister, her mother knows Henry much better than Meg can ever dream of.
• Glad I Thought of It: This is one of Cromwell's chief methods—he drops a few hints short of a full proposal, and a week later Henry is saying, "Cromwell, don't you think we should...?" Cromwell doesn't care about getting the credit; he just wants to get done whatever he's suggested.
• Good Bad Girl: Mary Boleyn. She was the mistress to the King of France and then Henry; her children are purported to be Henry's rather than her late husbands (as the son is a redhead, Cromwell finds this eminently plausible), and is described as "dispensing her favors" around the French court before doing the same at home. She also flirts with Cromwell quite a bit. However, her indiscretions are pushed on her by her family's ambitions. She's disgusted with their gameplaying and hypocritical treatment of her and wants to marry someone who won't die to free herself from their abuse. Cromwell seriously considers her as a potential wife for Richard before Henry decides he needs her as a bedwarmer during Anne's pregnancy, but she takes matters into her own hands by eloping with a poor but loving knight and doesn't grieve much when Anne boots her out of court.
• Good Parents: Cromwell is portrayed as a very caring, affectionate father figure to his own children as well his nieces, nephews, and wards.
• Gratuitous French: Anne Boleyn, who lived at the French court with her ambassador father, is described as throwing a lot of French expressions into her speech and playing up her "foreignness" to seem more interesting.
• Heir Club for Men: Henry’s desire to have a son isn’t treated as absurd by the narrative,^note Up until this point, England had never in its history had a female ruler. The one time a king tried to make a woman his heir — namely Henry I naming his daughter Matilda as his successor, after his only other legitimate child, William, died in a shipwreck — it didn't work out: Matilda's cousin Stephen seized the throne, igniting a civil war that lasted nearly 20 years and was so nasty a chronicler at the time claimed that 'Christ and his saints were asleep' and Victorian historians took to calling it "The Anarchy". but his extreme and irrational methods of getting one are. After a long and bloody century of civil wars, England had reached a fragile peace after his parents’ marriage tied a bow on everything and his father managed to turn the ship around. Now only 40 years after the crown was last won on the battlefield, everything rests on Princess Mary’s diminutive shoulders with tons of relatives just waiting for the moment to pounce. But it’s one thing to want a son, it’s another thing to call your own daughter a bastard and kill your second wife to get one. Cromwell's opinion differs, as he points out that Mary’s grandmother led an army in Spain.
• The Hero Dies: Cromwell is executed in the last book in the trilogy.
• Heroes Love Dogs: Especially little ones that remind him of his childhood pet. When Anne is crying over her spaniel's suspicious death by falling, Cromwell entirely sympathizes and knows not to suggest getting a new one.
• Historical Domain Character: Pretty much everyone in the books, the exceptions being most of Cromwell's servants, Christophe, Cromwell’s illegitimate daughter Jenneke, and a few more minor characters.
• Historical Hero Upgrade:
  • Cromwell. At best he's considered an amoral bureaucrat, but more often he's seen as a backstabbing, ambitious Social Climber. Here he's portrayed as a family man whose acquisition of wealth is to make his family respectable and comfortable, whose opposition to the Church comes from sincere objections to their practices, and his questionable deeds and machinations arise from his intense loyalty to his first master, Cardinal Wolsey. The real Cromwell was also at ease with torture, ordering it to be carried out through letters.
  • Cardinal Thomas Wolsey also benefits this in this portrayal. More than Cromwell, Wolsey is almost universally portrayed as a hypocrite whose downfall is usually seen as just desserts for his corruption. Here while none of his faults are denied, he is credited as being a self-made man who was a brilliant statesman and his failure to get Henry's annulment is shown as more a circumstance of greater European politics, some personal mistakes, and limitations within the system itself.
• Historical Villain Upgrade:
  • It makes sense that Thomas More would be viewed in a negative light when the story is narrated by Thomas Cromwell. Maybe that's why the several references to Evil May Day👁 Image
    don't mention that then-Undersheriff More speaking out in defense of the immigrants the rioters were rioting about. Most historians also conclude the charge of him torturing Protestants is entirely false.
  • Jane Rochford is portrayed as a vindictive and bitter woman who hates both her husband and sister-in-law and gives Cromwell the ammunition he needs to bring about their downfall mainly out of spite; albeit she does have reason for her behaviour since she wants to be free of her loveless marriage, she knows Henry is keen to be rid of Anne regardless and she doesn't want to be dragged down with her. Mantel did acknowledge in the afterword of Bring Up The Bodies that this depiction owes more to legend than current research and likely does the real Jane rather a disservice.
• History Repeats:
  • Henry's taste in wives follows a depressingly predictable pattern. He lusts after his brother's pious, dutiful wife; once he gets her, he eventually grows bored and frustrated, and he falls in love with the fiery and vivacious Anne Boleyn. Once he gets her, he becomes disillusioned, and his eye falls on the pious and dutiful Jane Seymour. Sure enough, once Jane has died, the Howards begin parading around the fiery and vivacious Catherine Howard. Cromwell can only shake his head at the sheer cynicism of the ploy, all the more so because it's working.
  • Wolsey at one point reminisces about how Henry's grandfather, Edward IV, also lusted for and married a woman of low rank, Elizabeth Woodville, and how it didn't end well for them.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Mary Howard's powerful family doesn't allow her to move in (and sleep) with her nominal husband Fitzroy, Henry's bastard son, just in case the political situation changes and they can get a better deal by claiming the marriage doesn't count because they never consummated it, having it anulled and marrying her elsewhere. Then Fitzroy dies, and Mary barely inherits anything on the grounds the marriage didn't count because they never consummated it. Oops.
• How They Treat the Help: Cromwell is ruthless to his adversaries but habitually kind to anyone in a lower social position than himself. He also has a penchant for showing more care if he's dealing with women whom he's working against in every other manner, like Katherine and Mary. Cromwell specifically makes a point of looking for intelligence and ability among people seeking charity from his house, since he's mindful of how a few helping hands at the right time helped him to his present position.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick: Cromwell gets himself into this position for everyone he works for, starting by setting his father-in-law Henry Wykys' cloth business in order. He later becomes Cardinal Wolsey's most valuable man and then, of course, Henry's. His official title for most of his tenure is the important but vaguely-defined "Master Secretary," which allows him tremendous latitude to do whatever Henry needs done.
• Hypocrite: At the beginning of the third book after Anne’s execution, Henry laments how he’s back at square one with an heir because Elizabeth is now considered a bastard. He notes that his niece Meg is now technically his heir but due to his sister Margaret’s troubled marital history, he can’t be sure Meg is really legitimate. Even though at that point he has three kids by three different women, all of whom are now legally considered bastards, and he's trying to get remarried to yet another woman to have more children.
