“Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.” This is the misleading epigram British schoolchildren are routinely taught. “Misleading” because, first, it mistakes divorce for annulment and, second, because it hints that for the queens in question “marriage failure” proved just as final a fate as having their heads lopped off.

As for six wives, the number is conservative compared with the spouses racked up by rulers such as Emperor Minh Mang of Vietnam’s Nguyễn dynasty or Fath-Ali Shah Qajar, second shah of Qajar Iran. Not to mention King Solomon, who is said to have had “seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines” (1 Kings 11:3) and is presumably laughing from his perch in heaven. 

In any case, these are the hackneyed tropes the National Portrait Gallery is addressing in its current exhibition, Six Lives: The Stories of Henry VIII’s Queens. From Hans Holbein’s 16th-century portraits to the costumes recently worn in SIX The Musical, almost five centuries of cultural artefacts have been collated to explore how treatment of “the wives” has tended to assign to them the role of appendages of the king. There have even been coffee mugs and other knickknacks on which the queens have appeared together in police lineup formation.

Once you’ve taken in the exhibition, the best way to reflect on all that you’ve discovered is over a limited-edition cocktail at The Portrait restaurant by Richard Corrigan. Inspired by the biographies of each late queen, these are distinctive twists on a classic. Katherine of Aragon’s heraldry, for instance, featured the pomegranate, a symbol of fertility (lots of seeds) that she often wore in the form of a brooch. In the limited-edition cocktail, the fruit is mixed with red wine and fresh orange juice to make La Primera sangria, a drink that references her Spanish heritage and a life that began, believe it or not, before her marriage to Old Coppernose.

Then there’s the French 36, named presumably after the year of Anne Boleyn’s execution. If so, it should stimulate not only your palate but your contemplation of the contrast between Boleyn’s character and what writer Christopher Hitchens wryly called ‘the family values of Henry VIII’. This twist on the French 75 consists of Grey Goose vodka, St-Germain elderflower liqueur and champagne. You might already be on to the emerging theme: the influence of the queens’ countries of origin over the cocktails. Anne Boleyn was an exponent of many reformist ideas and the proud owner of William Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament into English, as well as The Obedience of a Christian Man (1528), which criticised the papacy and what was to most people an unintelligible Latin Mass. The drink is inspired by the time she spent at the French Court, where she acquired much of her subversive thinking, some of which she later poured into Henry’s ear.

Like the food offering at The Portrait restaurant, there is something for everyone among these cocktails, which are served on coasters featuring corresponding artworks from the exhibition. Anyone preferring a soft drink – along with children now better educated than their classmates – can enjoy a Heart of Stone mocktail, comprising apple and saffron cordial, alcohol-free sparkling wine and Everleaf Forest aperitif with saffron, vanilla and orange blossom.

Finally, in case you’ve forgotten… did you know Henry VIII had six wives?

Six Lives: The Stories of Henry VIII’s Queens is on at the National Portrait Gallery until 8 September 2024; the Six Lives cocktail menu ends one day earlier. For bookings, see What’s On – Portrait Gallery Restaurant (theportraitrestaurant.com)