Brit, went to school in the 90's

In primary school - we covered his creation of the protestant Church of England. He did it just so he could divorce his first wife and take all the gold etc out of catholic churches, monasteries, abbey's. It's generally seen as progress because the protestant religion in many ways became more relaxed with allowing divorce and birth control which is seen as a positive thing. We covered quite a lot of his relationships with his six wives and how badly he treated most of them.

We generally have a mental image of him being a big fat angry monster - and usually lazy gets paired with fat. I was surprised when I saw his suit of armour in the Tower of London - he used to be buff and practice jousting all the time before his leg injury, which turned all that muscle to fat as he could not exercise anymore. I think many people are surprised when they find that out, and are also surprised at him being over 6ft tall because we tend to think of people in the past being shorter

AND THEN I grew up and did my own reading and I would conclude that yes he inadvertently helped modern western society by creating the protestant church though it was for selfish reasons. There are many ruins of monasteries and Abbey's throughout the UK, I wonder how different it would be if those had been preserved as in catholic countries