• I Am Not My Father: Cromwell goes to a lot of trouble to be the opposite of his own abusive, alcoholic father, so much so that Liz says he's actually spoiling their children.
• Identical Grandson: Henry is noted many times to greatly resemble his 6”4, devilishly handsome maternal grandfather Edward IV, both in looks and build. However, as time goes on this starts being said in a less complimentary way, because like his grandfather he starts to lose his looks and become obese in his mid-to-late 30s.
• I Do Not Speak Nonverbal: Wolsey tears Thomas Boleyn a new one over Anne's behavior, unaware that the family is in Henry's favor because he's taken Mary as a mistress. Cromwell despairs that there's no easy hand-signal for "Back off, the king is fucking his daughter" and wonders why the Italians haven't come up with one.
• I Have to Go Iron My Dog: At one point, Cromwell tells Chapuys he put off the French ambassador because he was busy playing bowls with his household. At first it seems like a jest and a show that Chapuys doesn't have to worry about France, but when the French ambassador shows up later it turns out that really is what Cromwell said—the first thing the ambassador says is "not playing bowls again?"
• I Meant to Do That: Cromwell is summoned to Henry's bedchamber in the middle of the night and finds the king distraught about a dream he'd had in which his late brother appeared to him. Henry feels that his brother was reproaching him, but Cromwell (who badly wants Henry to regard him as a Hyper-Competent Sidekick) suggests that the brother was urging Henry to become the best king he can be and throw off the power of the church. Henry, who is a bit of a ditz, cheers up immediately and says "I always send for the right people."
• Implausible Deniability: Toyed with. When Francis Weston repeats a funny story about how Cromwell locked the doors on the jury at More's trial and threatened to withhold their supper until they gave a guilty verdict, Cromwell doesn't say anything to contradict it because it's close enough to what he actually did.
• Inadequate Inheritor: A half century of peace in England hangs by a thread all because Henry cannot do what his father did- produce an heir and a spare at a young enough age to ensure a peaceful transition of power to an adult son. With Edward’s birth, it takes him twenty-five years with four women (one of whom he had killed) to do what his father did in eight months with one woman.
  Norfolk: : "The old king bred, and by the help of heaven he bred sons. But when Arthur died, there were swords sharpened in Europe, and they were sharpened up to carve up this kingdom. Henry that he is know, he was a child, nine years old. If the old king had not staggered on a few more years, the wars would have been to fight all over again. A child cannot hold England. And a bastard child? God give me strength!"
• I Need a Freaking Drink: The first thing Cromwell does after escaping Henry's rage is to find a goblet of wine and a chair to sit down in.
• Insistent Terminology:
  • It's Lady Mary Tudor, not Princess. It's Dowager Princess Katherine, not the Queen. Henry did not divorce Katherine and Anne, his marriages were void. Cromwell makes careful note of people who don't play along with this, although he himself sometimes seems exhausted with the whole thing.
  • Meanwhile, to Katherine's supporters, Anne is not the Queen of England, she is the King's concubine.
• Interrogated for Nothing: Mark Smeaton. Cromwell knows he didn't really sleep with Anne Boleyn, but he needs people to convict. The fact that Mark took part in the 'Sending the Cardinal to Hell' masque really didn't help his case, either.
• Interrupted Intimacy: Cromwell suddenly calls Helen Barre out of the house so she can help Cranmer's secret and pregnant wife. She appears in the midst of putting her cap back on, and Rafe is right behind her, also disheveled and quite angry that she's being so abruptly dragged off. Cromwell is so preoccupied that the significance of this doesn't even register until six months later.
• Innocently Insensitive: Gregory is a nice kid, but he hurts his father's feelings without meaning to from time to time.
• Is That a Threat?: Both variants of this occur between Cromwell and More, starting with the latter.
  • More tells Cromwell that he's aware Cromwell is corresponding with Tyndale and not to think he can get away with it because of his position.
    Cromwell: Are you threatening me? I'm just interested.
    More: ...Yes. That is precisely what I'm doing.
  • After More resigns and says he will "write and pray" in retirement, Cromwell says this.
    Cromwell: My reccomendation: write only a little, and pray a lot.
    More: Now is that a threat?
    Cromwell: My turn, don't you think?
• It Will Never Catch On: Anne Boleyn gleefully tells Cromwell of a sex scandal in the Seymour family, then says of Jane Seymour, her lady in waiting: "No one wants Milksop, and now no one will." This is...not correct.
• I Was Quite a Looker:
  • Catherine of Aragon is middle-aged and overweight in the present, but Wolsey tells Cromwell that she was stunningly beautiful in her youth.
    God forgive us all. The old king was constantly taking his lust to confession.
  • Henry himself is still strikingly handsome and fit at the time the books begin, but as the years go on he starts losing his good looks as he packs on the pounds.
• Joker Jury: Several of the men Cromwell places on More's jury have a deep personal grudge against the former Lord Chancellor, having suffered lost property or tortured friends to More's anti-heretical activities. When the other judges protest that they might try and find a jury that is actually impartial, Cromwell brushes it off by saying they'd probably have to go to Wales for that (and also Henry will not be happy if they don't get a conviction).
• Kangaroo Court: Thomas Cromwell presides over two: that of Sir Thomas More, and later Anne Boleyn and her five "lovers". There's no question of actual justice being involved; the trials are held because Henry wants them out of his hair and killing them is the quickest way to do that. Cromwell uses Anne's trial to get his own private revenge on the five men who he blames for Cardinal Wolsey's death, but he's also driven by the knowledge that he'll lose his own head if he doesn't do this, and so works up a "case" based on rumors and false confessions. (And when it happened anyway four years later, he didn't even get the courtesy of a sham trial.)
• Kavorka Man: Cromwell is built like the proverbial brick shithouse and his looks are ordinary at best, but he encounters very few women who are not at least briefly interested in him. The list includes Mary Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Helen Barre, Mary Tudor, Bess Oughtred, and Catherine Parr.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: In a non-violent but still undeniably cruel version of this trope. Cromwell tries to get Harry Percy^note who had been the messenger sent to arrest Cardinal Wolsey, Anne's revenge for Wolsey ruining their plan to Marry for Love to recant his recantation of a precontract with Anne Boleyn so it can be used as an excuse to annul her marriage with Henry. Percy refuses in an effort to retain one shred of self-respect and says that Cromwell can't twist his arm this time—Percy's wrecked his marriage, has no heir, and he's already dying from drinking nonstop since losing Anne. So, Cromwell appoints him to be one of Anne's jurors—if he and Anne were never married, there's no legal impediment, and her fate should mean nothing to him! Percy wails as Cromwell leaves the room.
