I feel like we donât talk enough about how the little solos each queen has sets up the sexist stereotype they are shoved into by society and then how they are broken down in their song.
âIf you try to dump me, you wonât try that againâ For Catherine of Aragon, itâs the petty, angry ex-wife. It reminds me of a crazy ex-girlfriend trope where the ex is basically painted as evil for trying to get revenge on her poor, nice guy ex. Then, in No Way, âPlease tell me what you think Iâve done wrong... Youâve got nothing to sayâ totally flips the script, the audience realizes that itâs Henry that is the crazy one, trying to find all these ways to get rid of her be it sending her to a nunnery or saying sheâs cursed with infertility. No Way shows us that Aragon not only has a right to be angry, but also that she has been biting her tongue this whole time to what Henry has been doing to her, in a show of restraint and strength.
âWhy did I lose my head? Well, my sleeves may be green, but my lipstickâs redâ makes it seem like Boleyn is using her sexuality as a weapon. Anne has been characterized this way in much of history, she is the classic âOther Womanâ, the whore with âthe plan to steal the manâ. In DLUH, we see a different side of Anne, one where she seems a lot less calculating, more helpless and clueless. Superficially, this throws her into yet another stereotype, of the âDumb Blondeâ, so to speak. Looking deeper into the lyrics, however, a lot more is revealed. The people making many of the decisions are the men in her life. Her father tells her to get ahead. Henry pursues the relationship, breaks things off with the church, and cheats on her. Anne is subject to the environment she has been thrown into, reacting to things instead of acting a lot of the time. She âdidnât mean to hurt anyoneâ (although she does make many decisions that do hurt people), but pays the price of Henryâs insanity.
âJane Seymour, the only one he truly lovedâ would make Seymour the âPerfect Wifeâ. Sheâs doting, sheâs dutiful, in the picture perfect relationship. She has the perfect husband, she has the heir to the throne, even in death, she has the queenâs funeral (the only one out of six to receive it), and buried beside her love once he passes. However, in Heart of Stone, we see that not everything was as easy as it seemed. âYou can tear me downâ, âIâll stand the testâ, and the other descriptions of turmoil show that Henry was not as good to her as weâd like to believe. Although perhaps, in his own fucked up way, he did love her, he did not treat her well. Many like to say that Seymour was not abused and shouldnât win the âcompetitionâ because she didnât have to deal with much from him, but reading between the lines shows that she dealt with his abuses in silence. She was not weak, but she wanted so desperately to make it with him and Edward, that she stuck it through until her untimely end.
âBut I didnât look as good as I did in my picâ implies that Anna of Cleves A. believes that and B. accepts it, which is a stark contrasting point in Get Down. From the beginning of Get Down she paints the picture that while, yes, what happened to her is awful, she did not lie down and accept what Henry decided was to happen for her. She used what happened and made her life amazing, far more wonderful than it wouldâve been if Henry was still involved in her life. Although historically this could be far from the truth, Six Cleves is one bad bitch flipping that rejection and making it a victory.
âLock up your husbands, lock up your son, KHoward is here and the funâs begunâ is one of the most apparent flips once we get to AYWD. Itâs carried through the song, as at first Katherine is âwantingâ (donât get me started on the statutory rape here) her encounters, but then we quickly learn the truth. She leads us to believe, like Henry believed, that she was a promiscuous woman not worthy of the throne, until we realize she was only a girl who was taken advantage of. Her stereotype is a very well-known and believed one as much as Anne Boleynâs, so itâs refreshing and heartening to see the musical portray it in a different way for the KHoward character, and Iâm so glad they did it this way.
âIâm the final wifeâŚ. Iâm the survivorâ For Catherine Parr, all she mentions in her intro is that she was the final wife, the one who survived, and other things to do with her being Henryâs 6th wife, or one of the Six. When we get to IDNYL, we are introduced to Catherine as a person, the things she did, the people she affected, outside of Henry. We are shown HER real story, not reliant on anyone else. Parr sets us up to believe that she was merely one of Six in order to make the reveal of her breaking off/having agency even more impactful. She went from one dimensional to 3D this way, which I think was a really cool way to segway into giving all the queens agency in the last part of the show.
Overall, I think itâs a really cool device that was used through the show, because of how rooted it is in our perceptions. Most people have a preconceived notion of these queens from their real lives and our understandings (or lack thereof) of what happened to them. For Six to break those really emphasizes how they are telling their own stories, âtaking back the microphoneâ, and freeing themselves from abuse, which is always a story the world needs to hear. đ
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