The Fall of Anne Boleyn

What is it about Anne Boleyn that continues to captivate us? Her life and the lives of Henry VIII and the members of the Tudor court are continually explored in fiction, nonfiction, movies, and television. I never tire of reading about these scheming, grasping characters, especially Anne. Probably because there are so many conflicting versions of her personality. In some accounts she is painted as a heroine, and in some she is painted as a scheming seductress. I like to think of her as somewhere in between. There are also many conflicting versions of the truth. Did she commit adultery? Did she have an incestuous relationship with her brother? Or did Henry (or one of his cronies) just concoct these allegations so he could get her out of the way and move on to his next wife? We will never truly know for sure, so there is much room for speculation. Alison Weir is one of my favorite writers of Tudor history, both nonfiction and fiction. Her latest work, The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn, is a nonfiction account of the last few months of Anne's life and the events that led up to her beheading. Weir suggests that Thomas Cromwell, Henry's minister, headed a conspiracy against Anne and the Boleyn family. She suggests that Henry may simply have had his marriage to Anne annulled after she failed to provide him with a male heir, and did not consider executing her until these vicious rumors (encouraged by Cromwell) reached him. Hilary Mantel painted a much different picture of Cromwell in her recent novel, Wolf Hall, and disagrees with this assumption.

Either way, it makes for some great drama. And sadly, Cromwell ended up in the same boat as Anne and many others in Henry's circle: used, and then executed, by Henry when he failed to provide him with whatever he wanted at the current moment. The moral of the story: Kings are trouble. Stick with the stable boy.