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The Other Boleyn Girl - is it historically accurate? (Slight spoiler alert)

82 replies

wombly · 23/12/2010 00:54

I'm afraid I only saw the film Xmas Blush, but was struck by details I didn't know about Tudor history. AFAIK Catherine of Aragon's defence of her position was verbatim in the film. So how about the Boleyn incest stuff? How historically accurate was that?

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JingleBelleDameSansMerci · 23/12/2010 15:33

I also thought I'd read somewhere that Anne's beheading was not a swift, single stroke but that the executioner had to have a second go at it. Again, can't remember where I read that.

I'm afraid I don't believe that Henry was unaware of any of the plotting against Anne. I think he could have stopped the proceedings at any time but chose not to.

CaveMum · 23/12/2010 15:37

I haven't read Children of England, must give it a try.

Innocent Traitor is very good, though I was shocked at how her husband Guilford Dudley is portrayed. A spoilt abusive mummy's boy. I also didn't realise that he was one of Robert Dudley's brothers.

It breaks me heart how manipulated and downright abused Lady Jane Grey was, and then executed at just 16/17 Sad.

BalloonSlayer · 23/12/2010 15:46

The big problem with accusations of sdultery Jingle, is that they call the succession into question. If Anne had been accused of adultery but Henry had pooh-poohed the accusations, how strong would a son of hers' claim to the throne actually BE in the future.

I have just also remembered that she was also accused of plotting his death. (It was treason to even acknowledge the fact that the king would ever die) That could have been the thing that really turned him against her.

Re the execution, no, Anne was famously executed by a swordsman from France who did it very quickly, kindly and professionally. He was paid for by Henry BUT - remembering this belatedly from The Lady in the Tower book again - he was sent for BEFORE her trial! And Anne agreed to quite a few demeaning things in order to avoid being burnt at the stake, when clearly that was never intended. Poor Anne Sad . . . although she was a bit of a cow and is heavily implicated in the poisoning of some clergymen who spoke against her.

TrillianAstra · 23/12/2010 15:48

Wouldn't you have to send for the headsman before the trial? It would take a long time to summon him from France after the trial.

wombly · 23/12/2010 15:49

Blimey, this has moved on since this morning - I haven't even got time to read it atm. Xmas Smile

And I haven't even raised the question of....Wolf Hall.

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LutyensInTinsel · 23/12/2010 17:03

"The big problem with accusations of sdultery Jingle, is that they call the succession into question. If Anne had been accused of adultery but Henry had pooh-poohed the accusations, how strong would a son of hers' claim to the throne actually BE in the future"

Wasn't Edward IV's mother accused of adultery with an archer, which was supposed to have resulted in Edward. Her husband (Henry V) refused to give the allegations any weight, and the succession wasn't threatened by the rumour. In fact Henry VII's claim to the throne was stronger through his mother (and thus through Edward IV) than though his father.

Happy to accept any corrections to the above Xmas Grin

CaveMum · 23/12/2010 17:17

Lutyens, that definitely rings a bell. I think I remember watching a Starkey (or similar) programme where they said that the dates didn't add up. I think they said that the date of conception (based on his date of birth) would have taken place during a time when his father was known to be out of the country!

BalloonSlayer · 23/12/2010 17:26

I expect you're spot on, Lutyens, other Queens had been accused of adultery and not even divorced, others had been definitely guilty of it and nothing much had happened. Anne was hugely unpopular though, and there were a lot of people trying to get rid of her, primarily Cromwell and of course the Seymours.

