to feel sorry for Queen Anne?

[64BooLane]

I’m reading something that mentions her in passing quite a bit.

Didn’t know a lot about her but apparently she had 17 - SEVENTEEN - pregnancies, and none of the children lived to grow up. And then she was widowed and became alcoholic, gouty and obese, for which she was widely mocked. Added to all of this, it sounds as if she really didn’t enjoy being Queen and felt a lot of guilt about the end of the Stuarts. Then she died at forty-nine.

I mean, that really just sucks so much that I can’t get it out of my head. I’m not well versed in English history though, so I’m not very clear on her other qualities, such as whether she was astute/intelligent/thoughtful etc.

Should I read more about her? Any MN historians around? Any recommendations for books about that period?

Oh I was thinking you mean Queen Anne Boleyn. Who I also feel sorry for obvs

I've always thought how awful it must have been for her to lose all those babies/young children. Just heartbreaking.

I do like QA-style architecture very much though.

We can do without Anne Boleyn being brought in to it! There’s enough confusion already

The original OW

”Half of Stirling Castle was built by Queen Anne”

Why didn’t she finish it?😂

There may be an obvious answer

Bloody hell. Looking at that "pregnancies" section on her Wiki page breaks your heart. What a miserable existence.

Princess Anne opened my school. She was wearing a rather boring dark brown get up and I thought one of her entourage (wearing a nice blue dress) was actually the princess. I was very young in my defence.

I always felt bad about Lady Jane Grey too, talk about a rock and a hard place.

Fab links, @Kokeshi

FlatKraken, do you have a link to the screenplay?

I love it when a thread turns out to be unintentionally so funny.

How awful

Threads like this make me more determined to turn off Radio 2, turn on Radio 4 and read some proper books.

Then I go full Dory and forget I had a plan to be more learned and interesting, and pick up Hello magazine and a kebab.

One of the exhibitions at KP (the building not crisps or cricketer) is a room with 17 tiny wooden toddlers' chairs in it. One was made for each of Queen Anne's children and then you read not one made it to adulthood. It's so sad, there are just so many.

I didn't know she built Stirling Castle. I bet she got her crinolines in a right state trowelling on the cement.

This thread is a real education-previous to this all I knew about Queen Anne (gleaned from TV programmes such as "Antiques Roadshow") is that she had incredibly funny shaped legs!

"she had incredibly funny shaped legs!"

Are you sure that doesn't refer to the furniture, not the woman?

Liz20 - I think that was the joke?!

Durr.

DownWith I'm often known as Buttocks or PSB. I think I may be immune to the humour of it now. 😂

Badbilly and lion feet.

Building a castle is surely more pleasant than build loos?

Maybe she built the initial model as a sand castle.

(She had the outer defences extended and strengthened during the last Jacobite uprising, by her half brother. Hence the Queen Anne Archway and Queen Anne Garden)