HOLLYWOOD —On last Sunday night’s exciting episode of “The Tudors,” Queen Katherine Howard simply could not stop herself from continuing her illicit affair with Thomas Culpeper, who is one of the king’s trusted courier. However, a man from her past arrived at Court only to demand that she hire him as her personal secretary. Katherine was mortified at the prospect that a former lover would be working so closely with her in the palace and so were several of her ladies. She did, however, relent and agree to offer him a position with her staff, warning him to keep his mouth shut.

Luckily for Queen Katherine, King Henry VIII was preoccupied on other important matters. His nephew, King James of Scotland was supposed to meet with him at a palace in the north of England to sign a treaty for peace between the Brits and the Scots. That didn’t happen when James refused to show up. King Henry was outraged and threw the jeweled gift he had planned to give to his nephew to the floor in a rage. As his wife, daughter Mary and his Lords looked on in horror, more bad news befell King Henry. Back in London at Windsor Castle King Henry’s only son Prince Edward had fallen deathly ill and Edward’s uncle Edward Seymour sent a courier to notify the King.

Henry rode quickly to his son’s side, then amazingly Prince Edward had a miraculous recovery. Even his sisters princesses Mary and Elizabeth were worried about him, and while they were in a private chapel praying for their younger brother to be spared and saved, Queen Katherine was continuing her adulterous behavior with Culpeper. Even the queen’s ladies were worried at this point because of the loose cannon now in her employ. Her former lover, who has yet to prove he can be a secretary, paraded around the king’s men, drinking and suggesting he’d been with Katherine Howard intimately and that he was a former lover of hers. Everyone who overheard the outburst looked shocked and in fear.

By the end of the episode, King Henry was in church giving thanks to God for his son’s return to good health and for his beautiful, young wife, Katherine. While the king was at his prayers a mysterious man approached from behind the king’s back and placed a letter in his pew. The letter consists of details about the queen’s past relationships with a number of men and her current affairs under his majesty’s nose. On this Sunday night’s episode, King Henry orders the queen be held in her apartment and her ladies are forced to testify about the queen’s behavior. Needless to say, from what we know of history, Queen Katherine’s not the only one Henry will behead for adultery and treason.

Last week’s episode was the best one so far this season. War with France and Scotland looms, but Henry’s passion and fury will be focused on the lusty teenager he foolishly married. No one makes a fool of Henry VIII, and Queen Katherine Howard should have remembered what happened to her cousin Queen Anne Boleyn.