• Language Fluency Denial: Cromwell has developed a fluency in a number of languages, which he often puts to use in his professional life. However, early in the novel, Cardinal Wolsey inquires about Cromwell's knowledge of Castilian Spanish for a mission involving Henry VIII's attempts to divorce Catherine of Aragon. While Cromwell actually is fluent in the language, he pretends to have only basic knowledge because he knows that the assignment would not bode well for his advancement.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After being arrested, Cromwell notes to himself that his enemies are sticking him with charges so spurious they would never manage to defend them in court, but they don't actually need to: they can just introduce a private bill against him and have the King pass it, a workaround Cromwell himself came up with to deal with previous enemies of his own.
• Last of His Kind: A lot of the back door scheming centers around the elderly Margaret Pole and her sons because she is the last living true Plantagenet. Henry tried to placate her by making her Mary’s governess but she and her sons become thorns in his side when they stay loyal to Catherine and the Church.
• Letting Her Hair Down: At one point Mary Tudor's migraine is so bad that she throws propriety to the wind, pulls off her hair net and yanks out the pins holding her hair up. Cromwell, as a witness to this, is utterly dumbstruck; the only time he's ever seen a grown woman let her hair down is as a precursor to sex — even then, he notes that most of them tie it up again to keep it out of the way during proceedings.
• Like a Son to Me: Cromwell treats his ward Rafe like his own son, and indeed they're closer to each other as Cromwell can mentor him in politics (his own son, who's away at school anyway, isn't quite as clever). When his brother-in-law Morgan Williams dies, Cromwell takes his widow and sons into his household, accepting Richard's request to change his surname to Cromwell. Later he takes in his late sisters' children and treats the girls as daughters.
• Literal-Minded: Jane Seymour has a knack of derailing conversations by taking euphemisms and figures of speech at face value. There are hints that she does it deliberately, for her own amusement.
• The Loins Sleep Tonight: Henry finds Anna of Cleves so unattractive that he's unable to consummate their marriage.
• Macho Masochism: Cromwell remembers an incident from his soldiering career in Italy where on a bet, he picked up a (potentially poisonous) snake with the intent of holding it for 10 seconds. It bit him early in the count, but he kept on holding it. After that, no one dared cross him.
• Malicious Misnaming: Anne Boleyn always referring to Cromwell as "Cremuel" seems to be this. While this does appear to be how a French person would pronounce the name - Chapuys also pronounces it this way - since Anne is a native English speaker (despite spending time in France), it is implied to be a deliberate slight.
• Malicious Slander: Lady Rochford is a spiteful gossip and she's been known to fabricate tales to spread around court. It's left unsaid if her accusations against her husband and Anne were true or not, especially since she hates George and longs to be rid of him.
• Married to the Job: Cromwell becomes entirely absorbed in his work as Wolsey and then Henry's right hand after his wife dies. This becomes actually problematic for him in the third book when Henry becomes irritated if Cromwell takes even a single day off. It's a major reason why he resists the efforts of his family and friends to remarry.
• Marry for Love:
  • Mary Boleyn secretly weds the poor but kind William Stafford and refuses to be criticized for it. In fact, getting banished from court is almost an Unishment — while she later writes asking her family to relent and send some money, she says that she'd rather be begging for bread with a man she loves than the greatest Queen in Christendom.
  • Rafe Sadler marries Helen Barre, a widow working in the Cromwell household, and keeps it secret until her pregnancy makes him confess. Cromwell is at first astonished that Rafe would completely ignore all practical considerations in marrying and says so, but soon comes around and says he'll convince Rafe's father that it's all right (since working for Cromwell has made Rafe quite a wealthy young man).^note Incidentally, the "dead" husband turned up over a decade later, forcing Rafe to obtain an Act of Parliament to set aside that marriage and legitimize his union and children with Helen.
  • Henry was genuinely in love with Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour when he married them, and is reluctant to marry someone he doesn't love — which is really unfortunate when it's the turn of Anne of Cleves.
• Marriage of Convenience: Something like this for Cromwell and Liz. After he proves himself an able and trustworthy business partner to her father, he shows his appreciation by suggesting Cromwell marry the widowed Liz, who's been wanting a new husband anyway. Liz is amenable and it turns out to be a happy union, but her father is still rather nonplussed when they decide to talk about the matter first.
• The Mentor: Cromwell credits Wolsey with teaching him how to navigate Tudor politics, and remains loyal to him throughout his disgrace and after his death. When he's faced with a difficult situation, his first thought is frequently "what would the Cardinal do?"
• Mood Whiplash: The second and third chapters of Wolf Hall show off Cromwell's close and affectionate relationship with his master Wolsey, his wife Liz and their son Gregory, as well as demonstrating Wolsey's confidence in being able to get the king an annulment for his union with Catherine and marrying him to a French princess. The very next chapter, two years later, has Wolsey in disgrace and being stripped of most of his wealth and posessions after failing to get Henry what he wants, and abandoned by most of his retainers save for Cromwell, who is himself mourning his recently deceased wife and daughters.
• Morality Pet: Henry doesn’t treat any of the women in his life well other than his younger sister Mary. While she’s barely in the story as she doesn't have much to do with Cromwell and dies off page, many characters mention how much the king loves his sister; he even let her get away with a slap on the wrist for marrying his best friend behind his back, when he wanted to marry her off for an alliance. He thinks rather less of his older sister Margaret, whom he hypocritically judges for having a similarly troubled love life and considers a bit of a nuisance.
• Mysterious Past: Between leaving England at roughly fifteen (after reportedly stabbing and killing someone) and returning to it about a decade and a half later, we know very little about what Cromwell was doing; we know he completely changed as a person, visited many European cities, fought in a war (for the French!) and spent some years working in a banking house in Florence, but he refuses to talk to anyone else in any detail about anything he saw or did in those years. Wolsey further complicates things by making up outrageous statements about Cromwell's past misdeeds. In a later conversation with Chapuys, Cromwell has to correct him about being raised by pirates, and Chapuys seems rather disappointed.
• Never My Fault: Henry isn't in the habit of taking responsibility for his regrets and increasingly does this as he loses touch with reality. While discussing his elderly cousin Margaret Pole, he notes that he believes she resents him for the execution of her brother Edward Plantagenet at his father’s hand, due to his superior claim to the throne. Whose fault is it that Edward was executed? Not either Henry’s, of course, but Catherine’s. Why? Because the elder Henry had delayed signing off on the death for years and years but finally did so after Catherine’s parents refused to send her to England until it was done. Years after Cardinal Wolsey's death, Henry still speaks about him with a degree of regard — as though, Cromwell puts it, it was some other monarch who'd hounded him to death.^note This was also Henry's attitude after he executed Cromwell in 1540, blaming everyone else for killing his most competent servant.
