List of The Tudors characters

Henry is presented as a spoiled and indulged ruler who after his marriage to Anne will not allow anyone to contradict him, having tasted an intoxicating sample of absolute power. So when he fails in his attempts to have a son with her, he is quick to lay the blame at Anne's door and then by chance meets Jane Seymour, a sweet, shy girl, and falls in love with her. Convinced that his future lies with Jane, Henry takes the chance to be rid of Anne when his longtime friend Charles Brandon tells him rumors suggest that she has been unfaithful. Anne is quickly brought to trial, found guilty and executed.

Although Henry's personal life improves with his marriage to Jane Seymour, who helps reunite him with his daughters, his position is threatened when Catholics in the north start to rebel against him. He crushes the rebellion and brutally punishes all those involved. Finally Henry's wish comes true when Jane gives him the one thing that his last two wives could not: a son. But his joy is short-lived when Jane falls sick and dies from childbed fever a few days later, leaving Henry in a deep state of depression.

He remains a widower for three years until Cromwell pushes him into a fourth marriage with the German Anne of Cleves. With promises of her beauty, he agrees to wed her but is disgusted by her when he finally meets her. Unable to escape the betrothal, he marries Anne but starts divorce proceedings soon after. He then notices the extremely young and seductive Katherine Howard and decides to marry her because she makes him feel young again. The marriage to Katherine Howard did not last. She was executed once her hidden past relations with Francis Dereham and her adulterous affair with Thomas Culpeper came to light. Henry later marries his sixth and final wife Catherine Parr, a wealthy widow closer to Henry's age. She was a loving wife and stepmother to all three of Henry's children and was made Queen Regent during Henry's absence at Boulogne. Bishop Gardiner and others suspected Catherine Parr of heresy and nearly had her arrested for it, but she was able to convince Henry of her devotion to him.

In 1536, Henry suffered a grievous leg wound in a joust that never healed properly and gave him pain the rest of his life. It also prevented him from being as active as he had been, and he became morbidly obese in the last years of his life. His increasing pain and approaching infirmity makes it doubtful the King can participate in the invasion of France in alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor. However, he rouses himself and leads the successful siege of Boulogne in 1544. In the fall of that year, he returns to England, where his health declines until his death in January, 1547.

The second season sees Anne reach the peak of her power. She is created as Marquess of Pembroke and is taken to France to meet the French King, Francis, as the future Queen and sleeps with Henry and thus conceives a child who she is confident will be a boy. Soon afterwards, Henry marries Anne and crowns her as Queen, his marriage to Catherine annulled by Cranmer; however, Anne and Henry's hopes are dashed when she gives birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, which sets in motion the Act of Succession. She is more or less manipulated by her father to do everything to win Henry's love (which becomes evident after her miscarriage of her second child). She allows Henry to disinherit his daughter Mary but tries to establish ties with her conditional upon Mary accepting her as queen. Mary rebuffs this offer.

Anne becomes desperate to conceive a son, but miscarries twice after Elizabeth and is eventually accused of witchcraft and adultery. Henry removes Elizabeth from the line of succession, convinced she is not his daughter, and sentences Anne to execution by beheading, which she goes to with dignity and surprising admiration from the people. Anne re-appears in the final episode of Season 4 in the dream sequence alongside Elizabeth, expressing pride for her daughter, proclaiming her innocence that the crimes she was killed for, and showing sympathy for her deceased cousin Katherine Howard.

Because of her seeming inability to give him a son, along with the onset of menopause, Henry worries that England might face a reversion to civil war in the event of his death. With the Wars of the Roses still a recent memory, he was determined to have a legitimate son to whom to pass his throne. He therefore preferred to believe that Katherine lied when she swore that her previous marriage was never consummated and that therefore his marriage to her was incestuous and illegal. Katherine was very lonely at court, her only friend was the ambassador of Spain, as Cardinal Wolsey dismissed her Spanish ladies-in-waiting for fear that they were spies for the Holy Roman Emperor. Nevertheless, she always does her duty as Queen of England admirably, even mingling with and donating to the common people after church services, and she is loved by the English people despite her Spanish background. She is banished to spend her final days at the house "The More", without any contact from the king's staff or her daughter Mary. She is last seen dictating her will on her deathbed, read both aloud and, intercutting with, by a mournful Henry VIII; Anne smiles upon hearing the news and states that "Now, I am indeed queen." Katherine re-appears in the final episode of Season 4 in the dream sequence alongside Mary, confronting Henry about his treatment of her daughter and her own status as his 'true wife'.

