six wives

Six wives refers to the six women who married King Henry VIII of England, a fact so central to English history that the phrase needs no elaboration: I can never remember all six wives in order.

The wives—Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Parr—are often summarized by their fates: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.