lucreziaborgia:
autrenecherche:
waterlilyrose:
autrenecherche:
not to start diskhorse but i wonder if people would still be saying ‘koa did it all for mary’ if edward vi had…y’know…lived and reigned for at least a few more decades.
I struggle with this. On one hand I truly.l admire koa strength and abhor the way henry viii treated her.
But… she could have had life be so much easier for her. If she had taken the veil as offered, mary would still be legitimate behind any son and would have saved both of them so much suffering.
Its hard to be behind a woman so completely obsiltinate 100%
I mean, that was sort of the crux of the matter (but hindsight is 20/20, tbf)– if we’re saying she did it ‘for Mary’, then okay…that means she actually thought Mary should be the only heir, ever. I find that hard to believe if she knew England’s previous history, for one, and also…was she planning on outliving Henry? She had to know it was a possibility she wouldn’t and that he’d marry and have a son after she died (which did, ultimately, happen).
And it’s hard to have an equitable discussion about this because there tends to be double standards when comparing Henry to KOA; even though ultimately Henry’s behavior and actions were more clearly egregious towards Mary from 1533 onwards.
It’s birds of the same feather– “Henry thought he knew better than the Pope!!” Well, so did KOA, at the beginning– the Pope himself asked her to step down sometime around 1528, and said that action would have his blessing because it would ensure peace in England. She was unwilling to do so; and so the argument that it was 100% based on religious convictions doesn’t really hold water. You could make that after the Pope forbid the annulment and sent the bull to Henry in 1531, and you could make it for after the Supremacy, but it seems that, similar to Henry, her religious convictions aligned with whichever option was the one she truly wanted and gave her the most power.
And “Henry put his own principles/beliefs over that of his daughter Mary”. True, and again, more egregious on his part. KOA did the same when she refused to sign both Acts, even though she knew she would be able to visit Mary when she was ill if she did. And of course, she wouldn’t have had to make that principled stand if Henry hadn’t made his first, and if Henry hadn’t used any possible leverage he could– including that– to get her to sign.
Henry putting his beliefs and ambitions before his daughter is hardly unprecedented for the time. Katherine herself wanted badly to return to Spain multiple times during her widowhood, but her father said nay and left her in what she viewed as agonizing limbo. That’s just one of many examples.
Henry wasn’t *only* a father — he was also a king, and his job, whatever you believe of his motives, meant he was obliged to put England’s best interests (or, rather, of the English monarchy and its sanctified hierarchy) before anyone else. Mary was very, very stubborn, but historians fail to realize she was not merely a rebellious teenager but also a genuine threat. People routinely forget Mary was almost eighteen when she was sent to Elizabeth’s household in 1533.
I believe Katherine was not thinking solely of her daughter’s well-being before her own preservation of her marriage and status, although she may well have believed she was saving her daughter’s soul by insisting she not submit to Henry and sit complacently at the “affront” against God that was Henry’s wish for an annulment.
Katherine was ready to martyr herself for her cause, but she probably should not have dragged Mary so deep into it. Arguably, she was doing almost as much self-serving in this situation as Henry, although it was the latter’s councillers that threatened Mary’s life while Katherine encouraged her to embrace martyrdom. This push-and-pull appeared to be traumatic.
I agree with most of this, but in a way I think “his beliefs and ambitions” doesn’t totally cover it.
What I meant initially about KOA and Henry being held to different standards in discussions in general, and also this topic, is this:
No, KOA couldn’t see the future, and had no way of knowing that this was definitely futile (although, I think at a certain point, she did see the futility of it on Earth, just not in that beyond it, namely heaven– hence the martyrdom aspect). Similarly, Henry couldn’t see the future either– all he knew was the past.
Often the argument is made that Isabella of Castile proved that a woman could rule successfully. But that was rule in Spain, not England (whose only example was the civil war that ensued after Matilda’s inheritance to the throne), and she was married to someone that ruled another kingdom in Spain, thus unifying Spain. Moreover, the most recent example of a daughter inheriting the throne in that country was that of Juana of Castile– and she had ultimately been usurped and imprisoned. Juana was, in fact, forcibly confined and her son Charles was ruling while the events of the Great Matter were unfolding.
