I think… Cromwell as a sympathetic figure has gone a bit tooooo far tbh, I could blame this on Mantel (and probably will shsh) but I think that portrayal appeals to a lot of people for…interesting motivations, esp. among people that ship Anne/Cromwell and then make post-after-post-after-post about how ~disgusting Henry/Anne is, how ~disgusting anyone is that ships it, how ~disgusting it is that there exists fanvids and edits and fanfiction, how ~disgusting it is that the Lovers Who Changed History was a title for a documentary about them, and that it existed as a doc at all. 

I’m getting fandom and like … legit historic opinion mixed a bit for this take I guess (although I think often they…are mixed so maybe that’s valid? idk) but I digress……

If we’re treating Anne’s death as judicial murder (and that’s a perfectly valid take), and Henry as her murderer, then…Cromwell is, at the very least, his accomplice. We don’t feel an overt amount of sympathy for accomplices in murders today (or, at least, I hope we don’t) or excuse their actions; and if evidence is found that renders them likely to be guilty in a court of law, they are still sentenced punishment (even if it is lesser than the primary criminal). 

It should be the same in the court of historic opinion. Henry is guilty of the crime, and Cromwell is guilty of the crimer to a lesser degree– but still, ultimately, culpable. 

And yet pro-Cromwell rheotric often descends into making excuses for him (and even, almost, borderline victim-blaming Anne for her own death):

“Cromwell was, above all, a practical man and an astute politician. Sadly for Anne she was no longer useful. She was bad for foreign relations. She had not provided Henry with a son. And Henry was rapidly losing interest in her. Henry wanted a new wife. And Cromwell had no reason to stick his neck out to save Anne. As far as Cromwell was concerned it was his duty to follow his king’s orders.

For some this may not make good fiction. Perhaps that is why recent fictional accounts of Cromwell have sought to find a different motive other than mere duty. But these don’t put Cromwell in a good light. They make him petty and vengeful, and vilify him as much as his alleged enemies. What I wonder is why no one ever tries to explore how Cromwell may have felt when he realised that his prosecution was not merely leading Queen Anne Boleyn to estrangement, but to the scaffold.”

I mean…c’mon…we should think about how Cromwell felt~ about Anne’s execution? He compiled all the ‘evidence’ and was heavily involved in and at her trial, it’s not as if he was just in the background, twiddling his thumbs! Cry me a whole-ass river… 

To sum up: if we’re not to feel sympathy for Henry over the manner of Anne’s death (which I would agree– is grossly misplaced– we shouldn’t, whether he genuinely believed her guilt or not), then by the same token we should also not feel sympathy towards Cromwell for Anne’s death. We can feel sympathy for him re: other things…he was a fascinating and extremely competent genius (basically, someone who was indispensable; that Henry nevertheless dispensed of) , and also as much a victim of judicial murder as Anne was. I certainly don’t believe he ‘deserved’ to die in such a horrific way, as some of Anne’s mega-fans do. 

I don’t think Cromwell deserves to be put in a purposefully bad light in general, I find that to be somewhat symptomatic of a classist take on him as a greedy, greedy-good-for-nothing-social-climber due to his humble origins (ironically enough, also a common take on Anne– despite that in her case her origins were certainly not humble in nature)…but I don’t think he deserves to be portrayed in a sympathetic light when it comes to Anne’s execution. To me, that’s taking a sympathetic portrayal a bit too far.