Hi, sorry, I don’t know of a book that goes over that specific topic in depth. Ives’ bio of Anne…analyses her tenure there, I would say, but there’s more evidence and discussing what narrative this evidence presents than analysis itself (if memory serves).
Here’s an article that might help, though:
Anne Boleyn’s Childhood and Adolescence by Retha Warnicke sort of touches on this; her theory is that Anne’s birthdate was indeed 1507, and that the explanation for her being at that court at such a young age is that she did not start out as Margaret’s maid of honour, but was “in residence in the palace with the children, the nieces and nephews whom Margaret was raising: Charles (future Holy Roman Emperor), Isabella (future Queen of Denmark) and Mary (future Queen of Hungary).”
Not to be like “we live in a society” but I think a lot of people’s mental health would be significantly less fucked if they didn’t have to function in a system that forces them to think about their value as a human being as based on how productive they are/how much money people can make off them
probably like, a series about henry ocho starting with his accession in 1509 (but throughout woven with flashbacks… 1494-right before the accession) up to his death.
and i would also want to do one with AB from childhood and beyond, and then suddenly in 1522 it becomes a crossover (skfsksk, or maybe we have scenes with thomas boleyn and elizabeth howard during the accession and onwards before, in the henry one).
that or something like the tudors (but from 1509 onwards), except it’s from the perspective of all the castle servants and they’re the main cast… kind of like 16th century downtown abs, except not prim or boring, and also we never see from the pov of the rich/royals because like…’tis a bit saturated and unneeded.
I’d love to know more about them, the information on that isn’t as accessible as other aspects of her life.
I think she had a close relationship with her sister, Mary, despite their falling out– she sent her a gold cup even after she’d been banished from court, and Mary said in a letter to Cromwell that it was Anne’s affection she missed most of all, among all her family.
Anne definitely had a close friendship with her brother, George, also.
It seems she was close with Bridget Wiltshire, who was one of her ladies-in-waiting, but they had a falling-out of some kind.
As for friends from childhood, likely Lady Margaret Lee (née Wyatt), as she later became one of her ladies, and the Wyatt estates were near Anne’s family’s.
To Marguerite of Navarre, Anne wrote “that her greatest wish, next to having a son, was to see [her] again’– not definite proof of a close friendship, but she did know her and I tend to think they were at least somewhat friends.
This about Margery Horsman, one of her ladies (it’s not the impression I got from Ives’ bio, but I could be misremembering):
Margery was close enough to Anne to know that she grieved when her favourite dog, Purkoy, was found dead after he fell out of a window. Margery also knew that nobody dared to inform the Queen of Purkoy’s tragic death until “it pleased the King’s Highness to tell her Grace of it”. Margery had free access to the Queen’s Privy Chamber, as demonstrated by Thomas Warley’s letters, and distributed golden cramp rings blessed by Henry VIII on Good Friday to Anne Boleyn’s supporters.
She’s often written in fiction as someone that had closer friendships with men than women; however my own independent research done doesn’t show much of an indication of that characterization– if anything, it seems she was the opposite to the point of antagonizing some powerful men at court:
“After the elder Katherine Howard’s (that is, the aunt of the more famous Catherine Howard) husband was put to death for treason, Anne swept in to arrange a marriage for Katherine to save her from ruin. She matched her with Lord Daubeney, and when Daubeney was promoted to Earl of Bridgewater by Henry VIII, Katherine became a Countess. Court gossip eventually turned against Katherine, who would write that:
“I have none to do me help except the Queen, to whom I am much bound, and with whom much effort is made to draw favour from me.”
Even in years when Anne’s queenship was secure, Baynton was “quick to criticize the ‘frivolity’ of Anne’s ladies and the cavalier attitude towards men that the household supposedly encouraged”.
“Sir Anthony Browne had quarreled with his sister Elizabeth, Countess of Worcester, over the freedom she enjoyed when she served Anne Boleyn and the subsequent enstrangement her residency in the household had apparently created with her husband” (Russell, 2016).
In the case of Elizabeth, Anne had not only paid her midwifery bills but loaned her £100 without Lord Worcester’s knowledge.
