Henry II Quotes in The Lion in Winter (1968)

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Henry II Quotes:

  • Eleanor: I adored you. I still do.

    Henry II: Of all the lies you've told, that is the most terrible.

    Eleanor: I know. That's why I've saved it up until now.

  • Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody.

    Eleanor: At my age there's not much traffic anymore.

  • Henry II: Now hear me, boy...

    Philip II: I am a king - I am no man's "boy"!

    Henry II: A king? Because you put your ass on purple cushions?

  • Eleanor: What would you have me do? Give out? Give up? Give in?

    Henry II: Give me a little peace.

    Eleanor: A little? Why so modest? How about eternal peace? Now there's a thought.

  • Eleanor: And when you die, which is regrettable but necessary, what will happen to frail Alais and her pruny prince? You can't think Richard's going to wait for your grotesque to grow.

    Henry II: You wouldn't let him do a thing like that.

    Eleanor: Let him? I'd push him through the nursery door.

    Henry II: You're not that cruel.

    Eleanor: Don't fret. We'll wait until you're dead to do it.

    Henry II: Eleanor, what do you want?

    Eleanor: Just what you want, a king for a son. You can make more, I can't. You think I want to disappear? One son is all I've got, and you can blot him out and call me cruel? For these ten years you've lived with everything I've lost, and loved another woman through it all, and I am cruel? I could peel you like a pear and God himself would call it justice!

  • Henry II: Well, I'm off.

    Eleanor: To Rome?

    Henry II: That's where they keep the Pope!

  • Henry II: There's no sense asking if the air is good if there's nothing else to breathe.

  • Henry II: Well, what shall we hang... the holly, or each other?

  • Henry II: What is this? I'm not mouldering. My paint's not peeling off. I'm good for years.

    Eleanor: How many years? Suppose I hold you back for one. I can. It's possible. Suppose your first son dies, ours did. It's possible. Suppose you're daughtered next, we were. That too is possible. How old is daddy then? What kind of spindly, ricket-ridden, milky, wizened, dim-eyed, gammy-handed, limpy line of things will you beget?

  • Henry II: The day those stout hearts band together is the day that pigs get wings.

    Eleanor: There'll be pork in the treetops come morning.

  • Henry II: I haven't kept the Great Bitch in the keep for ten years out of passionate attachment.

  • [last lines]

    Henry II: I hope we never die.

    Eleanor: So do I.

    Henry II: Do you think there's any chance of it?

  • Henry II: It's heavy... Oh Eleanor, you've brought me my tombstone! You spoil me!

  • Henry II: How was your crossing? Did the Channel part for you?

    Eleanor: It went flat when I told it to. I didn't think to ask for more.

  • Eleanor: [after Henry tells Eleanor he wants their marriage annulled] Out Eleanor... in Alais. Why?

    Henry II: A new wife, wife, will bear me sons.

    Eleanor: That is the single thing of which I would have thought you had enough.

  • Henry II: I've snapped and plotted all my life. There's no other way to be alive, king, and fifty all at once.

  • Eleanor: Henry.

    Henry II: Madam.

    Eleanor: Did you ever love me?

    Henry II: No.

    Eleanor: Good. That will make this pleasanter.

  • Eleanor: Henry?

    Henry II: Hmmm?

    Eleanor: I have a confession.

    Henry II: Yes?

    Eleanor: I don't much like our children!

  • Henry II: Oh God, but I do love being king!

  • Henry II: I found out the way your mind works and the kind of man you are. I know your plans and expectations - you've burbled every bit of strategy you've got. I know exactly what you will do, and exactly what you won't, and I've told you exactly nothing. To these aged eyes, boy, that's what winning looks like!

  • Henry II: I'm villifying you for God's sake - pay attention!

  • Eleanor: How dear of you to let me out of jail.

    Henry II: It's only for the holidays.

  • Henry II: My life, when it is written, will read better than it lived. Henry Fitz-Empress, first Plantagenet, a king at twenty-one, the ablest soldier of an able time. He led men well, he cared for justice when he could and ruled, for thirty years, a state as great as Charlemagne's. He married out of love, a woman out of legend. Not in Alexandria, or Rome, or Camelot has there been such a queen. She bore him many children. But no sons. King Henry had no sons. He had three whiskered things but he disowned them.

    Henry II: [to his sons] You're not mine! We're not connected! I deny you! None of you will get my crown, I leave you nothing and I wish you plague! May all your children breach and die!

    Henry II: [storms out the corridor, turns and looks back] My Boys are gone.

    Henry II: [he starts unsteadily down the corridor] I've lost my boys.

    Henry II: [he stops, glares towards the Deity] You dare to damn me, do You? Well, I damn you back.

    Henry II: [like a biblical figure, shaking his fist to the sky] GODDAMN YOU!

    Henry II: [moving blindly down the corridor again] My boys are gone. I've lost my boys. Oh, Jesus, all my boys...

    [collapses, weeping on the stairs]

  • Eleanor: You don't dare go!

    Henry II: Say that again at noon, you'll say it to my horse's ass! Lamb, I'll be rid of you by Easter: you can count your reign in days!

  • Henry II: We're in the cellar and you're going back to prison and my life is wasted and we've lost each other... and you're smiling.

