From the beginning of his 40-year hold on power, England’s King Henry VIII was a monarch of voracious appetites and little interest in the affairs of state – making him ripe for exploitation by his scheming Chancellor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, whose papal ambitions dominated his personal agenda. But King Henry’s desire for a male heir, and his wife Katherine of Aragon’s inability to produce one, set his empire on a historic course that threatened his authority, fostered the rise of Anne Boleyn, a mistress determined to be the new queen, and sparked a bloody Protestant Reformation that undermined the primacy of the Catholic Church in Europe. Despite challenges from a powerful Pope in Rome, ambitious and corrupt monarchs across the continent and even his own subjects, Henry will stop at nothing, including exiling and killing those closest to him, to get what he wants.