#do you really think what cranmer thinks of her is true as said by jane rochford and absorbed by cromwell

[fideidefenswhore]

Bordo argues that Dormer’s Anne is superior to the default version derived from Eustace Chapuys and Catholic polemicist Nicholas Sander, described by Paul Friedmann in Anne Boleyn (1884) as ‘incredibly vain, ambitious, unscrupulous, coarse, fierce, and relentless,’ and still found in fiction such as Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl (2001) and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012). The real Anne, though fond of a good time, encountered evangelical thought in the French court, became an avid student of scripture, assisted importation of English Bibles, gave Henry copies of Simon Fish's Supplication of the Beggars and William Tyndale's Obedience of a Christian Man, sought to convert monasteries to educational purposes, and was a patron of evangelicals.

History, Fiction, and The Tudors: Sex, Politics, Power, and Artistic License

#tbf the sequel (butb) does include anne's charity but there's such an overt skepticism in the text that she might as well have #*and evangelicalism #omitted the same... #or they do but as an inherently skeptical device rather #do you really think what cranmer thinks of her is true as said by jane rochford and absorbed by cromwell #do you REALLY think she makes smocks for the poor because she 'cares' etc #anyway such a funny summation of her character... #one by one: #incredibly vain? probably but i don't. care? #ambitious sure unscrupulous no #coarse? such an odd attribute to ascribe to her #anne was erudite and sophisticated #even if she could be vindictive #fierce and relentless sure #vain being first is a tell tho #anytime men describe women and the first descriptor they use is 'vain'... #she becomes mother to me

[mermaidsirennikita]

I love katherine of aragon and anne boleyn and will not pick one over the other but anne was such a bitch sometimes that was unnecessary yikes. how much do you think her force of character influenced her own fall? bc it was a hell of a strong character. thanks in advance for answering me!!

I wouldn’t call her a bitch at all--I’d call her a woman of her time.  I mean, we also don’t know exactly how much of what’s been attributed her was really her.  For example, she’s blamed a lot for the way Mary was treated; personally, I find it hard to believe that someone as savvy as Anne wouldn’t have perhaps wanted Mary (with her Spanish blood and Catholic support) in the background.  But we don’t know exactly how much she influenced Henry in that regard, and at the end of the day HE made the decision to shut his daughter away, to treat Catherine of Aragon like shit, and to continue to treat Mary like shit well after Anne died.

We also have to understand that Anne was under incredible stress and pressure.  She was constantly under pressure to provide an heir, act the Extra Perfect queen to counteract the fact that she wasn’t a Catholic queen and wasn’t pedigreed like Catherine, and all of the other reasons that people hated her.  And when she failed to provide an heir, that contributed to her mental decline.  She didn’t have a surplus of friends at court, though she certainly had her supporters.  She went through three or four pregnancies, depending on who you ask, in less than four years.  That alone placed a huge amount of mental and physical stress on her, and I think it’s important to note that while queens of the sixteenth century certainly viewed miscarriages as not only the loss of a baby but a lost opportunity for an heir/spare, they were still miscarriages, which typically bring with them depression and grief.  Tbh, it’s a testament to Catherine of Aragon’s upbringing that she wasn’t a wreck considering her numerous stillbirths, miscarriages, and babies who died shortly after birth.

Anne did not have that upbringing, and I think that what she did to contribute to her fall (because she definitely made missteps) can be credited to that as much as her natural temperament.  I would never call Anne perfect, and I think she was a naturally shrewd, cutting person.  As someone who can do the whole “wittily and snarkily charm a room” thing when called upon, I think the flipside is usually that when you’re stressed or upset you can be quite mean, at least verbally.  The thing is that a queen like Catherine of Aragon or say, Catherine de’ Medici would know when to put their tongues away and hold their cards.   I always refer to Sarah Gristwood’s interpretation of Anne in “Game of Queens” when I think of this.  She did not have the political acumen that some think she did--and she wouldn’t have, growing up as a nobleman’s daughter in England, with no major political match in sight.  She could absolutely charm, was totally intelligent--but she didn’t know when to keep her head down.  She was more socially savvy, I think, than politically savvy--if she’d had time, maybe she would have learned to bite her tongue.  The comment she made to Henry Norris about looking for dead men’s boots, or whatever, was hugely inappropriate and gave people like Cromwell ammo.  She allegedly made comments about Henry’s impotence too--a big no-no.  Even freaking out at the sight of Jane Seymour on her husband’s knee, as understandable as it was, was probably not the right move at that moment.  

Honestly, Anne could have been a perfect wife, and if Henry thought she wasn’t going to give him a son, he would have gotten rid of her one way or another.  But it’s true that some aspects of her character contributed to her falling in the way that she did.  Does this remotely mean she was guilty?  No, and I think a lot of people knew that even back then.  But anything that indiscreet put her in danger not simply of having her marriage annulled, but of being executed.  WITH ALL THIS BEING SAID: I don’t know if Henry and his cronies would have gone ahead and had her executed anyway if she had held her tongue and given them zero verbal  pieces of “evidence”, because the charges were bullshit and some of the people they threw in with her (like her brother George) were obviously just people they wanted to get rid of anyway.  And in general, the entire trial was a clusterfuck so it’s possible that Cromwell would have moved for accusing her of witchcraft, incest, adultery, et. al. either way just to make sure she was gone for good.  But idk, I’m torn as to whether or not Anne’s character made them think “kill her” versus “put her away”.  Because maybe if she hadn’t been so strong-willed, they wouldn’t have worried about her messing around after being put in a convent?  But really, how much damage could she have done if they’d left her alive?  It’s possible that she stood a threat to whichever queen and heir came next simply because some, like Cranmer, associated her with the break from the Catholic Church.  It’s very confusing to me.  But yeah, no matter what, Anne didn’t play her cards right at the end, and understandably so--but it aided in her fall.

