January 1547. The King of England’s fetid 400-pound frame lies on his deathbed, his nation left as rotten and broken as his body. Once Europe’s most promising and enlightened prince, he squandered Britain’s riches on futile wars, tore apart the centuries-old religious certainties of his people and threw off the shackles of papal authority. We pull back the veil to expose the vicious rivalries and conspiracies that characterized Henry VIII’s court, where a man could find ultimate riches — or his head impaled on a traitor’s spike.