Anne Boleyn: The Biography

Anne Boleyn: The Biography

One of the most common misconceptions about Anne Boleyn is that she was of 'lowly birth', the daughter of a poor knight or an insignificant member of the landed gentry. In actual fact, Anne was the daughter of Lady Elizabeth Howard (daughter of the 2nd Duke of Norfolk) and Thomas Boleyn, a prominent and respected politician and diplomat at the court of King Henry VIII. Anne did not enter the world a Princess, groomed from birth to one day sit on a throne as queen, but she did enter the world a member of the most elite class in England, primed to rub shoulders with royalty.

For Anne, rubbing shoulders with royalty was not enough, and when Henry VIII’s desiring eyes fell on her, she deftly used his passion against him. Unlike a string of beautiful young courtiers before her, Anne refused to become Henry’s mistress. The only way Anne would agree to the king’s amorous advances was if he made her his wife.

It would have been incredible for the King of England to choose a woman with no connection to a foreign throne for his wife, but to have his seventeen year marriage to his current wife annulled to make it happen? Unbelievable. And yet, that’s exactly what happened. The lengths that Henry went to to make Anne his queen denied Catherine of Aragon her queenship, made his daughter Mary illegitimate, brought about England’s break with the Catholic church and set the English Reformation into motion.

Anne was transformed from a flirtatious young courtier to the most powerful woman in England. Yet, at that time, even the Queen of England was a victim of her sex and Queen Anne was in possession of far less power that she appeared to be.

Tasked with providing Henry with a male heir to secure a Tudor succession, Anne soon realized that Henry’s love for her was conditional. Anne became pregnant four times during her marriage to Henry but delivered only one child, a girl. Superstitious and forever looking for signs of divine intervention in the events of his life, Henry began to consider whether marrying Anne had been a mistake. Henry’s fear that God was punishing him seemed to manifest itself when Anne miscarried what was later revealed to be a male child on the same day that Catherine of Aragon died.

Without the security of a powerful dynastic royal family behind her, Anne was vulnerable to suffering the same fate as Catherine of Aragon - stripped of her title, sent into exile and forgotten. As it turned out, Anne was to suffer a fate even worse than that. A woman born before her time, with ambitions that proved to be beyond her reach, this is the story of how Anne Boleyn rose to occupy the most enviable position in all of England, only to find the price of occupying it too high.

Anne Boleyn: The Biography