• Never Trust a Title: Although Wolf Hall is the home of the Seymours, virtually nothing that happens in the first book takes place there, and the Seymours themselves don't really become significant until Bring Up The Bodies. Mantel said that, apart from the foreshadowing, she chose the title because the novel is set in the metaphorical den of wolves that is Henry's court.
• No Doubt the Years Have Changed Me: Cromwell pulls an extremely petty version of this on More. The two first met when More was 14 and Cromwell 7, and Cromwell was one of several servants waiting on various pages/scholars, including More. One day, Cromwell asked More what he was reading and More blew him off with a joke at Cromwell's expense. Cromwell brings up this incident to More many years later, when More is imprisoned, and More (understandably) has no recollection of it. When More has been defeated, Cromwell thinks to himself, "You didn't remember me but I remembered you."
• Non-Answer: After the slightly embarrassing incident noted under Damn You, Muscle Memory!, Cromwell explains that he saw the shadow of a would-be murderer just in time to turn the attempt back on him. Wolsey asks if he's confessed to a priest, and Cromwell gives an evasive answer about having been a soldier at the time.
• No Pregger Sex: Henry doesn't sleep with Anne when she's pregnant, because he's afraid that it might cause a miscarriage. Instead, Mary Boleyn is forced by her family to be his 'bed warmer'.
• No True Scotsman: Cromwell is always being insulted as possibly Irish, possibly Jewish,^note they were barred from England at the time and could only remain if they converted and forfeited all property more Italian than English, a misplaced commoner among the gentlemen of the court, heretic, sectary, etcetera etcetera etcetera.
• Not Helping Your Case:
  • Cromwell wants to bury his disreputable past and establish himself and his family as respectable, but he still makes use of his dark reputation and physically imposing presence whenever it would be useful in achieving whatever end he's after... and it's often useful.
  • He's also appalled that Wriothesley thinks he could extend his vengeance for Wolsey to Henry himself. Cromwell is genuinely loyal to Henry (despite being aggravated whenever Henry acts like Wolsey's death had nothing to do with him), but given what he did to Anne and the "demons", it's not that unreasonable a conclusion.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Cromwell extracts a confession from Mark Smeaton not through torture but when Christophe locks him in a storage closet at night. It happens to be the one Cromwell keeps his Christmas star in, the big metal one that has cloth sleeves over its sharp gilded tips. Christophe once mistook it for an instrument of torture, and poor Mark does the same. Cromwell also advises Wriothesley not to get specific — Smeaton knows there's a Tower and there's a rack inside of it, so sitting in the dark and making vague allusions ("we'll write down what you say but not necessarily what we do") is more than enough to get what they need.
• Not What It Looks Like: Cromwell is very respectful and kind to Mary Tudor, especially in the final book, often buying her presents, protecting her from her enemies, and risking his own status to try and reconcile her and the king. Most of the court, possibly including Henry, assumes that he's doing it because he wants to marry her. The assumption is not helped by Cromwell's steadfast refusal to marry any other woman, even when he has a lot of choice. In reality, he made a promise to Katherine that he would look after her daughter and he takes it very seriously.
• The Noun and the Noun: The Mirror and the Light
• Obfuscating Stupidity:
  • Jane Seymour presents herself as a naive Shrinking Violet while serving in Anne's household. While she does seem to be a genuinely kind girl, she's much cleverer than she lets on, and her true savvy is seen when talking to Cromwell, when she's at home at Wolf Hall, and most importantly when she realizes she's now the focus of Henry's affection. Her sister says she's waiting for any man to tell her what to do, but not necessarily to listen to him. When Cromwell and the Seymours are musing about maybe having Anne put into a convent, it's Jane that says, coldly and logically, that Anne knows too much about all the shenanigans at court, she'd be a focal point for rebellion and she'd refuse to go quietly, so she has to die.
  • Gregory Cromwell, who's rather guileless, gets a long look by his father after responding earnestly to a question asked in jest. Gregory admits that he's not that gullible anymore but he still pretends to be since it amuses people and they expect it.
• Oblivious to Love:
  • When Helen Barre asks Cromwell just how sure he is that her disappeared husband is dead so that she's free to marry again, he just answers that he's very sure and goes on with his other business. It's not until months later, after she's married Rafe, that Cromwell realizes she wanted to be free to marry him. One of the few times he misses a trick.
  • Through an insufficiently explicit marriage offer made by Cromwell to her brother, Bess Oughtred—Jane Seymour's widowed sister—believes that she's going to be marrying Cromwell rather than his son Gregory. A rather mortifying conversation between her and Cromwell ensues shortly before the wedding during which Cromwell falls over himself explaining how much more suitable a husband Gregory would be, even though she seemed entirely fine with the idea.
• Off with His Head!: Bishop Fisher and Thomas More are beheaded in the first book. Anne and George Boleyn, Henry Norris, Mark Smeaton, Will Brereton, and Francis Weston are all beheaded in the second. The third ends with the beheading of Cromwell himself.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • After Henry's jousting accident, Cromwell has the uncomfortable realization that Henry is his only real ally in court — anyone else who could have taken power if Henry had died would be highly inclined to kill him, regardless of his abilities.
  • Mark Smeaton in Bring Up the Bodies, in the pivotal scene where Cromwell subtly eggs Smeaton on, eventually getting a boasting Mark to admit/claim that he actually had sex with Anne Boleyn. When Cromwell changes his tone in an instant, a horrified Mark realizes that he's being interrogated, but it's too late.
  • Several of the people who had a hand in Wolsey's disgrace and downfall — such as Anne, Henry Norris and Charles Brandon — have this reaction when they realise that Cromwell has not forgiven or forgotten, and is driven at least partly by revenge.
  • Henry's niece Meg realizes she's royally screwed up in her hair-brained scheme to marry one of Anne Boleyn's relatives behind her uncle's back after the execution when her mother sends her a letter saying that she needs to drop everything and go apologize. Cromwell points out that given her mother is Henry's sister and knows him better than probably anyone on earth, Meg should really take her advice.
• Oh, My Gods!: In keeping with the setting, characters frequently utter oaths in reference to Jesus and various saints. In some cases, these are blasphemous (i.e. Walter Cromwell's exclamation of "Creeping Christ"; Norfolk's swearing by the "thrice-beshitten shroud of Lazarus"; Cromwell's swearing by his patron saint and referencing the "bleached bones of Becket").
