I find the portrayal of the fictional Anne Boleyn as a violent person…disturbing, and it’s a very common thread in Tudor fiction. 

Wolf Hall, the novel, portrays her as being physically abusive to her sister, pinching her etc. From the tv series (probably the books? I still haven’t finished the first) we have this, and we have her slapping her sister-in-law, Jane Parker, across the face. 

But Mantel’s declared that Anne was “no victim”– so this is hardly surprising. 

Tudors portrays her ripping a locket from Jane Seymour’s neck so hard that she draws blood. There is a story that alludes to this, but it comes from Jane Dormer, a lady-in-waiting to Mary I that was born in 1538. It could only have come from hearsay, and likely, rumor– as it is found by no other source.

In a way, Tudors’ portrayal is more sympathetic, but only at the cost of slandering another Boleyn in its fiction– Anne lashes out in violence, but in the narrative this is an understandable result of the pressure and stress from the  physical & emotional abuse/rough manhandling inflicted upon her by her father, Thomas Boleyn. 

Yet the above anecdote of the locket is mentioned, in many nonfiction works and many articles on sites like HistoryExtra, as if it is unassailable fact (by Alison Weir and Elizabeth Norton, to name a few)– without the context, or the birthdate of the source (which occurred years after the alleged incident) mentioned. 

Anne Boleyn is alleged to have said violent things certainly– threats to Cromwell, and about her step-daughter. There are some rather baseless accusations that she encouraged the executions of Fisher and More.

But where did she act violently? Beyond the sport of hunting, and besides an alleged report that she told someone at Hatfield to “box” Mary’s ears, acts of violence are something that even Chapuys didn’t accuse her of– only threats of them. 

I find it disturbing that a woman that died by such violent means, that had to sit imprisoned, knowing her brother and friends were dying by even more brutal means (the axe, versus the sword), is so often portrayed as having been violent herself. I find it disturbing that a woman who was against the burnings for heresy in Europe, and tried to save many from that fate by her patronage, is so often portrayed as being violent herself. Additionally, it disturbs me that this characterization is often used as a narrative device in fiction, as it often is, to imply that she somehow deserved her death… that “violent delights have violent ends.”

That she was, to quote Mantel– “not a victim”.