Tag: answered

Anne Boleyn being a real queen. A powerful woman in a world ruled by man , knows how to stand up for herself and express her opinions.

Is this for the Tudors accuracy thing?

If so, I mean, yeah, she was definitely Queen of England (despite the fact that she was not acknowledged as such by the Vatican; even Chapuys eventually acknowledged her as such by bowing to her). I would say she was…I mean, she didn’t have the powerful relations that KOA did, or the Vatican’s acknowledgement that she was Henry’s wife and Queen, but otherwise I’d say she was nearly, or as powerful, as KOA had been? Very influential, to say the least, had the English Bible on display in her household, was referred to as “that gracious lady Queen Anne’s, the which hath the name to be as mediatrix betwixt Your Grace and high justice” in a letter to Henry by an English subject. 

Too expressive of her opinions, was the opinion of some others…stood up for herself? Likely, I think she stood up for others often as well and I wish we’d seen that more, they did at least include that her confrontation with Cromwell was based on where the funds from the Dissolution were going, and that not enough were going towards charity (her ‘even Wolsey did that’ delivery made me laugh, heh); even if they didn’t include that she had interceded with Henry to pardon those involved in the Elizabeth Barton conspiracy, with the exception of the instigator of it. 

how different do you think their relationship would be if Anne had accepted Henry’s proposal to be his maitresse-en-titre? do you think he would’ve kept to that promise? or would he have lost interest eventually?

I’m wary about giving my honest thoughts on this matter because they’re kind of…controversial (like, I’ve gotten a lot of backlash for expressing my views on this before), tbh, so imma just–

First, we don’t actually know with 100% certainty that she rejected that offer (I mean, obviously she rejected at the very least the public title of only mistress, but privately is another matter). That’s kind of just the prevailing idea that’s put forth based on the Vatican letters (but these are probably not the only ones Henry wrote, also we don’t have hers, also we don’t have definite dates for any except the one dated by the remark about the papal legate, and another dated by its remarks about when she contracted the Sweat), based on her leaving for Hever for the summer (which, wasn’t, honestly, unusual? There were usually way fewer courtiers on the court’s summer progress, a lot of them left for their family homes), based on also, imo, the implication that 

a) Henry would never have married someone that had ‘put out’ before their marriage

b) He only married her because it was the ‘only way’ to have sex with her. And for literally no other reason. 

It’s entirely possible that she was his mistress (which is a pretty broad definition w/ a lot of possibilities attached as well– a mistress in the sense of courtly love? a mistress in the sense of what was allowed within the parameters of a courtship 
dans la chambre? variations in between?) before he actually proposed marriage. 

And if this did happen, I actually think in any scenario in which he had yet to have a son by K(o)A, he would have eventually proposed, realizing that she was a well-suited choice of a Queen Consort and also that he wanted to spend his life with her. Basically, that he would have had that dawning realization in 1527, or 28, or whatever, that Chapuys spoke so eloquently of in 1530:

…the love of the King for the Lady is so great that he would not give her up for the eldest daughter of France, or anyone else in the world.

In an AU where he gave this offer and K(o)A already had a son?

I do think he would have kept that promise. Because, during the entirety of his betrothal to Anne, he did. I think that was probably a big part of her anger at his affairs during their marriage– that he would be with no one else for at least six years (possibly at least a year of their marriage, too), but take a mistress during her second and third pregnancies (Madge Sheldon, I think it was? The Seymour affair was kept to courtship only) was unconscionable to her. She couldn’t reconcile it to how faithful he had been to her before. 

Would he have lost interest eventually? Maybe, it is hard to say with any certainty. It’s often said their relationship was weak, tenuous, and based on no real love, connection, or affection, and that this is so clear because it deteriorated/fell apart ‘so quickly’.

But the thing is, it didn’t fall apart ‘so quickly’. Their marriage was only three years, it’s true, and the last (even before May ‘36) was definitely worse than the first two, but before that they’d had a betrothal that defied the societal expectations for its length (betrothals were long processes if one of the betrothed was a child when it was made– otherwise, there were no ‘long engagements’ with the nobility of years, that simply wasn’t done), from 1527(at the latest)– 1532. 

They fought during that period of time, it’s true (this is usually mentioned as evidence that their relationship was always unstable, volatile, ‘only based on sex’). He grumbled once about how she’d spoken harshly to him, that Katherine had never spoken to him that way. Another fight had apparently been so bad that she refused to speak with him, until he was reduced to asking her relatives to intercede with Anne on his behalf, “with tears.”

