King Henry VIII

“It’s good to be king.”

Henry VIII has, for good reason, often been called the grandfather of killin’ it.  He measured his dick in cubits and his women by the score.  His excesses made King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette cry in shame until the entire French monarchy was overthrown by a rabble of common peasants.  With more than fifty palaces adorned with over 2,000 tapestries, Henry burned through money faster than Dirk Diggler on crack and the only thing rising higher than inflation during his reign was his level on the killin’ it scale.

The term primae noctis was Henry’s modus operandi. His dedication to killing it was so strong he literally converted an entire nation just so he could bang out some provincial tease. He tilted his mighty lance at commoners and courtesans alike, spilling wine from his jeweled chalice all the while. He would have felt right at home in the bacchanals of ancient Rome or the best clubs in LA.  A prolific writer and composer, he was known to drop a poem on a wench as quick as he was to drop a wench from his fur-lined harem. His shit was the best and he didn’t have time to waste it on some comely lass trying to give him the girlfriend experience. His blood oath to killin' it was so paramount that he sent two non-consecutive wives to the executioner’s block.

Saying something trite like "a normal day for Henry VIII" would belie how much this luminary iconoclast advanced killin' it from its dark ages conception. With the blood (usually of a close adviser or papal envoy) covering him from head to toe you might wonder how he slept: he didn’t. Wading nude into a room balls deep in nubile young ladies-in-waiting and then rolling around with them in a sea of plush silk and velvet bedding while servants dressed as Egyptian eunuchs sprinkled rose petals on them and minstrels laid down the latest hit by Palestrina was about par for the course on an average morning.

After the nocturnal sating of his passions, he would don the finest mantle and cover himself in jewels so glimmering they would make Liberace feel like a square. After an invigorating game of tennis or penning a bellicose missive to one of his many haters, he would give thought to contemporary political philosophy while visiting the apartments of one of the finer ladies of England, accompanied by a lutist plucking a lusty soundtrack. After venting his rage at the lady for failing to provide him with a male heir in front her cuckold husband he would go off to joust and then hunt boar with the Duke of Suffolk and after that party for two fortnights straight.

Royal families have a way of making either pedigreed killers or bona fide half-wits who wouldn't know killin' it if it was the only thing at the banquet table. While the Monegasque lay claim to an unbroken line, Henry VIII's descendants have the highest standard of killin' being held over their head. This weighs heavy, like a full suit of crotchless armor. But Henry VIII knew that the weightiest crown is nothing to the bon vivant who kills it the hardest.

“You have sent me a Flanders mare!”