Henry VIII’s desire for a son and heir is often misrepresented as a sort of 1950s’ corporate misogyny. That’s not really an equitable comparison. It wasn’t so much that he believed women were physically and mentally incapable of leadership (although that was likely a component); but more that these were the previous examples of how female leadership was received, and what that reception could lead to– namely rebellion, usurpation (in Juana’s case, being literally imprisoned and reduced to a figuredhead, more or less), forced abdication, civil war, instability, etc.
It’s often said that Henry was “proved wrong” in terms of women as rulers, and female leadership. More or less, that is Worsley’s quippy closing of her Six Wives series. But Henry left KOA and Katherine Parr regent, so he clearly didn’t think women were incapable of rule– at least in a temporary capacity. Moreover, that he was “proved wrong” could only be said if he had left neither of his daughters in the Succession, and they had had both reigned despite this– and that was not what happened. He had left his daughters in the Succession.
Again, he wasn’t “proved wrong” when it came to the reception of female leadership, either; even though both daughters managed to reign and neither were ever deposed. Evidently the Monstrous Regiment of Women resonated with quite a few people at the time, given John Knox’s popularity. Another female ruler in the same century, Mary Queen of Scots, was imprisoned and forced to abdicate in favor of her son.
And that’s just in the 16th century. Even as recently as last year, a data analysis done at the PEW Research Center determined that most of the world’s nations have never had a female leader (at the head of government):
the list is still relatively short, and even when women have made it to power, they’ve rarely led for a long time…
Fifty-six of the 146 nations (38%) studied by the World Economic Forum in 2014 and 2016 have had a female head of government or state for at least one year in the past half-century. In 31 of these countries, women have led for five years or less; in 10 nations, they have led for only a year.
While the number of current female leaders – excluding monarchs and figurehead leaders – has more than doubled since 2000, these women still represent fewer than 10% of 193 UN member states.
The U.S. and its neighbors have had little or no time under female leadership. The U.S. and Mexico have never had a woman as chief executive, and Canada’s first and only female prime minister served for just four months.
ellemoncoeuranavera:
“We tend to think about Anne Boleyn in black-and-white terms. So, she’s either a sexual predator, or she’s sexually chaste; she’s either pious, or she’s worldly; she’s either innocent or sophisticated. And yet, actually, what I’ve learned here is that her French education, her time at the French court, was such that it prepared her to be a much more complex character than that.
“Her nine years on the continent transformed her from a teenage girl into an extremely desirable woman. The Anne that emerges back in England is one who’s been shaped by many different influences. Who is both pious and worldly; who’s both sophisticated and something of an innocent. She’s one who can both play musical instruments, who can sing, who can dance, who can speak French, who is sophisticated and witty, who’s been exposed to a world of cosmopolitan glamour. And she’s such an attractive prospect because, precisely because, she’s so complex.”
– Dr. Suzannah Lipscomb, on the effect of Anne Boleyn’s formative years on the continent, Henry & Anne: The Lovers Who Changed History
I definitely agree with Lipscomb’s assertion that people too often view Anne as a superficial figure, both thanks in part to television, film, literature (TOBG, Philippa Gregory’s works, and oversimplified analyses of historical events), and, most odiously of all, the perusal of primary sources (which are, admittedly, usually the most accurate accounts of people/events in history) from individuals who have a clear antipathy and vendetta against the subject of their writing, and their words being taken, at nominal value, as gospel. In Anne’s case, a few being Eustace Chapuys (whose credibility and verisimilitudinous I called into question in a https://ellemoncoeuranavera.tumblr.com/post/180022089505/it-is-chapuys-too-who-is-largely-responsible
%20%20″>post from a few weeks ago), Nicholas Sanders, an embittered Elizabethan Catholic exile and author of the anti-Protestant De origine ac progressu schismatis Anglicani (Of the Origin and Progression of the English Schism), and Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria, a close friend and confidante of Mary I, and, after the queen’s death, married Gómez Suárez de Figueroa y Córdoba, 1st Duke of Feria, and became a protector of English, Irish, and Scottish Catholics seeking asylum in Spain.