Cromwell is depicted as being ruthless and calculating, but also as a hard-working and extremely able minister; he is Wolsey's true successor as the King's right hand. His historic role as a talented administrator and reformer eventually comes into conflict with Henry's ambiguous commitment to the Reformation; the series portrays Cromwell as a committed Protestant who sees the Reformation slipping away, with the Church of England, despite its break from Rome, retaining Catholic tradition and ritual. An attempt to strengthen the King's ties to Protestantism through a German marriage to Anne of Cleves (though couched as a political alliance) backfires. Because of his commoner origins Cromwell is resented by nobles such as the Duke of Suffolk and frequently abused even by Henry. His beheading is a botched affair because the executioner is drunk.

He is deeply loyal and devoted to Anne Boleyn but, despite his devotion to her, he is forced to relinquish the mutual desire for a reformed faith when Anne falls from favour. He takes her last confession in the Tower and breaks the news to her that Elizabeth is to be declared illegitimate but promises her that he will endeavour to keep her in the King's "good and kind graces".

Despite her unhappy marriage and the scandal of her in-laws, Jane is asked back to court by Queen Jane and is appointed her principal lady in waiting. Jane secretly helps the Queen to get funds to the Lady Elizabeth's governess when Henry refuses to pay and arranges the public return of Lady Mary to court. Lady Rochford is a keen supporter of the Reformation and abhors the Catholic faith, although she is so moved by Jane's actions that she puts aside her opinions. She is later seen as a lady in waiting to Katherine Howard, whom she despises, and manipulates her into a clandestine affair with Thomas Culpepper, one of Henry's grooms who is pathologically obsessed with the young queen. Once the affair came to light, she was interrogated and arrested for treason (as well as aiding and abetting) and had a nervous breakdown. Despite Lady Rochford being declared legally insane, King Henry VIII passed a law to make it legal to execute her by beheading. She was executed the same day as Katherine Howard.

Chapuys has the distinction of being the only character to feature prominently in all four seasons without ever being a starring cast member. His origin and ultimate fate were changed for the series: historically, he was a Savoyard (not a Spaniard as suggested in the series) and retired to the Low Countries, where he set up a small college in 1548. He died in 1556, meaning that he in fact lived into Mary's reign.

In the aftermath of Anne's execution, Henry is initially unwilling to have anything to do with Elizabeth, claiming not to believe that she is his child, but when Elizabeth's half-sister, Mary, and stepmother, Jane Seymour, arrange for her to be brought to court and presented to her father for Christmas 1536, she is welcomed. She attends the christening of her half-brother, Edward, and later goes to live at Hundson with Mary. In episode 3.07, Elizabeth and Mary are present at court to greet their newest stepmother, Anne of Cleves. During Henry's marriage to Katherine Howard, Elizabeth is much warmer to her than Mary, but makes no secret of her preference for Anne of Cleves, and spends most of her free time at Hever Castle (Anne's residence and Elizabeth's ancestral home). In episode 4.06, Elizabeth treats her restoration to the succession with dread, and declares to Mary, with God as her witness, that she will never marry.

Elizabeth develops a closeness to her sister and brother. She is seen to be good friends with Anne of Cleves and, in the fourth season, grows close to Catherine Parr, who vows to raise Elizabeth in the faith of her mother. However, throughout all of this, she and her father remain somewhat distant. By the end Henry acknowledges, while conversing with the spirit of Anne Boleyn, that he has always been proud of his daughter and does recognise that she is very intelligent. He also reveals that he wishes that he could have shown her more affection but that her resemblance to her mother (Elizabeth looked like her father, but had her mother's eyes and personality) made him keep her at arms length.