(Thanks lots to @badass-women-in-history / @bespectacled-phoenix for reaching out and giving me an excuse to go wild asking for this write-up!)
Hi friends! I’m here to talk about Anne Boleyn, Queen of England (d.1536). You probably know her as the second of Henry VIII’s six wives, notably the first queen ever to be lawfully executed in England. You might also know her as the mother of another Queen - Elizabeth I.
There she is! Was this actually what she looked like? Weeeellll….
Why do I find her so fascinating? There’s definitely an element of mystery to Anne - Henry VIII went out of his way to destroy all evidence of her existence, from her royal insignia to her portraits to her letters, so there’s very little of the “real” Anne Boleyn left to us. What we do have in terms of her words and personality is often handed down to us by people who absolutely loathed her and everything she stood for; we don’t even know what year she was born.
The result is that she’s been imagined and re-imagined over and over again by pop culture: as fiery and outspoken in Anne of the Thousand Days, as ruthless and ambitious in The Other Boleyn Girl, brittle and calculating in Wolf Hall, passionate and temperamental in The Tudors…the list goes on and on.
So what do we actually know about her? We know that she was instrumental in England’s shift from Catholicism to the new “reformed” faith (which would become the Church of England). We know she didn’t fit the conventional beauty standards of the time, but that she was charming and witty and could draw people to her through sheer force of personality. We know that she was kind and charitable, if hot-tempered, that she looked out for other women in particular and had many close female friends.
As for me personally - I love her defiance, of social norms and beauty norms alike. I love that she was willing to fight for herself, for her daughter, for what she believed in. I love her fire. I love her refusal to stay within the box that was meant to hold women of her time. I love her power dressing. I love her snark. And I love that we’re still talking about how remarkable she was five centuries after her death.
After a youth spent in the courts of France and the Netherlands, Anne returned to England and became a lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine of Aragon (also a badass). Anne was pursued by Henry VIII, who needed a son badly, for seven years while he tried and failed to set Catherine aside, culminating in England’s split from Catholicism. Did Anne love Henry? Did she want any part of his attention? Did she ever imagine she might become queen? The debate rages on!
They were married in 1533, after which Anne was crowned queen with the crown of St. Edward - making her the first queen consort, rather than a king, to wear it. (Henry had previously created Anne Marquess of Pembroke, making her also the first English woman to hold a peerage in her own right.) Elizabeth was born later that year, but at least two miscarriages followed, and Henry was no closer to gaining a male heir. There were other factors involved, but the bottom line was that he began to tire of her.
The coup that brought down Anne Boleyn, and who was most at fault for it, is still hotly debated. At the very least Henry was disturbingly calm about his wife’s supposed treachery; at most, he went out of his way to have her judicially murdered. Either way, Anne was arrested on May 2nd, 1536, accused of having multiple lovers (adultery and treason), including her own brother George (incest). Contrary to popular belief, she was not accused of witchcraft.
Despite the appalling lack of evidence, the trial’s end was a foregone conclusion - Henry had actually sent for her executioner before Anne ever took the stand. Anne still defended herself ably, and when the guilty verdict was read she gave an incredible speech acknowledging her sole “crime”: that she had not been subservient enough for her husband.
Awaiting her death in the Tower of London, Anne made her final confession: she swore, on the damnation of her soul, that she was innocent of the charges against her. On May 19th she dressed in ermine, the robes of a queen, and wore a petticoat of red, the color of martyrs - a power dresser to the end. She made one last speech, beseeching the people to pray for her and for the king, before a French swordsman beheaded her with a single stroke.
Henry married Jane Seymour eleven days later.
But there’s one other thing we know about Anne Boleyn: that she loved her daughter, Elizabeth, immeasurably. And we know that when Elizabeth became Queen herself, defying Henry’s certainty that a woman could not rule, she honored her mother as best she could.
A ring belonging to Elizabeth I; it contains portraits of her and her mother, Anne.
- Anne was a trendsetter at court, wearing jewels in her hair, popularizing the French hood and putting together outfits like this. What a fashion icon.
Such a Look. (Anne of the Thousand Days is known for its gorgeous costumes.)
- She loved dogs; when her beloved pet Purkoy died her servants actually appealed to Henry, the King of England, because none of them wanted to be the ones to break the news to her.
- There’s a very good chance she ran into Leonardo da Vinci at one point.
- Anne had snark for days; at one point she changed her official motto to “Aisi sera groigne qui groigne” - Let them grumble; this is how it’s going to be. At another time she declared she would rather hang Catherine than acknowledge the other queen as her mistress, prompting the Imperial ambassador to say she was as “brave as a lion” (and no, he did not mean it as a compliment).
- Her dark sense of humor persisted even in the Tower. When her jailer promised that she would feel no pain at her execution, she replied that yes, she had heard the executioner was “very good” - and in any case, she only had “a little neck”. And then she burst out laughing.
- Anne had warm and loving relationships with her brother George, her sister Mary and her sister-in-law Jane, despite many portrayals to the contrary.
And Finally, Some Quotes:
Two quotes, to be exact, that I always remember when I think of Anne. The first is an excerpt from the speech she gave at her execution:
“If any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best.”
I love this one because it feels like Anne’s appeal to future generations - as if she understood that her legend would endure, even if all the facts of her life did not, and that others would eventually take up her “cause”. I like to think that on the whole, we’ve judged her very differently than Henry’s court did.
The second quote (and my favorite) comes from one of the only pieces of Anne’s own handwriting still in existence. She wrote it in her personal Book of Hours, possibly as a young girl:
Le temps viendra - je, Anne Boleyn.
The time will come - I, Anne Boleyn.
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