An oft-quoted part of Sanders’s De origine, which is often thought to have been written in response to John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (which depicts Anne in a positive light, albeit a false one, as https://alicehoffmans.tumblr.com/post/179676943078/would-you-consider-anne-boleyn-a-feminist-martyr
%20%20″>she was not a martyr [thank you to @alicehoffmans for pointing this out!]), is concerning Anne’s appearance. Keen to blacken Anne’s name as much possible, he writes:
Anne Boleyn was rather tall of stature with black hair and an oval face of sallow complexion, as if troubled with jaundice. She had a projecting tooth under her upper lip, and on her right hand, six fingers. There was a large wen (tumor or wart) under her chin, and therefore to hide its ugliness, she wore a high dress covering her throat.
Though the wen, projecting tooth, and jaundiced-appearance have, by-and-large, faded from the popular conscience, the myth of a sixth finger continues to persist like the proverbial sword of Damocles. From Emily Pooley’s wax reconstruction (which the sculptor says is included to highlight the Catholic propaganda used against Anne), to famous portraits, and even a mention in the critically acclaimed Steel Magnolias, the specter of the dreaded sixth finger has remained at the forefront of many peoples’ beliefs about Anne. This is largely due to the fact that many historians have failed to peer beyond face value at Sanders’s outlandish claim, and not use their critical thinking skills to 1) ask the question of, if she had a vestigial finger, how would she have been selected to serve as one of Catherine of Aragon’s ladies-in-waiting? Especially when, during earlier times and in the Tudor period, such structures would have been regarded as satanic and would have marked Anne out as a witch, 2) surely Henry would have not been so ardently determined to marry Anne and have issue with her if she did have an additional finger? and 3) if Chapuys, who is undoubtedly one of the most quoted/“trusted” primary sources concerning Anne and all things Henrician, does not mention the additional digit, then surely the idea of its existence should be taken with a healthy dose of incredulity. Ultimately, the iconography of Anne Boleyn possessing a sixth finger permeates because of many historians and scholars’ failure to denounce and identify Sanders as an unreliable source and, because of such negligence, the idea is disseminated to media consumers and, authors, who put such an icon of Anne in their works, allow the legend of the sixth finger persists.
As for Jane Dormer, it has become deeply ingrained the popular psyche that Anne Boleyn was a violent woman, for which there is little-to-no basis. This subsequently accreted character trait of Anne’s has its basis in a chronicle written by Lady Jane herself. In The Life of Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria, there is a brief mention of an incident that allegedly occurred between Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour, her successor as Henry’s third wife. According to Dormer, she was:
[by her Uncle Francis Bryan] placed… with the Lady Anne Boleyn, the Queen, in whose service the king affected her, for which there was often much scratching and bye blows between the queen and her maid [Jane Seymour].
The first thing to do is to acknowledge the improbability of this event actually having come to pass. Dormer, herself, was born on 6 January 1538, over 18 months after Anne had been executed, so she could not have been an eyewitness to the supposed altercation. Secondly, Dormer most likely heard this story from Susan Clarencieux, another staunch supporter, and friend of Mary I, who had served Mary from 1525 to 1533 as a maid of honor, and again from 1536 after Mary had signed the Oath of Supremacy. Given Susan’s closeness and affinity to Mary, it isn’t too farfetched to believe that Clarencieux could have fabricated the story of Anne being violent towards Jane Seymour/being an abusive person in general, as the vast majority of Englishmen and women blamed Anne for Henry’s neglectful treatment of Mary. Consequently, this brief statement has had immense repercussions for Anne’s portrayal as a person in literature and the media. For example, in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, during a conversation between Mary Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell, after Cromwell tells Mary he has a son, she replies, saying:
We know. Anne has all the Cardinal’s men in her little black book. She’s forever writing, devising punishments. She pinches me, you know. Want to see my bruises? When she’s Queen her enemies will feel it. You’d do well to keep in her good books. And out her bad ones.
