Michael Hirst's The Tudors and Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall

Fidelity is an f-word that everyone can appreciate. It refers to honesty and loyalty—total and complete devotion towards someone or something else. But fidelity means more than just one thing. It can refer to the relationship between significant others, between a king and his court, and between a cardinal and his closest man. In fact, fidelity can be split into two other words that encompass all parts of it: faithfulness and fealty. Employing examples from Michael Hirst’s The Tudors and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, fidelity will be seen with new depth and clarity, and hopefully, f-words can be seen in a new, more positive light.
Faithfulness, part one of the fidelity solution, is used in this sense to refer to steadfastness in affection. It means always staying true to a significant other, never wavering in passion. In the works of Hirst and Mantel, faithfulness can best be illustrated by stating that it is the exact opposite of everything that King Henry VIII does.
“In Cold Blood,” the first episode of The Tudors, contains a scene where, right after he swears to go to war against the French, Henry “spends the day making love to Lady Blount” (Episode Summary 1.1). It should be mentioned that Lady Blount is also married at this time. Not only does Henry cheat on his Queen, but he has one of her ladies-in-waiting cheat on her husband, destroying in every possible way the definition of faithfulness.
In Wolf Hall, a conversation between George Cavendish and Thomas Cromwell fixates on the topic of Henry’s affair with Mary Boleyn, in which Cromwell asks, “While he was close with Mary, he was thinking about sister Anne?” (Mantel 73). This very obviously illustrates the King’s desire to sleep with both Boleyn sisters, not just the o...

... middle of paper ...

...s of the 1500s?
As it turns out, f-words are more significant parts of society than anyone ever thought. Fidelity and its two parts, faithfulness and fealty, are f-words that every person should live by. At their roots, they all mean integrity and allegiance, whether that be applied to a wife or a husband, a cardinal or a king, a boyfriend or a girlfriend, a president or a prime minister. Most importantly, fidelity can be achieved by everyone if they just think of and use their f-words often.

Works Cited

Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary. 2013. Web. 24 November 2013. .

In Cold Blood – The Tudors Episode Summary 1.1. 20 March 2011. Web. 14 October 2013. .

Mantel, Hilary. Wolf Hall. New York: Picador, 2009. Print.