Looking back, they way royalty is presented to U.S. School children has a huge effect on why there is a fascination with the topic.
I still remember the chant, Divorced! beheaded! died! divorced! beheaded! survived! when we were studying Henry VIII. It worked, I can still remember the order of each poor woman's fate. At the time, Henry was seen in a more favorable light. Historians have released poor Anne Boleyn from most of what she was charged with. If you have, however, seen a recent television series called the Tudors, their work may have been for naught. The costumes were beautiful and the acting incredible. It perpetrated some of the more slanderous accusations about some of Henry's life and his wives that we now know to be false.
Is this poetic license or as Honore de Balzac writes, "...it is plain that historians are privileged liars, who lend their pen to popular beliefs precisely as the newspapers of the day, or most of them, express the opinions of their readers..." - Catherine de Medici (translated from French to English by Katherine Prescott Wormeley)
Today's royal books are all about the Tudors. You be the judge!