• Old Man Marrying a Child: Once Henry’s sister Mary dies, her husband Charles Brandon marries a young heiress because Mary’s pension from being dowager Queen of France was most of his income. He’s pushing 50 and she’s 14, and was originally supposed to marry his son. He doesn’t abide by the norm of waiting to consummate the marriage either.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Thomas More never meets Richard Rich without complaining of how Rich was a wastrel as a young man. Thomas Cromwell uses this to his advantage when he's trying to manufacture evidence for the Kangaroo Court by sending in Rich to take away More's books personally, guessing that More will be less tight-lipped around a man he utterly dismisses (even though that man is now Solicitor General). It works; Rich provides damning testimony at the trial and More doesn't help his case by insulting him in front of the court.
• OOC Is Serious Business:
  • George Cavendish is truly alarmed when he starts chatting to Cromwell and realizes he's crying, having finally reached the breaking point between the death of his family and the prospect of losing everything he's worked for in Wolsey's fall from grace.
  • Cromwell realizes that Henry is seriously attracted to Jane Seymour when they're talking about someone's minor health complaints and Henry ignores the opportunity to go on at length about home remedies.
• Papa Wolf: When one of his apprentices expresses a fear of Thomas More after delivering a letter from Tyndale, Cromwell says he would beat More's head against the cobbles to let in "some of God's love" if More tried to arrest a member of his household. Cromwell also shuts down, in a rather threatening manner, someone jawing about Thomas Wyatt's infatuation with Queen Anne.
• Parental Substitute:
  • Nephew Richard says that with his own father dead, Cromwell is his father now, and asks that he be allowed to use his surname from now on.
  • Cromwell sometimes thinks back on Wolsey not only as his master but his father.
  • Any reasonably intelligent but poor male child in the vicinity of Austen Friars tends to get swept into the household (at one point he has an entire choirful of boys). Cromwell is always conscious of how he rose from a Putney urchin to the King's right hand and is eager to give other young men opportunities to surpass their origins.
• Perspective Flip: Hillary Mantel has explicitly described these books as what the familiar story of Henry and his divorce would look like from Thomas Cromwell's point of view.
• Pet the Dog: Norfolk shows one bit of kindness towards Cromwell by asking "all right, lad?" the day after Henry bawled him out in public.
• Photographic Memory: Cromwell picked up a "system" as a young soldier in Italy wherein one can remember things with precision by associating them with specific sensory experiences, and this plays out in how Cromwell's memories of past events are tied to specific objects and experiences (i.e. a type of fabric). Cromwell has also memorized several texts, including the Bible in Latin and in one scene, inquires about resuming a chess game started several years previously, offering to place the pieces precisely where play left off.^note this one is a half-truth though, as he'd be placing them based on his knowledge of playing style It also helps him not to forget insults, ever.
• Planet of Steves: There's numerous Thomases in the story, including but not limited to Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Wolsey, not one but two Thomas Howards, Thomas Boleyn, Thomas More, and Thomas Cranmer. This gets a Lampshade Hanging in one scene where Wolsey has his first meeting with Boleyn and Boleyn takes note of Cromwell. Cromwell thinks to himself that Boleyn will not remember him, because "half the world is named Thomas". There's also several Henries, including the current monarch and his illegitimate son, and the fact that Cromwell's sister-in-law Johane is married to a Jonathan and has a daughter called Jo. There's also a scene where Cromwell is lusting after Elizabeth Seymour and is relieved to learn that she goes by Bess, which allows him to separate her from his late wife, also named Elizabeth, but who went by the nickname Liz. Cromwell also privately laments that everyone defaults to "Anne" rather than "Anna of Cleves" because he doesn't like the association with Anne Boleyn.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Depending on how you view Cromwell. While he disapproves of pointless cruelty, his biggest objection to torturing Mark Smeaton isn't that it's cruel and unusual, but that it doesn't work:
  "No one wants your pain, Mark. It's no good to anyone, no one's interested in it. Not even God himself, and certainly not me. I have no use for your screams. I want words that make sense. Words I can transcribe."
• Precision F-Strike:
  • When trying to get into the room to do some damage control with Henry at Christmas, Cromwell is accosted by a couple of Henry's gentlemen of the privy chamber goofing around in costume. Outwardly he remains as calm as ever, but his internal monologue indicates how pissed off he is:
    Prime Christmas game: Let's fuck about with Cromwell.
  • Christophe claims that when Henry had his jousting accident and Cromwell feared that he died, he "seized [Henry] by the ears and bellowed into his face: ‘Breathe, you fucker, breathe!’"
• Pronouncing My Name for You: At their first meeting, Thomas Wriothesley makes a point of informing Cromwell that “My name is Wri-oth-es-ley, but wish to spare you the effort, you can call me Risley." This leads to a Running Gag shared between Cromwell, Rafe, and Richard, as nearly every time after that they speak of him, they refer to him as "Call Me Risley" or just "Call Me".
• Psycho Sidekick: Cromwell's apprentice Christophe fits this trope quite nicely, as he's completely amoral and is devoted to Cromwell largely on the basis of seeing him as a fellow cutthroat. Christophe's skills are put to work teaching Cromwell's other apprentices to fight (including how to fight really dirty), as well as getting Mark Smeaton to talk based on threats to leave him alone with Christophe.
• Rags to Riches: See From Nobody to Nightmare. Cromwell started life as the son of an improvident brewer doing manual labor and ended it as a wealthy and powerful nobleman. And as per history, he raised up his family in the process. His nephew Richard was the son of brewer and would-be-lawyer Morgan Williams, and with his participation in Cromwell's Dissolution of the Monasteries👁 Image
  , he ended up as a wealthy courtier (incidentally, Richard was the great-grandfather of Oliver Cromwell).
• Refuge in Audacity: When Katherine dies Henry aims to avoid the expense of a royal funeral at St Paul's by saying that she wasn't royal but merely a Dowager Princess of Wales. This, despite the fact that both of her parents were crowned monarchs (her mother Isabella being queen of Castile in her own right) and her pedigree was far more illustrious than Henry's.
• Replacement Goldfish: Cromwell is continually trying to create substitutes for the loved ones he's lost in his life, starting with his dog. The Bella he leaves at the start of the book wasn't the first one, and every small dog he keeps as a pet acquires the name; there is a reference to his nieces walking the current Bella. After Liz dies, he has an affair with Johane and frequently conflates her with her sister. He later names his falcons after his deceased wife, daughters, and sisters (which his hunting partners find odd). Cardinal Wolsey is the only one he doesn't try to somehow replace, probably because he's busy getting revenge instead.
• Revenge by Proxy: Cromwell warns Gregory not to go wandering around London when Anne and her alleged lovers are imprisoned since they're still popular and it's well known that Cromwell is the one responsible for their imprisonment.
• Rhetorical Question Blunder: Cromwell has a habit of answering questions that the speaker only meant rhetorically (or was plainly expecting a different answer to).
• Riddle for the Ages: It's never made explicit whether Cromwell actually believes Anne is guilty of any of the charges he helps bring against her—or, for that matter, whether she really is guilty of anything. At times Cromwell seems credulous, but it's also clear that he will do what he must to get Anne off the throne.
