A Queen and My Pentatych

As I pondered, (people still do do that), my idea of a number of brightly painted units hung like colorful rungs of a ladder between base moulding and ceiling line, Honey watched TV. The Tudors. I listened with half an ear, but then Henry's oldest wife got my full attention.

Katherine Parr, was quite a gal,who definitely knew how to keep her head and her marriage. This last Sunday night, Henry's last wife was running the country, bonding with Henry's kids, and keeping the crazy conservative church guy hysterically hunting reformed Protestant heretics at bay while her honey was off in France getting back what was his.

Katherine Parr,ironically named after Henry's first wife, Catherine of Aragon, because her mom and the first queen were great friends, had her hands full, but was as handy as any modern working woman. She could juggle her job as Acting Regent in Henry's absence, Henry's step kids and the zealots nipping at her reformed heels. In her highly religious/political world filled with treachery, she was great at stroking male egos to survive in a position she never wanted.

Katherine will have a few rough minutes in the last two installments of the Tudor series. While she kept her faith a secret, it did sorta come out that she was a a member of the reformed sect. The surprise for all opposed to her heretical ways was that Henry forgave her. She told him she had needed him to teach her. He had been gone so long at war she didn't know what to do without him; so she did what she'd done before. Henry ate it up. Katherine kept her marriage, her position and her head with skillfully applied feminine wit--some would call it wiles, but they would be males.

When her husband died, the widow queen wanted to be Acting Regent again while little King Edward grew up. She would have been too, if she hadn't secretly married Lady Jane Seymour's brother Thomas, an old flame, before Henry demanded her hand. There was a scandal of course--probably the two married before the year of widowhood was up--and all she got to be was acting guardian for Henry's children: One of them being the future Queen Elizabeth the first and the second one being Mary Queen of Scots.

While busy guiding England's future monarchs, she wrote and published two books under her own name--about religion of course. It was a hot topic. I'd bet a best seller. A remarkable woman, she fascinated me. Multifaceted...Worthy of her own mini series...

Mini series. Multifaceted. Multiple units. A collection of a number of traits, shows,paintings that come together to make a remarkable whole. My triptych will be a pentatych, five paintings installed as one to make a big bang.