I have only caused a Twitter cancellation once in my life. It’s something I find mildly embarrassing to remember – me, the uppity twentysomething, drunk on the power of my smartphone – but, in my defence, it was a different time. A time when casting around for things to be annoyed about before loudly, unselfconsciously declaring them to be evil was a much-embraced collective pastime. The subject of my ire? It was a, erm… mug. Yes, I was in the gift shop of a beloved heritage organisation that I shall not name, when I found myself confronted by a drinking receptacle with fancy, heat-sensitive properties. Alongside it was a sign: “Pour in a hot beverage and watch as Henry’s six wives vanish!”
Urgh, I thought. The trivialising of the lives – and, in some cases, killings – of Henry VIII’s spouses. Gross. Others felt the same. The response was almost instant – the evil mug had to go. “A huge mistake”, “Vile and not funny” and “What the actual f***?” featured among the sample of responses. Next came the sincere apology from the place selling the item. Reader, a day later, that mug was no longer for sale. Funny, then, to come face to face with it once more in the National Portrait Gallery’s Six Lives: The Story of Henry VIII’s Queens exhibition, where it sits in a glass box of coasters, DVDs, Christmas decorations, and other Tudor-wife ephemera. Collected from various members of the gallery’s staff, these items are a reminder that the “divorced, beheaded, died” crew make for queasily good merch.