• The Rival: Endless and numerous rivalries abound, but Stephen Gardiner is Cromwell's nemesis, starting from their days working for Wolsey. Cromwell attributes its origin to a couple of things—Gardiner's shaky connection to the Tudor family and being pushed into the Church giving him a bad attitude, and he can't escape being the son of a cloth merchant around a man who knows every cloth merchant in England. Whatever the cause, Gardiner despises Cromwell and would be involved in his downfall in 1540, along with Norfolk.
• Romancing the Widow: Exactly what occurs with Rafe and Helen. She's the widow, he's the one romancing.
• Romanticism Versus Enlightenment: Cromwell, with his extensive travels, practical experience as a banker and merchant (among many other occupations), appreciation for new trends in theology, politics, and economics, and generally pragmatic outlook, is a thoroughly enlightened Renaissance man. Henry and his court, meanwhile, are still stuck in the Romantic Middle Ages. A major theme of the series is the inevitability of Enlightenment overtaking a world still clinging to Romanticism. Since this is almost always presented as a good thing (naturally enough, since Cromwell is the POV character), the books could be said to fall squarely on the Enlightenment side of the scale.
• Rules Lawyer: Wolsey is this when it comes to degrees of nobility and advises Cromwell practice it as well. Both being lowborn, they constantly have their lack of pedigree thrown in their face as an insult. Therefore Wolsey makes a habit of turning it back on them, such as when he reminds Thomas Boleyn that his family is not nearly the equal of the Percys when young Harry and Anne start making noises about marriage. They wrote the rules, so he'll enforce them to the smallest degree.
• Running Gag: Every time Cromwell sees little Elizabeth he thinks to himself that she’s the most serious baby he’s ever met.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!:
  • Cromwell is afforded some degree of protection for his participation in secret Tyndale gospel meetings because he's working for Cardinal Wolsey; there's an unspoken understanding between the two of them that a little heresy is Cromwell's reward for being such an excellent and capable right hand. (Cromwell also warns his companions when a raid is likely to happen because of the names Wolsey merely mentions.)
  • Inverted with Thomas Wyatt, whose father had asked Cromwell to keep an eye on him. Wyatt had a well-known crush on Anne and wrote poems that were probably about his unrequited love (though vague enough to escape official scrutiny). Cromwell refuses to arrest him until others finally convince him that he can't avoid it. Even then he keeps Wyatt in the Tower so that nobody will try conducting their own "interrogations" and keeps his case separate, hoping that the trial and execution of the other five will be enough to take the heat off. It does, and he releases Wyatt unharmed a little while later. More "screw the rules for my connections."
• The Scrooge: Henry is willing to pour fortunes into his military campaigns, but when it comes to the women in his life he's incredibly stingy. When Katherine dies he won't allow her to be buried in St. Paul's Cathedral because of the expense a royal funeral would entail and insists she be buried in Peterborough; he also tries to get hold of Katherine's fine furs and plate, even though Richard Riche points out that if Henry and Katherine were never truly married — as Henry has been claiming nonstop for close on a decade — then he's only her brother-in-law, and therefore not legally entitled to inherit her property. (Cromwell muses that Henry will find some loophole and get the furs and plate regardless. Some of the furs do indeed later turn up on Anne, much good though they do her.) When he sends Jane Seymour a courting gift of a prayer book, he admits that it used to be his wife's — by which he means his first and second wife, so he's used the same gift for three different women. Jane's disappointed when she sees that the book still has the initials H and A on the cover; as Cromwell makes excuses, saying the A can be replaced, he mentally notes that you can still see where the K used to be. And when his bastard son Fitzroy dies of consumption, Henry refuses to let his daughter-in-law Mary Howard keep many of the lands that should have come to her as his son's widow, since the marriage was never consummated.
• Secret Relationship:
  • Rafe somehow manages to marry Helen Barre without Cromwell even noticing. Both men are pretty astonished that such a thing was possible.
  • Archbishop Cranmer reveals that he's secretly married Grete, the niece of German reformer Andreas Osiander, and has smuggled her into England because she's pregnant. Cromwell's reaction is basically Oh, Crap! before he runs off and grabs Helen to help her out.
  • Henry's niece Meg Douglas is carrying on a relationship with Thomas Howard (Anne Boleyn's uncle) behind his back and plans to marry him in secret. Even though she needs her uncle's permission to marry and is his heir at this point before Edward's birth, because Mary and Elizabeth are technically bastards. It takes a talking-to from Cromwell and a letter from her mother to get Meg to see reason and go apologize to her uncle ASAP.
• Self-Made Man: Wolsey was the son of a butcher who rose through his career in the Church and served both Henries. Cromwell, the son of a ruffianish Putney blacksmith and brewer, becomes Henry's most trusted adviser. Their backgrounds make them a target of derision and resentment for nobles like the Duke of Norfolk who believe that people of "low birth" have no place advising kings—that should be the remit of ancient bloodlines, such as, the one the Duke of Norfolk belongs to.
• Shell Game: The young Cromwell, after he ran away from home, supported himself for a time by running a find-the-lady game. Years later, Cromwell looks back on that time and remarks to himself that as a royal councillor his livelihood still depends on rearranging ladies and making queens appear and disappear.
• Shown Their Work: The books are filled with details about the exact make-up of Tudor England.
• Shotgun Wedding: Henry occasionally likes to remind people that his parents' wedding was not this. Even though his mother was very likely already pregnant on the day itself since Arthur was born only eight months later, a formal betrothal was considered as good as a legally binding marriage.
• Sibling Rivalry: Anne and Mary Boleyn's relationship, never that close even at the best of times, eventually devolves into this. When Mary secretly marries William Stafford and becomes pregnant with their child, Anne accuses her of actually getting pregnant via Henry and doing so in order to spite her, since she's recently lost her own unborn baby. Mary, for her part, says that she'd rather be with the poor but honest Stafford, who genuinely loves her, than in Anne's position, claiming that she's grown thin and haggard and needs to use 'French tricks' to keep Henry's interest. Mary's banished from court and Anne disowns her; the two never see each other again.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: Henry and Anne simper and coo over each other whenever they aren't acting like the Bickersons—Cromwell prefers the latter to the former, though he didn't realize how that would end.
• Sidetracked by the Analogy: When thinking about More's execution, Cromwell describes it as walking down the road next to a man only to find he's plunged into a deep watery hole. Then he starts thinking that he'd better allocate some funds to road repair because that actually happens a lot.
