Monarch

Monarch is a British costume drama involving Henry VIII. It was written and directed by John Walsh and released in 2000 at the Mill Valley Film Festival. It was re-released in 2014 after the film negative, thought lost, was rediscovered. Plot Monarch is part fact, part fiction and unfolds around one night in the life of a hated king susceptible to assassination, and paranoid with the thought of his own mortality. The film is set in just one night when the injured Henry VIII arrives at a manor house closed for the season. Henry is without the power of his throne. He is vulnerable to those around him and to his own mental issues. He had left England financially and morally bankrupt; his collection of enemies became his only constant. A voiceover at the end claims that when Mary Tudor came to the throne, she had her father's remains exhumed and burned as a heretic. There is no evidence that this is true. In an Irish Post interview, Walsh said “Often you can find out more about someone in a small time frame rather than you can if the two-hour film spans their whole life. Most bio-pics become little more than a montage of facts. If you confine a character to that time frame you can find out more about them.” Cast T. P. McKenna as Henry VIII Jean Marsh as The Queens, an amalgamation of his ex-wives. James Coombes as Thorn, the King's personal protection guard. Peter Miles as a courtier to King Henry.