This was rambling, hope you liked it!

#Anonymous

[fideidefenswhore]

the recent outpouring of s.eymour apologism i’ve witnessed on twitter recently seems a bit like goalpost moving...

im not going to link it bc i really don’t care . that much (any of y’all can dm me if you really want); but i’ve looked into the dynamic being spoken of a lot and i think ‘no words of b.oleyn’ speaks a lot to how this family saw themselves and what they had taken part in. 

im going to try to put this more succintly / abbrev version of what i messaged a friend recently:

as to the levied charge of hypocrisy, the emotional reality when we speak to c.atherine of aragon vs a.nne boleyn vs j.ane seymour is just vastly different...

while i don't think anyone would say c.atherine’s reproductive history was not sad, there was at least, a buffer...

did the boleyns take advantage of the fact that she had no surviving sons? absolutely, without a doubt. arguably that is rather morally grey

but there is a HUGE difference btwn taking advantage of an opportunity that presents itself nine years after the queen's last pregnancy & stillbirth

and taking advantage and discrediting one ...what, a week? a month?  after her last miscarriage... i judge the circumstances differently because they are different...

& im just not about humbly accepting this false equivalency being banded about , like...

there is a huge difference btwn encouraging a trial into the validity of a royal marriage again, near-decade after, vs a woman being arrested FOUR MONTHS after she has had a miscarriage

& whether or not the s.eymour involvement encouraged arrest specifically, clipping along at a nice pace to accept it and enjoying your sister living & dining in style as queen-to-be while the woman with that title about to be tried is confined in the tower...  they're not the same, i do find it egregious and very different than the 1st scenario.

there were people ousted from power in every promotion the b.oleyns and their affinity rose. anne was made marquess after c.atherine’s exile. cranmer was promoted after warham died of natural causes. im sure g.eorge was made viscount at the expense of ... someone, certainly t.homas b.oleyn was made earl of ormond at the expense of some relatives. anne became queen after c.atherine’s demotion. e.lizabeth became princess after mary’s. 

there were people executed for not recognizing the royal supremacy, which one could argue was the same as denying the b.oleyn marriage (it’s a grey area, arguably they were connected, but it’s hard to argue anyone was executed for eschewing the act of succession alone, more and fisher both pointedly said they were not against that element). but there’s hardly the brutal 1:1 that exists in regards to the b.oleyn downfall. henry & jane received a dispensation to wed on the day anne was executed, they were betrothed the next, wed ten days after that, and j.ane was queen. e.dward s.eymour was made viscount eighteen days after his technical predecessor (brother to the queen) , the viscount rochford, was beheaded. 

‘but you’re just a hypocrite for admiring the b.oleyns and not the s.eymours’, eh, i think the reason that there are more fans of the former than the latter is that they operated differently & there were different circumstances surrounding their respective rises to power. to ‘win’ in this system always required ruthlessness, and it always meant someone else lost. ‘to the victor, the spoils’, sure, but ‘to the victor, the spoils’ hits different when the ‘spoils’ are inextricably tied to the reality of the orphaned children & widows of the judicially murdered upon the exact moment of victory (respectively, the moment of the betrothal of h.enry&a.nne, & the moment of betrothal of h.enry&j.ane...only true of the latter, and essentially-- what, thirteen days gone-- only true of the latter, even if one switches ‘betrothal’ to ‘wedding date’- -the closest it comes to for the former is the arrest of bishop fisher in march 1533, previous to annulment of henry’s 1st marriage).

& that’s what bothers people, as far as i understand it. this wasn’t game of thrones, this really happened. whether or not someone ‘agrees’ with the kind of language used to describe what happened, there isn’t any denying the order in which it did, nor the coinciding events. if it doesn’t disgust you, it’s your prerogative. if you believe animus towards the complicit actors/beneficiaries is mutually exclusive to animus towards the principal agent/s (depending on which theory you go by, henry himself vs henry and cromwell vs cromwell alone, although any besides the middle is a bit of a stretch imo-- henry was at the very least the final say/ultimate power), well, that is, too, but you would be incorrect, even if you have, at times, personally come across one or the other. 

#'it could not have been FORESEEN' (re: the boleyn downfall) #to the fatal degree it came to #is that* what bothers people? #is that what people believe? bcus i haven't seen that outside of mantel (fictionally) positing it was jane that left the poison pen drawing #in anne's household #or is it that no one of the faction (as the argument goes there was) seemed to think it was a bridge too far when it did go that far #that no one expressed many qualms and the haste with which it was all done also seeming readily accepted #that they readily accepted all that bloodshed with no compunction for the 'greater good' of an aim that was never reached #'your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayad yourself for nothing.' fin. #and im speaking more to the faction in that sense #i have very little sympathy for the most complicit members of that faction. #i have a hard time shedding a single tear for carew in the same way i have a hard time shedding a single one for cromwell #'well all these people had to die but at least mary was reconciled to her father after doing exactly what anne had exhorted her to do for #two years! oh wai-' #*any qualms #*betrayed #more abbrev: well. failed step one #the closest we get to qualms is someone (idr who exactly) #saying it would touch henry's 'honor' if no one except smeaton confessed #well. sucks to suck .