Off with their heads... but was Henry VIII out of his?

As a new documentary presents the case for the six worst monarchs in history, experts are divided on whether jousting traumas are to blame for the Tudor king's transformation from gentle scholar to sadistic killer

- By Karen Rockett

HE IS widely considered to be England’s most blood-thirsty ruler with his insatiable appetite for murder. King Henry VIII killed up to 70,000 people during his turbulent, 36-year reign over England, famously including two wives and various previously trusted friends, aides and relatives. But was the terrible Tudor monarch a “pampered resentful little boy” who became “a psychopathic sadist”, or a weary middle-aged man suffering from a chronic brain disorder brought on by repeated head injuries?

That’s the question experts will attempt to answer in the first of a new six-part TV documentary, Killer Kings, starting tonight on Sky History.

Henry’s grim death toll surpasses ruthless Roman emperors, terrible Russian Tsars and Biblical baby killers. However, this groundbreaking new true crime documentary series argues that his brutal actions don't paint the full picture of a complicated and ultimately tragic man.

It explores how the troubled king’s repeated brain injuries and a little-known genetic condition may explain his increasingly tyrannical and erratic behaviour in later life.

"It is estimated Henry killed tens of thousands of people during his reign by burning, boiling, stretching, crushing or decapitating them," explains Tudor historian Dr Elizabeth Norton. “He was a bloated, blood-thirsty temperamental wife killer.

"When he becomes king in 1509 aged 17, he is young, he is good-looking and he is sporty — but early on in his reign there are hints at ruthlessness. He has his father's servants executed. These are judicial murders, but are they just a fledgling king flexing his muscles?”

Dr Donna Youngs, an investigative psychologist, believes the answers to Henry’s sadistic tendencies began in his childhood when the “resentful spare to the heir” was raised in a separate household to his older brother Arthur.