to get your own way, not just because you are a king but because you are that sort of man. When you are thwarted, your charm vanishes. You are capable of a carpet-chewing rage, which throws people because it is so unexpected, and because you will turn on the people closest to you. But most of the time you like to be liked; you have no fear of confronting men, though you don’t seek confrontation, but you will not confront a woman, so you are run ragged between Katherine and Anne, trying to placate one and please the other. Unlike most men of your era, you truly believe in romantic love (though, of course, not in monogamy). It is an ideal for you. You were in love with Katherine when you married her and when you fall in love with Anne Boleyn you feel you must shape your life around her. Likewise, when Jane Seymour comes along…
When you ask Katherine for an annulment, you are not (in the view of your advisers) asking for anything outrageous. The Pope is usually keen to please royalty, and there are recent precedents in both your families. The timing is what’s wrong; the troops of Katherine’s nephew the Emperor march into Rome and the Pope is no longer free to decide. You are outraged when Katherine resists you and Wolsey fails you. You believe in your own case; you are a keen amateur theologian, and you think you know what God wants.
You are highly emotional. You are religious, superstitious, vulnerable to panic. Because you are so afraid of dying without an heir you’ve become a hypochondriac, and gradually a sort of self-pity has corrupted your character. You are so different from Cromwell that there’s probably little natural sympathy between you; you get your brotherly love from Archbishop Cranmer. But you need Cromwell as a stabilising force. You can carry on being loved by your people, as long as he will carry your sins for you. He begins by amusing and impressing you, proceeds by making you rich, and ends by frightening you. When, in 1540, you are told by Cromwell’s enemies that he intends to turn you out and become King himself, you completely believe it. For a few weeks, anyway. Then, as soon as his head is off, you want him back. It’s the Wolsey story over again. Who is to blame? Definitely not you.
ANNE BOLEYN
You do not have six fingers. The extra digit is added long after your death by Jesuit propaganda. But in your lifetime you are the focus of every lurid story that the imagination of Europe can dream up. From the moment you enter public consciousness, you carry the projections of everyone who is afraid of sex or ashamed of it. You will never be loved by the English people, who want a proper, royal Queen like Katherine, and who don’t like change of any sort. Does that matter? Not really. What Henry’s inner circle thinks of you matters far more. But do you realise this? Reputation management is not your strong point. Charm only thinly disguises your will to win.
You are the most sophisticated woman at Henry’s Court, with polished manners and just the suggestion of a French accent. Unlike your sister Mary, you have kept your name clean. You are elegant, reserved, self-controlled, cerebral, calculating and astute. But you are (especially as the story progresses) inclined to frayed nerves and shaking hands. You are quick-tempered and, like anyone under pressure, you can be highly irrational. You look at people to see what use can be got out of them, and you immediately see the use of Thomas Cromwell.
You come to the English Court in your early twenties, but you are in your late twenties before you catch Henry’s attention, and ours in the plays. Your contemporaries did not think you were pretty because they admired pink-and-white blonde beauty, and you (judging by their descriptions) were dark and slender. This difference becomes part of your distinction. It’s your vitality that draws the eye. You sing beautifully and dance whenever you can. You are the leader of fashion at the Court, before you become Queen.
When you are first at Court you become involved with Harry Percy, the heir to the Earldom of Northumberland. In the strictly regulated hierarchy of Court marriages, he is ‘above’ you, and is already promised to the daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury. Cardinal Wolsey steps in and makes Harry Percy go ahead with the Shrewsbury marriage. It’s at this point, your detractors will say, that you start to hate Wolsey and look for revenge. As far as the Cardinal is concerned, it’s nothing personal. But it wouldn’t be surprising if you took it personally. Harry Percy will later claim you had made a promise of marriage before witnesses, which would count as binding. At the time you are silent about the business. Whether you had feelings for Harry Percy, or were acting out of ambition, is not clear.
When the King makes his first approaches you are wary because you don’t intend to be a discarded mistress, like your sister Mary. You make him keep his distance and work hard for a smile. To think that you, a knight’s daughter, could replace the Queen of England is an idea so audacious that it takes a while for the rest of Europe to catch up with it. It’s assumed that, once Henry’s divorce comes through, he will marry a French princess. You are Wolsey’s downfall; for a long time, though he remembers you exist, he doesn’t know you’re important to the King. As far as he is concerned, he has finished his dealings with you when he makes Harry Percy reject you. There was a time when the King told Wolsey everything. But since you came along, that age has passed.
Your campaign to be Queen is fought with patience and cunning. Saying ‘no’ to Henry is a profitable business and you are made Marquise of Pembroke. There is a point when, after you feel Henry has committed himself to you, you’d probably be willing to go to bed with him; but by that time, he’s intent on remaining apart until you are married. He says you have promised him a son, and he wants to be right with his conscience and with God. Any child you have must be born within your marriage. You marry secretly in Calais, at the end of 1532, and a few weeks later, with no fuss, on English soil. Elizabeth is born the September following. Though Henry is disappointed not to have a boy, he doesn’t (as myth suggests) turn against you. He is glad to have a healthy child after losing so many, and confident of a boy next time.
Are you really a religious woman, a convinced reformer? No one will ever know. It’s probable that you picked up your ideas at the French Court, where the intellectual as well as the moral climate is freer. There’s nothing to gain for you in being a faithful daughter of Rome. The texts you put Henry’s way are self-serving, in that they suggest the subject should be obedient to the secular ruler, not to the Pope. But you go to some trouble to protect and promote evangelicals. ‘My bishops’, as you call them, are your war leaders against the old order.
Your family – your father, Thomas Boleyn, and your uncle the Duke of Norfolk – expect that, if they back you as Henry’s second wife, it will be to the family’s advantage, and they will be your advisers and indeed controllers. They are shocked to find that, once Queen, you consider yourself the head of the family. They begin to distance themselves from you as you ‘fail’ Henry by not providing a son, but your brother George is close to you and always loyal. Your sister Mary has a shrewd idea of what is going on; after the first blaze of triumph, you are unhappy.
You expected to be Henry’s confidante and adviser, as Katherine was in the early days of the first marriage. But Henry is less open now, and his problems (many of them caused by your marriage) are new and seem intractable. Gradually you realise that Cromwell, whom you regarded as your servant, is accreting more and more power and that he has his own agenda and his own interests.
Meanwhile, you are locked into an unwinnable contest with Henry’s teenage daughter Mary. She will never acknowledge you as Queen, even after her mother is dead. From time to time your temper makes you threaten her. No one knows whether you mean your threats, but it’s widely believed you would harm her if you could.
After Elizabeth’s birth you miscarry at least one, maybe two children. Henry feels he has staked everything on a marriage that, despite his best efforts, no one in Europe recognises. You start to quarrel. Ambassador Chapuys gleefully retails each public row in dispatches. Cromwell warns the Ambassador not to make too much of it; you have always quarrelled and made up. But, unlike Katherine, you don’t take it quietly when Henry looks at other women. That he would become interested in someone as mousy as Jane Seymour seems like an insult.
Besides,