• Slut-Shaming: Henry does this to his sister Margaret at the beginning of the third book. He says that while he has let her daughter Meg Douglas live at his court for her whole life out of the goodness of his heart and that Meg is technically his heir, he's not really sure he can trust that Meg is really legitimate given his sister's similarly troubled marital history. This, when Henry has had three children with three different women (potentially four, since it's whispered that he's the father of Mary Boleyn's son).
• Smart People Play Chess: Cromwell's chess game is very good, and he teaches Rafe. They end up unable to play each other without hitting a stalemate because they know each other's game so well. Cromwell also pulls off a Surprise Checkmate against one of the Seymour boys in Calais, and repeats it later after Seymour claims he was distracted by Cromwell's inquiries about Jane.
• Smug Snake: Anne and George Boleyn try to order Cromwell around on the basis that they made him what he is today. Not his own considerable talents or his service as Wolsey's right hand man. And he certainly didn't make them by being the one to successfully break Henry's marriage to Catherine, oh no.
• Spare to the Throne: Even twenty years into his reign, Henry hasn't quite shed the insecurity that came from his brother's death, hence the dream in which he thought Arthur was reproaching him for taking his kingdom and his wife.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: The obscene masque that depicts Cardinal Wolsey being dragged to Hell. It's crude enough that one women has to leave the room to be sick, and it's heavily implied that Cromwell deliberately remembered who took part in it so that he could get his revenge upon them.
• Stroke the Beard: Thomas Boleyn likes to do this in an attempt to look wise. Cromwell scathingly thinks that he just looks like he's pleasuring himself.
• Succession Crisis: No one is quite sure what would happen to England if Henry were to die without a male heir. His brother died as a teenager, his father was an only child, and Mary is his only legitimate child at the start of the series. Thus far the only time a woman was the heir to the English throne there was a horrific civil war, and the crown was last won in the recent past on the battlefield by her grandfather. Henry’s first cousin Henry Courtenay is the next grandson-in-line of Edward IV, but his second cousins the Poles could also press a claim; Courtenay’s wife is presented as a Lady Macbeth type figure who’s desperate to be Queen and the Poles are still Catholic so neither of them are really good options either. Oddly, Henry himself favors his niece Meg as the heir behind any of his own children.
• Talkative Loon: After his night in the Christmas closet, Mark babbles out the name of every man in England when asked to name Anne's lovers and Christophe has to keep smacking him in the head to get the right number of potential candidates; at once point he ends up accusing the queen of adultery with her own husband.
• Talking to the Dead:
  • Cromwell often addresses Wolsey in his thoughts, wondering what his former master would make of some event or asking his advice, and grows accustomed to consulting Wolsey's ghost in his mind. He's unable to do it after Wolsey's illegitimate daughter accuses him of betraying her father in such a way that Cromwell realizes she got this from Wolsey himself.
  • He finds himself sometimes holding mental debates with More only to pull himself up short as though he's forgotten More is dead.
• Tempting Fate: When Anne is about to give birth, Cromwell advises the men drawing up the proclamations to leave a little space in case they need to add an ss to the word prince. They don't. They should have.
• Title Drop:
  • Wolf Hall is an alternative spelling for Wulfhall, an estate owned by the Seymours. It comes up a couple of times in connection to the lady-in-waiting Jane Seymour, foreshadowing the larger role it and she will play in the sequel.
  • "Bring up the bodies" is the command sent to the Tower of London when it's time for the men accused of adultery with Anne Boleyn to be brought out for their trial.
  • In The Mirror and the Light, King Henry is flatteringly described as "the mirror and the light of other kings". Also, the final section of the novel consists of two chapters, "The Mirror" (describing Cromwell's reflections on the night before his death) and "The Light" (describing the death itself).
• Take That!: Thomas More is portrayed as being a religious fanatic and extremely controlling towards his wife and family, in contrast to his generally very positive portrayal in other media; it's not at all helped by the fact that Mantel was anti-Catholic. The book feels like a deliberate counterpoint to A Man for All Seasons, a comparison that's invited when Cromwell compares the situation to a play in which More is waiting for them all to trip over their lines, and later says that he's probably writing an account in which he, Cromwell, will be the fool and oppressor while More is the innocent victim with "a better turn of phrase."
• That Came Out Wrong: Played for Drama. At a masquerade in the second book, one man makes the mistake of observing that if another's very skimpy costume slips and exposes him in front of Anne, it "won't be anything she hasn't seen before". He hastily backpedals and explains he just means in general, because naturally as a married woman she's seen her husband naked...but Cromwell has already decided he needs to frame Anne for adultery, and he'll take this for supporting evidence, thank you.
• This Cannot Be!: Anne and the four noble men accused as her lovers can't accept the reality of what's happening to them for quite some time, though at different speeds (Weston comes to grips with his hopeless situation soon into Cromwell's interrogation). Anne keeps looking up at the Tower until she ascends the scaffold, and even the constable of the Tower of London admits he was expecting a Last-Minute Reprieve from Henry.
• Torture Is Ineffective: This is Cromwell's opinion, up to a point. He prefers not to go as far as physical torture unless time is really pressing. He does, however, get a great deal of mileage out of psychologically torturing whomever he's got locked up in the Tower (mainly by making them believe they're about to be physically tortured).
• To the Pain: This is how Cromwell gets Harry Percy to shut up about being pre-contracted to marry Anne Boleyn. When Percy says that there's no way to force him quiet because he's got an army and Cromwell hasn't, Cromwell says that he does know all of Percy's creditors. And he'll get them to call in their debts. All at once. And with no money, Percy can't pay his troops, and without troops he can't hold the North, and if he can't hold the North then he'll be levered out of his castle at Northumberland so someone useful can be put in. And after that, yes, he can marry Anne and live with her in absolute poverty, wearing homespun, eating rabbits. Percy shuts up.
• Tragic Keepsake:
  • Wolsey gives Cromwell his turquoise ring and tells him not to open the gift until after Wolsey is dead. Cromwell wears it from then on.
  • Cromwell permits Thomas More's daughter Meg to take her father's head. Later he hears rumors that she carries it around and prays to it.
  • The peacock angel wings that Grace liked to wear. Cromwell keeps them in the Christmas closet against the chance of having another little girl to wear them (whether his own or just a member of his household's). After Mark Smeaton is locked in the closet all night to imagine the invisible decorations as torture devices, Cromwell decides he will have to burn the wings.
• Unequal Pairing: Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn is occasionally compared to the marriage of his maternal grandparents, Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. Elizabeth and Anne are the only two consorts post-Conquest who began as English subjects of minor to mid-nobility, and the point is made that in that situation, the consort is the one who ends up losing. Compared to Katherine and Anne of Cleves, whose lives were spared because of their powerful families, a commoner Queen is expendable and the second that she gets into trouble she has no one to help her. As soon as Edward IV died the gloves were off, Elizabeth had to flee for safety and her sons were killed; Anne barely makes it three years as Queen before she and her brother are both killed to get rid of them after she has a miscarriage with a fetus that was old enough to tell was a boy. Anne's comparatively low status also contributes to Henry's increasing resentment of her, since unlike any royal bride from Europe she brought nothing to the marriage other than the possibility of bearing a son; when all their children other than Elizabeth miscarry, Henry starts to deeply regret a union that's cost him so much and has yielded so little, wondering why he ever desired her at all.
