Jo here
Which monarchs do you think get a bad rap? I'm talking English in particular, because that's what I know best, but any and all. Anyone want to speak up for Vlad the Impaler or Ivan the Terrible, or even Ethelred the Unready?
There's always Richard III. I have no strong opinion on him, but I know a great many people do. I read Daughter of Time and thought it put a pretty good argument forward that he didn't kill the princes and was generally a Good Thing. (Ref. 1066 And All That) There are some who reckon King John wasn't all that bad really, administratively speaking and compared to Richard the Absent Lionheart.
Americans tend to think George III a Bad Thing, given that he annoyed
them enough to cause the Revolution, but as everyone seems to think that was a Good Thing, I think they should applaud him, which might explain the American enthusiasm for British royalty. Or not. But if one cares, he was a determinedly faithful husband, even if an obsessive parent to his horde of offspring.
But I'm really talking about Henry VIII, victim of the TV show The Tudors, but generally considered a Bloody Menace for zipping through wives with casual, brutal indifference. However, though I'd never say he was a saint, it wasn't quite like that, was it?
Henry was born in 1491, son of Henry VII, who was definitely an upstart working very hard to found a dynasty. Therefore, we can assume Henry 8 was raised to think that important. He's also not long removed from the Wars of the Roses, proof of the mess that comes about when the inheritance isn't clear, and if he was educated, which he was, he'd know plenty of other examples from the past.
Henry VII, b 1457, died 1509, produced three sons, though one died young, but two is an heir and a spare -- not bad. Arthur, b 1486, died at 16 in 1502, after having made an important marriage to Katherine of Aragon, a Spanish Princess. The solution was for Henry to marry her, which happened in 1509, when he was became king at aged 18. She was 24.
But here's the main point. He married Anne Boleyn in 1533, when he was 42 and Katherine was 48, after 24 years of marriage. We can assume that she was then into menopause and she hadn't been successful at childbearing over the past 2 decades. Right or wrong, this was not a hasty disposal of an unwanted wife.
Henry needed an heir, and a male heir. There was absolutely no precedence for a successful reigning queen. The last one had been Henry I's daughter, Matilda, and that had led to a bloody civil war. It was expected that a queen would marry, and there was no good way to do that. If she married within the country it would raise someone high. If she married an equal abroad, she would be giving England into foreign control. (Only see Mary I, and later Mary II of William-and-Mary fame.)
Therefore one could say that it was the duty of middle-aged Henry to get rid of his older and now barren wife and try again. Anne Boleyn was a bad choice, but he learned by that one. Jane Seymour was virtuous. If she hadn't died giving birth to Prince Edward, Henry's marital games would have stopped right there.(I'm making no claims about his extra-marital ones!)
I have one other point. Sometimes people make it seem that Henry shouldn't have expected to get a divorce on the grounds that Katherine had consummated her marriage to Arthur, but in fact dissolution of marriage on the grounds of consanguinity or other similar arguments was quite common. Eleanor of Provence had done something similar to shake off the King of France to marry King Henry II of England.
The main reason Henry 8 didn't get his divorce was that by great bad 
luck, Katherine was "Charlie's Aunt." Katherine was aunt to Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, who had the pope firmly in his grasp. He didn't want his niece's marriage annulled and her daughter made a bastard, and that was that.
So that's the case for the defense. Not a good man, no, but not quite the casual disposer of wives he was made out to be, especially when young.
Got any similar arguments about other monarchs?
Jo