    Eleanor: It's the way I register despair. There's everything in life but hope.

    Henry II: We're both alive... and for all I know that's what hope is.

  • Henry II: The Vexin's mine.

    Philip II: By what authority?

    Henry II: It's got my troops all over it; that makes it mine.

  • Eleanor: Henry's bed is Henry's province. He can people it with sheep for all I care, which on occasion he has done.

    Henry II: Rosamund's been dead for seven years...

    Eleanor: ...two months and eighteen days. I never liked her much.

    Henry II: You count the days?

    Eleanor: I made the numbers up.

  • Eleanor: And that's to be the king.

    Prince Geoffrey: And I'm to be his Chancellor. Has he told you? John will rule the country, while I run it. That is to say he gets to spend the taxes that I raise.

    Eleanor: How nice for you.

    Prince Geoffrey: It's not as nice as being king.

    Henry II: We've made you Duke of Brittany, is that so little?

    Prince Geoffrey: No one ever thinks of crown and mentions Geoff, why is that?

    Henry II: Isn't being chancellor power enough?

    Prince Geoffrey: It's not the power I feel deprived of; it's the mention I miss. There's no affection for me here; you wouldn't think I'd want that, would you?

  • Henry II: Who's to say it's monstrous? I'm the King. I call it just. Therefore, I, Henry, by the Grace of God King of the English, Lord of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, Count of Anjou, Brittany, Poitou and Normandy, Maine, Gascony, and Aquitaine, do sentence you to death. Done this Christmas Day at Chinon in God's year eleven eighty-three.

  • Henry II: I have an offer for you, my dear.

    Eleanor: A deal? A deal? I give the richest province on the continent to John for what? You tell me, mastermind, for what?

    Henry II: Your freedom.

    Eleanor: [softly] Oh.

    Henry II: Once Johnny gets the Aquitaine, you're free, I'll let you out. Think. On the loose in London, winters in Provence, impromptu trips to visit Richard anywhere he's killing people. All that for a signature.

  • Henry II: [Henry brings candles into the dungeon] What we do in dungeons needs the shades of day. I stole the candles from the chapel. Jesus won't begrudge them and the chaplain works for me.

  • Henry II: More Brandy wine? They were boiling it in Ireland before the snakes left!

  • Henry II: I want no women in my life.

    Princess Alais: You're tired.

    Henry II: I could have conquered Europe - all of it - but I had women in my life.

  • Henry II: In my time I've known contessas, milkmaids, courtesans and novices, whores, gypsies, jades, and little boys, but nowhere in God's western world have I found anyone to love but you.

  • Eleanor: I adored you.

    Henry II: Never!

    Eleanor: I still do.

  • Henry II: The sky is pocked with stars. What eyes the wise men must have had to see a new one in so many.

  • Henry II: I want to reach a settlement. I left you with too little earlier,

    Philip II: Yes, nothing is too little.

  • Henry II: My finest angle. It's on all the coins.

  • Philip II: A king like you has policy prepared on everything. well, what's the official line on sodomy? How stands the Crown on boys who do with boys?

    Henry II: Richard finds his way into so many legends; let's hear yours and see how it compares.

    Philip II: Well, he found me first when I was 15. We were hunting; it was nearly dark; my horse fell; I was thrown. I woke to Richard touching me. He asked me if I loved him: 'Philip, do you love me?' And I told him yes. Do you know why I told him yes? So that one day I could tell you all about it. You cannot imagine what that 'yes' cost. Imagine snuggling to a chancred whore, and bending back your lips into something like a smile saying, 'Yes, I love you, and I find you...

    [pause]

    Philip II: ...beautiful.' I don't know how I did it.

  • Henry II: We're off to Rome to see the Pope.

    Princess Alais: He's excommunicated you again?

    Henry II: No, he's going to set me free.

  • Henry II: When the king is off his ass, nobody sleeps!

  • Henry II: I'm 50 now. Good God, boy, I'm the oldest man I know! I've got a decade on the pope!

  • Henry II: Geoffrey: There's a masterpiece. He isn't flesh: he's a device. He's wheels and gears. And Johnny: Was his latest treason your idea? I've caught him lying, and I've said, 'he's young.' I've found him cheating, and I've said, 'he's just a boy.' I've watched him steal and whore and whip his servants, and he's not a child; he's the man we made him.

    Eleanor: Don't share John with me. He's your accomplishment.

    Henry II: And Richard's yours. How could you send him off to deal with Philip?

    Eleanor: I was tired. I was busy. They were friends.

    Henry II: Eleanor, he was the best, and from the cradle on you cradled him. I never had a chance.

  • Prince Geoffrey: You don't think of me much.

    Henry II: Much? I don't think of you at all

  • Henry II: When I bellow, bellow back.

  • Henry II: Where's a priest? Somebody fetch me a priest! YOU! Fetch me a bishop!

  • Prince Geoffrey: You don't think much of me.

    Henry II: Much? I don't think of you at all.

  • Princess Alais: Henry, I can't be your mistress if I'm married to your son.

    Henry II: Why can't you? Johnny wouldn't mind.

  • [first lines]

    Henry II: Come for me!

Browse more character quotes from The Lion in Winter (1968)

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Characters on The Lion in Winter (1968)