Furthermore, in the live action TV show Wolf Hall, Anne is even shown to have slapped Jane Boleyn (neé Parker), Viscountess Rochford, when there’s absolutely no historical evidence for such an event occurring. In The Tudors, however, we get a more empathetic view of the conflict that Dormer alludes to in her chronicle, with Anne snatching a necklace (with a miniature of the King within it) from Jane Seymour’s neck so harshly that it cuts her hand, while she’s in near tears over her failing marriage.
Anne’s iconography of being a violent woman has been largely carried by Jane Dormer’s chronicle, which has so little evidence to any event of the sort actually transpiring that it’s immensely frustrating to see Anne being depicted as a harsh, termagant woman who possessed no other qualities. Yes, Anne made threats against Mary during her tenure as queen, but these were all born out of frustration and empty ones at that, for the majority of Christendom did not recognize her marriage and daughter as legitimate, the omnipresent pressure to produce a male heir, and the undoubtedly ever-looming specter of Mary and Catherine and their supporters–like a shadow cast before the sun– most definitely would’ve made Anne feel insecure about her station as queen. It is so easy to forget that Anne was a woman with many facets: both pious and indulgent, kind and charming yet sardonic, in love with the Gospel and dedicated to Reform, but also in love with the majesty of a crown and the man who came with it.
The best way to sum up this (rather long!) post, I feel, is to quote Gareth Russell, who said of Anne:
Anne Boleyn was neither saint nor villain; she was not even, either by the standards of her own time or the eras to come, a particularly bad person. In fact, it is my own personal assessment that her virtues overwhelmingly outweighed her vices, but her neuroses just about outweighed her talents. Today, people often see only the feud with Katherine of Aragon or with Mary Tudor, the fabricated rivalry with her sister, Mary Stafford, or the prurient, ridiculous pornography that constituted her downfall. Assessments of her character have become established as fact on no surer foundation than the virtue of repetition. Others see only a great, resolute politician – a 16th century Margaret Thatcher – a woman in a man’s world, devoid of weakness, hesitation and feminine softness. We have not yet troubled to look properly at her charities, her friendships and the tidal wave of compliments that were hers in the days before notoriety drowned her. We ignore her controversial attendance at a Requiem Mass for the butchered Cardinal Fisher, her locking of herself in her oratory and bursting into tears at the news of Katherine of Aragon’s death or the commendable image of a woman horrified, repulsed and disgusted by the burning to death of heretics. And that, in the 16th century, is something surely to her credit, no matter how much we attempt to contextualise it. She was, without doubt, a mass of contradictions – much good, some bad. But that, in the end, is something we must allow to her, for it is the most quintessential fundamental of what it means to be human, to be alive, and these contradictions, the subtleties and nuances, are important – more than important, in fact – for they remind us that this extraordinary woman really lived and that this repellently fascinating story, really, really happened.
Rules: list the first lines of your last 10 published stories. See if there are any patterns yourself, or have other people say what they notice (aww that would be nice…). Tag up to 10 friends!
tagged by @ofmodernmyths – thank you!!
tagging…whoever wants to do it! also @quillington @essequamvideri24 @feuillesmortes @somethingaboutsewing @redxluna @mihrsuri… whoever else follows me and writes fic~
opening lines from my very one-note fics, take one:
1.)
Anne hates
third-wheeling.
Or,
rather, she hates third-wheeling in certain circumstances.
With one
glaring exception, most of her present circumstances are fine:
One,
An
exclusive “pre-grand-opening” of a bar that resides on the rooftop of a posh
hotel north of the Thames; with a beautiful view on each corner (she’s already
walked its borders). On one corner is St. Olave’s Church, its clocktower lit up
with a bluish glow.