I think Alison Weir, when trying to be fair about it says that Anne was tried fairly according to the law of her time. That is: it was treason for the Queen to commit adultery, as it threatened the succession, and it was treason to plot the king's death or even talk about the possibility of it. And although it seems a travesty of justice to us to read that the accused were not given the precise details of the case against them in order so they could prepare a proper defence (for example being alleged to have committed adultery with X at, say, Greenwich Palace on 1st February when actually on that date Anne was at Windsor and X was at Richmond, but although that can be proved by historians now it couldn't be proved when they were on trial and this was the first they had ever heard of it) - that was what the law was THEN. So Henry wanted her to have a fair trial, and she actually had a fair trial according to the law then and one of the men had "confessed." I do wonder whether if he hadn't said what he said history would have been different.

Trills It was unprecedented for a Queen to be executed. That a headsman was summoned before the trial indicates that it was assumed to be pretty likely that Anne would be found guilty. Of course, he could have been sent home again. But it was pretty cruel to make Anne think for several days that she was going to be burned at the stake, in order to get her to agree to a divorce in exchange for being beheaded, when it was obviously always the intention that she should be beheaded.

Re the weakened claim to the succession, both of Henry's heirs at that time (Mary and Elizabeth) had weak claims to the succession depending on whose side you took. Henry really needed a son whose paternity and legitimacy was without doubt. Which he would have had if Anne had managed to produce one, as Katherine of Aragon died at the start of that very year.

Also, the claims of adultery made it look as if he was impotent and that Anne was having to take lovers in order to get pregnant to save herself. (I think this is the stance Philippa Gregory's book takes.) This is highly unlikely to be the truth.

Alison Weir wonders if Anne was Rhesus negative, as it was odd that she had one trouble free pregnancy but all her subsequent babies died.

TeiTetua · 23/12/2010 17:37

I thought the book was pretty clever in taking the things that she was accused of, incest and witchcraft, and making up a version of the story where that actually did happen. Not that either of the Boleyns (Anne or her brother) were really inclined to do any such thing, but maybe the situation they were in, and the ambitions that they had, forced it on them? It made the story more complex and more interesting, by extending the hideous politics of the era into hideous things that people might do in private.

expatinscotland · 23/12/2010 18:23

Jingle, you might be thinking of the Countess of Salisbury. This lady's execution was in part due to her son's (he was rather conveniently in France) repeated condemnation of Henry's actions.

She was rather elderly and became quite unhinged when it came time for her execution, which became a rather shocking affair.

expatinscotland · 23/12/2010 18:29

'Wouldn't you have to send for the headsman before the trial? It would take a long time to summon him from France after the trial.'

Indeed, the swordsman was delayed upon landing in England due to muddy roads.

Anne was informed of the time of her execution, stayed up most of the night praying, only to be told in the morning that it was to be put off another day as the swordsman had been delayed.

Strangely, when Mary, Queen of Scots was executed, it appears she was hiding a small dog or two in her skirts. Hmm

LutyensInTinsel · 23/12/2010 19:57

"Indeed, the swordsman was delayed upon landing in England due to muddy roads"

Some things never change Xmas Grin

TrillianAstra · 23/12/2010 20:17

Xmas Grin at expat

wombly · 23/12/2010 21:47

Thanks for those Wikipedia links - I've now read them. The most interesting page, though, was about George Boleyn. Both George and Anne seem to have been very serious about religion, ie the protestant cause. Which is what Wolf Hall indicates, too.

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expatinscotland · 23/12/2010 23:32

She paid him some immense sum, all in silver. it's well recorded, for it was customary for the accused to give the purse and for the executioner to ask forgiveness.

her hair was quite legendary. both she and catherine of aragon had hair so long they could sit upon it, though catherine's was fair and anne's was dark.

she wore it well bound up that day, so as not to imede the swordsman.

he felled her head in one blow, that much is well-recorded.

mary, queen of scots' body was moved to Westminster by the son she really didn't know, to lie next to elizabeth.

TwoIfBySea · 25/12/2010 22:30

Henry Carey, Mary's son and possibly Henry's too declined the acknowledgement offered to him by Elizabeth.

Like Anne and the accusations against her, his and his sister's paternity seems to have been a matter for gossip and here-say.