And he could have thrown the towel in at any point. Could’ve said, “you know what, I’ve had enough of this” at any of the times she spoke sharply to him, and like…still continued to try for an annulment and marry a French royal (Francois was always eager to make an alliance against Charles V, for reasons both personal and political– he’d even offered Henry his sixteen-year-old daughter’s hand in marriage– a day, or mere days, after Anne’s execution), or a number of other alternatives. 

But he never did. And in a lot of ways, he would’ve had an easier going with the annulment process if he had, and it would’ve seemed more credible to a lot of people had he made clear that his intentions were to marry another foreign royal once it had been achieved. 

He didn’t, because he wanted to marry Anne specifically, and have an heir with Anne, specifically. So, I think he must have loved her just as specifically. 

It’s this that makes me believe he wouldn’t have ‘lost interest’ eventually had she accepted the title, in a world/AU without the obstacles he had (lack of a male heir, Charles V and others blockading his attempts to find solutions to this problem, etc.). 

do you think henry ever felt regret for killing anne? also, what do you think drove him to do it in the first place?

This is…a bit heavy for a Wednesday…

It’s hard to know because a lot of the evidence of Anne’s existence (portraits, etc.) was destroyed; likely most of this was done under his command (although we don’t have access to the official records for this, as such), but strangely enough not all of it was? Their initials are still over the fireplace in the Presence Chamber of St. James Palace, for instance. We could chalk this up to an accidental oversight, but as Henry had this palace remodeled in 1544, it would seem he had ample opportunity to take them down and never asked the renovators to do so. 

Anne was referred to as the “late Queen” in English warrants/records of Henry VIII’s reign as early as August 1536. This kind of begs the question of ‘how’–their marriage was annulled by Cranmer in May. If her marriage to Henry was never valid, then how was she the Queen? 

I’ve talked more about possible explanations here; also about items from her inventory he bought. 

The scene alluding to this in Tudors, while of course fictional, is interesting…if the figures of Anne and Elizabeth are not, in fact, ghosts, but rather images from his subconscious, Anne’s “I was innocent, all the accusations against me were false” is actually just what Henry’s known all along (or, perhaps, finally knows). And when he says he wishes he could love Elizabeth more, but from “time to time she reminds me of you, and what you did to me”, Anne’s “I did nothing to you” (and then the rest above) would indicate that his distance from Elizabeth stems not so much that Elizabeth reminds him of Anne, but more from how Elizabeth reminds him of his own guilt.

Idk, I just mention the scene because I admire its complexity and I think your question…has no simple answers, really. 

So…did he ever feel regret? We’ll never know. I tend to think that he did, but that at the same time, if we ever brought him back from the dead to ask him “Was it all worth it?” (’it’ being…well, what happened to Anne, and all of the best and the worst of his reign) his answer would be “yes”. 

As for The Million Dollar Tudor Question (why/how could he do it/ how did this all unfold?); I’ve touched on it in essay-length asks:

here

and here.

*edited version

Most romantic H/A moments? In The Tudors and/or history?

The top was probably after she recovered from the Sweat (that was like a pinnacle reunion scene like…I don’t think anything has topped it since, on any period drama, altho this came pretty close).

Sadly, the thing about Tudors was that their relationship wasn’t actually very well-developed or well-written? So tbh I don’t think there were that many romantic moments between the two of them on the show, or not as much as there should have been, at any rate.

We know they’re in the love but we don’t know, like…why. We don’t really see them talk to each other about their families, their childhoods, their hopes and dreams and fears; so in that way it was very Tell-Not-Show:

Worse, the earthshaking union between Henry and Anne is nearly as talky. She wants to be queen, he wants her to be queen (I’ll spare you the 15 versions of this conversation), but the pair, pretty and unknowable, lack any clear reason why they’re so smitten. The audience is expected to take their word for it — and there are plenty of words, just few that resonate. In one scene, a triumphantly pregnant Anne giddily declares a craving for apples, and she becomes a real person, but The Tudors provides too few of those moments. Instead, Henry and Anne nag and harp and tongue each other. It’s like asking us to root for a particularly vapid reality TV couple.

 Some of this was, I think, due to limited screentime (and the time jump in between s1 and s2), and had they not done the storyline where Norfolk and Thomas Boleyn are pushing/manouevering Anne into the relationship they probably would’ve had a better arc. Because tbh, that took up a lot of time. 