– best of the best & the worst of the worst (henry/anne)
2.)
Anne steps out of the office doors with a spring in her step– her father always gets her the most perfect gifts for her birthday, and the one he just gave her is no exception.
Thomas Boleyn’s assistant’s desk, which was (thankfully) empty when Anne arrived, is now occupied by its owner.
– redeux (henry/anne)
3.)
There’s no one at the check-in desk, but there is a notecard propped and folded that reads “Be back in ten.”
Henry, not being in the mood to wait ten, slides his numbered card next to the note and walks behind the desk and into the closet.
It is dark, although open, and failing to find a light switch he uses the flashlight on his phone to flick through the coats and their numbers, attached on the sleeves by clothespins.
Upon hearing a loud hiccup he nearly jumps out of his skin, lurching backwards, he looks down only to find a girl sitting on the floor, hand clasped over her mouth.
– keep myself awake (henry/anne)
4.)
From: 323-431-231
To: Katherine Aragon
Sent August 20th, 2016, Saturday, 4:00 AM
Henry Tudor has tagged you in a relationship status
“Henry Tudor is in an Open Relationship with Katherine Aragon”
Press “1” to like
– whitehall university (henry/anne + gen)
5.)
It begins on a Saturday, a few minutes before noon and heavy with blooming June heat.
It begins at a threshold, like many new things do– but one that is, unexpectedly, ajar.
But there’s the number from the Facebook posting on the group page for UCLA rooms for rent, glinting in tacked gold right above the eyehole– 526, and so Anne knocks, holding the door handle with her unoccupied hand so that it doesn’t swing open under her firmly beating fist– being mistaken for a burglar would not be a good start.
– close quarters (henry/anne)
6.)
You have four new messages.
Hi, sweetie. You haven’t been picking up on your cell so I thought I’d try you here. Please call back, it can be less than a minute, [tearfully] just to let me know you’re okay—I’m worried about you. Love you.
Next message:
Hey man—again, so sorry, I had no idea that would happen. I didn’t even think that many people watched that show, it might be the—anyway. If you still want to get blackout drunk, maybe you’d have a more sympathetic experience at like… a gay bar? Just a thought. Let me know if you need anything, though, for real. Peace.
– dancing with our hands tied (henry/anne)
7.)
Elizabeth pages through the sketchbook on her lap, shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand.
She is her own worst critic, and art is not something that she feels is meant for her. But then, none of her classes feel as if they are for her, none thrill her in the way was hoping for when she first enrolled at Whitehall.
There are subjects she enjoys, and subjects she should enjoy but doesn’t. History, for instance, is mainly just reading, broken down it is a series of stories, and she has taken to stories like a fish to water since she was a child.
And yet she feels too wise and world-weary for each and every history course. History is inherently dishonest—the only one who gets to tell the story is the one who lives.
– between two centuries (henry vii/elizabeth of york)
8.)
From: AnneOrmonde@orpheusuniversity.edu
To: MargaretSavoy@orpheusuniversity.edu
Sent January 5, 2016, Monday, 7:09 PM
The “opportunity” sounds a little too good to be true, honestly. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of someone requesting a student to play for them privately, much less alone. Unless it’s a music therapy session or something.
– struck twice (henry/anne)
9.)
Anne’s New Year’s gift is presented to her with great pomp by servants as she shares the last course of supper with Henry.
The gift is hangings that he explains are meant for both her bed and bedchamber, the expanse of which is held on either end by pairs of liveried footmen: masses of crimson satin, cloth of gold, and cloth of silver stretched for their viewing.
– crimson (henry/anne)
10.)
Henry’s halfway through his coke and whiskey when a tiny brunette hoists herself onto a barstool three seats away from him, sliding an enormous purse (really, practically a suitcase, and white, to match her dress, he assumes) onto the matte black surface of the bar.
– so what would an angel say, the devil wants to know (henry/anne)
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