For Anne to be given a French executioner rather than an axeman did mean she didn't suffer the several blows it took to behead some. Mary, QoS was said to have taken either two or nineteen whacks depending on which tale you read - she was supposed to have said "sweet Jesus" after the first blow failed to do the job and the second one met with some sinew. Ended up having to be sawed off.

Boak.

Tudors are rather over done now though. I really enjoyed PG's latest two The White Queen and The Red Queen and would like to see more of the earlier bunch. Honestly, whoever thought history was boring didn't really look. Fair enough PG may bend and twist history to suit the story sometimes but there are things she misses out that are simply unbelievable.

BalloonSlayer · 26/12/2010 09:02

"For Anne to be given a French executioner rather than an axeman did mean she didn't suffer the several blows it took to behead some."

  • no of course it doesn't mean it will go well.

However there are a LOT of contemporary accounts of her execution and they all say he took it off with one very quick stroke. (He was very good, too, very kind, he took his shoes off so he could creep up behind her - she was blindfolded - and do it as quickly as possible from the opposite direction to the one she was expecting.)

TwoIfBySea · 26/12/2010 18:36

At the same point, if it were revenge one was wanting, you would not wish for them to be beheaded cleanly. To hire a French swordsman was a status symbol - for a disgraced Queen especially.

MrsThisIsTheCadillacOfNailguns · 26/12/2010 19:03

Expat,that is interesting about the Woodvylles.The family who own the estate where we live are descended from Woodvilles and one of the farms is still named after them.Wonder if it is the same family with a change of spelling?

BalloonSlayer · 27/12/2010 10:30

TwoifBySea it is generally seen as a sign of Henry's remnants of affection for Anne that he arranged the least painful death possible for her. He was pretty tired of her when it all kicked off . . . yet he was madly in love with Katherine Howard when her (apparently true) adultery came to light - he let her be beheaded with an axe.

Henry was reported never to have mentioned Anne's name again. Yet in AW's book, she points out that in a dynastic portrait painted a few years later, Elizabeth is wearing all Anne's famous jewellery, includng I think her B necklace, as if to advertise whose daughter she is. Henry would have had to agree to that. I wonder whether the truth dawned on him as the years passed.

mrskbpw · 07/01/2011 15:55

Ooh I loved The Red Queen and The White Queen. Really, really good. I have very little knowledge about the Wars of the Roses.

Bit of an aside, my 11-month-old lump of a baby is teething and refusing to sleep unless he's in our bed, lying in the crook of my arm. I had a delirious night's sleep last week, dreaming I was Richard III with a withered arm thanks to the combination of The Red Queen and 10kg of boy on my arm.

BaresarkBunny · 19/02/2011 00:17

Mary Boleyn's grand daughter, Lettice Knollys, was the second wife of Elizabeth I favourite, Robert Dudley.

Robert Dudley was the main man whose name was linked to Elizabeth and the question of her virginity. Rumour had it that he arranged to have his first wife, Amy, murdered so he could marry the queen.

biryani · 20/02/2011 15:52

Yes, I think you're right, Dingle. According to another Phillippa Gregory, though, the marriage (to Arthur) WAS consummated but I suppose this could never be proven, could it? Henry (lovely man as has is) then tried to claim she'd committed adultery in order to nullify the marriage to marry Anne. As I understand it, one of her musicians confessed under torture that he'd slept with her, paving the way for the (unproven) allegations of incest with her brother and others. It is said that Anne always hid one of her hands because of the alleged extra digit.

megapixels · 20/02/2011 22:48

Oh that's Mark Smeaton the lute player isn't it? Apparently there were whispers at the time that Elizabeth looked like him.

megapixels · 20/02/2011 22:51

PG takes a lot of liberties with the facts though, she made up a pregnancy and childbirth for Elizabeth in The Virgin's Lover and said in her notes at the end that it was unlikely that it happened.