We don’t see that many intimate moments between them (not even them waking up with each other), most are focused on sex. Which is a shame, imo, because I think their relationship was about a lot more than just sex but that’s often what it’s reduced to. 

Anyway, I’ll pull a few from my tag that I like, those I use for inspo:

image
image
image
image

this one she’s not technically in but it’s about her and i </3 :

image
image
image

🥔

there’s likely a significant connection between the prevalence of depression in the United States and our extreme wealth disparity (we have the highest wealth inequality in the world, Sweden and the U.K. falling behind us); but it’s trendier to blame it on how we’re ‘too fat’, ‘don’t exercise enough’, and are not eating organic enough or w/e 🙂

🥔

i’ll do another fic/fandom because why not:

i’ve started to see some really upsetting comments on other people’s fics; and it’s made me so cautious that i’ve just started moderating comments on my own.

like ‘

sad that authors think they can post a chapter their fic and then never update’ and like… of course they can?? it’s their fic, not yours. if you want control of an update schedule, then you need to write your own fic. simple as that. 

tl;dr it was a really long and upsetting thread in a fandom i write for (telling the author they ‘owed them an apology’, lmao) and i feel like there’s been this kind of shift in fandom behavior of like…demanding updates more often than you actually write a comment to the author about what you like about the story in the first place. 

and also a shift in like…spam like comments? i actually don’t agree with ‘any comment is better than none’. i would rather have none than ‘update!’ and i would rather have none than one-word comments that have no context like ‘bastard’ (you have to assume it’s one of your characters, but you don’t know which one?? if people aren’t going going to specify, sometimes it’s better to just…not say anything, tbh).

🥔 ^__^

guess i’ll just talk about tudors because i have so much meta-ish about it i’ve yet to discuss:

in retrospect, it kind of baffles me that they tried to make their character of henry more sympathetic in ways that were inaccurate (i.e. don’t reflect historic record) and less sympathetic (or, i guess here i mean likable more than sympathetic) in ways that were inaccurate.

for more sympathetic, we have, for instance:

  • anne of cleves is told that in addition to her pension for accepting the annulment, she is free to marry whoever she chooses (the former is true enough, the latter was certainly not)
  • henry fitzroy dying at like… five or six? henry crying over his lil cap (if they’d started earlier they could have had a scene of emotional anguish after the new year’s prince of 1511 died, but nooooooo,)
  • henry wearing black for mourning while anne wears yellow after koa’s death is announced (bitch wore yellow…and sorry, no, it wasn’t the ‘Spanish color of mourning’…)

for less sympathetic, we have:

🥔 (for your opinion on anything you feel like…i’m in the mood for some tea ;) )

i don’t feel like tv shows nowadays (for the most part, anyway) start with really good hooks anymore??

like fr, as an Elder, what happened to that?? i feel like tv pilots 1994-2007 began with incredible hooks to suck the viewer in, absolutely packed with twists and content, and now they’re just like ‘we’re building…we’re building tension…introducing all the characters…and building’ and my ADD self be like damn!! build a little faster!!!!!

💣?

there’s a lot of pop psych. theories behind why henry ocho had six wives. a lot of ‘he was marriage cuh-RAZY’ or ‘he was looking for the perfect woman that didn’t exist’, or even ‘he was looking for a wife that was most like his mom’ (like…hello??) and…

on one hand i get where this is coming from. to a certain extent, he did seem to have unrealistic expectations of romance/romantic love for a monarch. 

on the other hand, i don’t really think it’s like…that deep, necessarily.

i think what this ignores is that, of course six is a lot of marriages in one lifetime, but the more interesting aspect of it is that four of those took place in ten years. 

and also that some (definitely not all, but some) of the aspects of the whole six-wives thing were circumstantial. 

for instance, had koa had a son that survived childhood, he likely would have only had one– or two, perhaps, if she ended up dying in 1536, anyways. 

had jane seymour survived, he probably would have had three wives. 

i’ve read a lot of ‘he would’ve just tried to get rid of her, i know it’ and like a) … how do you ‘know’ that, really? how could you possibly? and b) i’m aware he didn’t treat her well, but the idea that he would’ve tried to somehow annul the only marriage that had yielded him a legitimate, surviving son, or like…poison her or smth is pretty OTT. we have no evidence of henry poisoning anyone; that catchy ‘where a borgia used poison, a tudor used the law’ is a bit generalized, but stands up pretty well against historic record (for the latter, anyway– not well-versed in the former).