One occasionally sees efforts to analogize Trump and Henry VIII. And with good reason, because they had plenty in common:
- Wealthy, domineering fathers;
- A strange sort of charisma;
- A lust for cheap popularity (think Empson and Dudley here);
- A love of pageantry and the military;
- Difficult, unstable relationships with women;
- Laziness, and a short attention span;
- A penchant for firing people (Henry usually had them killed); and
- An affinity for manipulating people, particularly in old age.
The two are different, however, in that Henry had a strong (if amazingly convenient at times) conscience, and was a committed Christian. He would have completely rejected Trump’s single-minded focus on power and leverage.
Personally, I think the better Trump analogy is to Kaiser Wilhelm II, but it’s a debatable point.