Was Henry VIII Infertile? Miscarriages and Male Infertility in Tudor England

Regarding problems of producing royal offspring, I always liked the rumored story of how Louis XIV was conceived: after his mother Anna of Austria had experienced four stillbirths and failed to produce an heir, she fell in disgrace and was largely ignored by the king. On December 5th 1637, after 23 years of a marriage that at that point only existed on paper, the king was on his way to a hunting lodge near Versailles. Bad weather forced him to stop at the Louvre palace, where his wife was already set up for the winter. The only rooms that were heated were hers, so the king was forced to share a bed with his wife. 9 months later, on September 5th 1638, Louis XIV was born.

While an interesting study, I think proper caution needs to be made with respect to his health before his marriage to Anne Boleyn and his health during and after said marriage. It is very possible that Catherine had fertility issues, but by the time he re-married, he was obese, over 40 etc. That is to say, he was only with married to one woman in his "prime".

Still a fun thing to think about though.

I'm not sure what kind of definition of 'infertile' is consistent with 'had four children live to teenhood or later another that managed a couple months, and two more that were at least born live'.

From the article:

The disregard of male infertility in Henry’s case may offer a clue to the reasons for the under-reporting of male reproductive health, then and now, to the detriment of both men and women.

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To the detriment and beheading of the his wives more accurately.

I've always thought how sensible the Japanese tradition of adoption is.

Henry had an illegitimate son quite early on (during marriage 1).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_FitzRoy,_Duke_of_Richmon...

There is also the theory that Henry had the rare Kell antigene [1], which can cause autoimmune disease and would case complications on second born babies (similar to antibody reactions with non-matching blood types between mothers and infants).

It's mentioned in footnote 9.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kell_antigen_system

Worth noting two things:

First, I'd hardly call infertile a man who had several children of whom a decent percentage lived to see early to later adulthood (good by late medieval standards, even among the wealthiest).

Secondly: Even today millions of people all over the world live their lives with undiagnosed or poorly diagnosed and incorrectly treated venereal diseases that can cause all sorts of long-term fertility problems. This despite such things being mostly curable and reasonably easy to diagnose even in fairly poor countries with basic medicine. Now imagine those numbers and their related complications in a time when medical knowledge around anything except obvious injuries and broken bones consisted of blaming bad humors and maybe witchcraft for random ills... Yeah... Either Henry or any of his wives could have been harbouring the long-term effects of any one of a dozen common sexually transmitted or other types of infections without having a clue about how these things were screwing with their capacity to screw their way into healthy children.

It's a sad thing to think about women who were killed for no good reason after suffering a series of miscarriages in probably politically arranged marriages but as royals, this is kind of a live by the sword, die by the sword kind of thing.

All their power came from someone being (at least plausibly) the male heir of a warlord to retain power within their warlord caste. If you can't further that goal for another warlord then you're going to get treated like they treat everyone else that's an obstacle to power.