• Ungrateful Bastard:
  • Boleyns, the lot. First, they pimp out daughter Mary to Francis and Henry to raise their stock and then call her a worthless whore when the affairs end — it's for this reason that Anne refuses to accept anything less than marriage. Then, when Cromwell makes it possible and becomes Master Secretary, they decide that they're responsible for his advancement, not the other way around. The instant they realize he's unwilling to be their Yes-Man, they turn on him — Anne declares him an enemy and when it appears Henry is dead in a jousting match, they promise to kill him.
  • Henry views about all of his various relatives to be this, but considers the Poles to be especially ungrateful. After they didn’t get along with his father (especially because of the execution of Margaret Pole’s brother), he brough them back into favor, let Margaret be Mary’s governess and paid for her sons to go to university out of his own pocket. He considers them staying loyal to Mary and the Church of Rome to be a personal affront rather than them standing by their own principles and blows a gasket when Reginal Pole starts publishing works explicitly against him.
  • Practically none of the people who owe their careers or even their lives to Cromwell show any interest in helping him after his own arrest.
• Un-person: Henry's abandonment of his first two wives is complete. He acknowledges Katherine as little as humanly possible and even tells Cromwell to get rid of her deathbed letter without even reading it. Cromwell later advises Jane Seymour, who served and was fond of the queen, not to mention Katherine or she will instantly lose Henry's favor. When he has Anne executed, he erases every trace of her existence to the extent of taking back the clothes she was executed in so they could be destroyed. (This is why there's only one known contemporary portrait of her, a defaced medallion; Henry had the rest burnt.)
• Unscrupulous Hero: Cromwell definitely has a chequered past, and while sympathetic in many ways, still ties himself to Henry and does all the dirty work of having Thomas More and Anne Boleyn executed.
• Unreliable Narrator: While not lying to himself exactly, Cromwell definitely tends to skip over the less morally sound parts of his thought processes. It is implied at the end of Bring Up The Bodies that he chose the five men charged with adultery with Anne because they took part in the 'Sending The Cardinal To Hell' masque, but this is never brought up in the narration while he's actually doing the organising.
• Upper-Class Twit: A lot of Henry's noble friends are portrayed like this. The Duke of Suffolk in particular is easily distracted and doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut — on one occasion Cromwell has to drag the man out of the room to keep him from loudly gossiping about Anne in front of Chapuys.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Subverted. It initially appears that young Thomas was a decent and open-hearted lad—and he was in many respects, but as the books go on he also recalls the times when he was an absolute terror. And the reason Walter was beating him at the start of Wolf Hall was because fifteen-year-old Tom had just killed someone in a knife fight.
• Wacky Cravings: During her pregnancy, Jane Seymour develops a craving for quails, and according to Gregory, she "sets into them as if they had done her an injury".
• War Is Hell: The few glimpses back at Cromwell's mercenary career hint at this—harsh conditions, incompetent commanders, pain, and he was also on the French side in the Battle of Garigliano👁 Image
  . The one where the Italians lost 900 and the French lost four thousand. Inasmuch as the chronology of Cromwell's life in Europe is made clear, that seems to have been the point when he dragged himself to the nearest house, which happened to be a famous banker's, to recover and find better work. That experience gives him much more perspective when arguing against war with France, since he knows the difference between saying "fifty miles from Paris" in Parliament and being the soldier who has to actually get there.
• Wham Line: Even Cromwell is shocked when Mark Smeaton casually, and with barely any prompting, says Anne is sad because she's in love with him, Mark, and claims they've totally slept together. He thought he was going to get Mark to maybe incriminate other gentlemen after some careful coaching and getting more than he needed so easily throws him for a loop.
• What a Senseless Waste of Human Life:
  • Elizabeth Barton. She's portrayed as an Attention Whore who didn't understand the consequences of her prophesying and was exploited by the Poles and Cortenays in their desire to take the throne back from the Tudors. Cromwell thinks she's probably been abused and has certainly been ill-served by the priests who directed her; when he does the paperwork to seize her possessions prior to execution she has almost nothing, and he provides the bribe she'll need to get a quick death from the hangman.
  • Cromwell has a moment of regret over Mark Smeaton, thinking that if he'd hired him (as Cromwell had many of Wolsey's other displaced servants), he could have shaped Mark into a useful man with self-respect rather than a perpetual lovesick boy hanging around at Anne's door in hopes of attention and in expectation of mockery, only to doom himself by five minutes of boasting. But then, they never liked each other back in the Wolsey days, so it didn't happen.
• What's Up, King Dude?: The Duke of Suffolk grew up with Henry and is prone to do things like barging into rooms shouting "ARE YOU READY YET HARRY" like a schoolboy.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: Henry's leg wound in the third book. It pains him continually and the court is often on tenterhooks wondering if it's finally going to kill him. The best the doctors can do is try and drain the infection when it flares.
• Worthy Opponent: Despite working hard to have her marriage annulled, Cromwell has a lot of respect for Katherine of Aragon and her daughter Mary's refusal to go quietly. (According to the historical writings of Chapuys, Cromwell said that if she had been a man, she would have rivaled the great heroes of history.)
• World of Snark: England is seen as this by a Spanish woman who came over with Catherine of Aragon. Of course, the way a lot of characters talk qualifies the novel to actually be a World of Snark, making her line a Lampshade Hanging.
• You Have Failed Me: After capably serving Henry for years, Cardinal Wolsey fails him once and would almost certainly have been executed had he not died en route to London. Later, Henry makes clear that he doesn't care how "slender" the case against Thomas More is, he wants a conviction—that on the heels of a Kangaroo Court which proved insufficiently unjust, Cromwell has his colleagues pull out all the stops. Next is Anne Boleyn, once Henry grows frustrated with her 'failure' to give birth to a son. In The Mirror and the Light, Cromwell himself suffers the same fate of having Henry turn against him for the one thing he couldn't do.
• Young Future Famous People: Rafe would go on to be an ambassador, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Secretary of State, and Privy Councillor to Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth I. He managed to serve three Tudor monarchs and then die of old age, an impressive feat all on its own.
• Your Mom: When Elizabeth Barton confronts Henry in public, he brushes off her doom-laden prophecies with a joking tone. Then she tells him she can see his mother, and he instantly grows serious.