Anne Boleyn died today 1536

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Anne Boleyn was convicted of false charges of witchcraft, adultery and conspiracy and was beheaded today in 1536, so the psychopath Henry VIII could marry again. She would been so proud of her daughter Elizabeth I

I think Anne was ambivalent about HViii. She secretly hoped to marry Henry Percy until Wolsey stuck the boot in. That there was her hope of a romantic marriage. All the rest of it is bullying from her parents desperate to be Somebodies at court and HViii himself pestering her. Poor Anne actually.

I like to think she was just super ambitious and refused to be anyone's mistress, it was either wife or nothing and since the man in question was the king wife = queen too. She refused to have full sex with him for so long because she knew if she gave him what he wanted he would lose interest.

I think she might have genuinely loved Henry Percy and when her marriage to him was vetoed by her family she thought if she couldn't marry for love she may as well set her sights as high as possible. If she was going to be used as a pawn in her family's game she would claim the greatest prize of all, the king.

She was a strong and intelligent woman and I think she enjoyed being the king's 'advisor', I think she loved the respect and power being associated with him brought her, especially since women couldn't really get it any other way at that point in time. Unfortunately she expected to retain that respect and privilege when she became his wife (maybe even get more) but he did not see it that way. At that point he expected her to become a meek and mild baby factory but that wasn't her character.

I have always felt deeply sad about what happened to her and I really would love to see what she would have been like if she'd lived in modern times, I think she would have been a total badass :)

If Anne didn't fancy Henry...

And if he was known to get bored of women once he'd had them...

Then isn't (perversely) the best course of action to say yes a few times, be very boring, and then be rid of him?

Trills but with what consequence? Everyone would know they'd slept together - Henry wouldn't keep it secret. What kind of marriage (and therefore life) could she have hoped for?

I think Henry married off mistresses he felt kindly towards - like Bessie Blount once she'd had Fitzroy.

I was just playing with the illogiclity of it :)

I agree with Jasper that she probably enjoyed being powerful and having her opinions sought.

I dunno, if my choice was repeatedly and for an indeterminate period having sex with someone I didn't want to (I.e. rape) and coquettishly holding out saying 'oooh but you're married' I know which I'd choose.

Being from ye olden times and a posh family doesn't make sexual abuse anymore palatable.

And that's assuming that Henry wasn't into any weird shit with his mistresses...was if you had to submit to beatings as well so he could get his power kick?

I realise I'm being hugely hypothetical but then aren't we all :)

what if*

I agree what happened to Anne was horrific but she was heavily implicated when some of her fiercest critics were poisoned. She was also extremely cruel to Mary.

katherine carey's daughter (lettice knowlys?) looks just like Elizabeth 1st in the portraits so much so that I think one portrait got confused as being Elizabeth.

Not convinced by that, Frankie - different portraits of what's known to be the same person often looked very different!

I thin that her family were very ambitious and so she had to work within an even more restrcted set of choices - she couldn't bugger off to hide in the countryside, for example, because you don't getgrants of money and lands and titles doing that.

I don't think she would have wanted to though - her family were ambitious and used her, yes, but I think she was ambitious for herself too.

Unlike poor Katherine Howard, who I think really had no agency of her own, and was just the pawn of a family who really should have known better by then.

Even if Anne was cruel to Mary she didn't deserve to die so Henry could move on. I am no Anne fan and hate her treatment of Katherine and Mary.

Pomeral, IIRC, various historians were horrified at the postulation by Philippa Gregory that HVII forced himself on Elizabeth of York. Yet they were times when kings might put to death their brothers or cousins

No of course she didn't deserve to die. I do think that her story has a touch of the "if you're horrible to people on your way up then don't expect any kindness when you're on your way down" to it.

She alienated a lot of people and when she needed support there was none because no one liked her.

If Anne had agreed she was pre contracted or put herself out of the way some other way, I'm pretty sure Mary would've had her killed when she ascended.

Following on from my previous point - it's taken for granted that kings and nobles killed or imprisoned close relatives and others who disobeyed them and/or threatened their position. It's accepted that HVIII took drastic and murderous actions to secure his succession. It's known that Margaret Beaufort was 13 when she had Henry Tudor.

Yet the idea that a king could've raped his future wife was mocked. I'd say it was quite in keeping.

The article is pretty crap, by the way.

Henry VIII was extraordinarily discreet about his mistresses.

It's only when Elizabeth Blount had Henry Fitzroy that he acknowledged she'd been his mistress. And he never acknowledged Mary Boleyn except when he wrote to the pope declaring it in order to get the consanguinity with Anne taken into account - this was in order to ensure that the legitimacy of any children with Anne could not be questioned on the grounds of his previous relationship with Mary (he was still thinking in terms of getting a papally sanctioned divorce at this point). Once Anne fell from grace, he didn't mind people knowing but while he was married to Katherine, he was more than usually discreet.

Chances are he would have arranged a good marriage for Anne if she'd agreed to be his mistress, it wouldn't have been a bad move in terms of future career (just in terms of having to endure sexual relations with him).

I think the fact that no-one was prepared to speak for her on the way down, wasn't just because she'd pissed people off (although there's some truth in that) - it was because the coup was so quick, so brutal and so obviously pre-planned that people knew there was no point in speaking out against it and actually it would be dangerous - they might be implicated too. People like Cranmer did like and support Anne, but it was just too dangerous to say "this is wrong". Even her father was too afraid to speak out. That's not just because he was a revolting coward and appalling father, it's because he may well have gone to the scaffold along with his children if he had done.

Yonic horrified at the rape or the idea that he would have wanted his heir to be conceived illegitimately? I struggled with the idea of that TBH given his background

Wasn't court a bit of a village crossed with a playground though where everyone wanted what everyone else had and gossip was currency?

Discrete re: no public acknowledging, yes. But surely everyone would have known about his mistresses in a nudge nudge wink wink kind of way.

Elizabeth Blout was a catch post Henry Fitzroy, anyone married to her would share in the privileges.

I struggle to believe the outcome would have been as good for Anne if she had gone along with HVIII but deliberately been a bit boring so he went off her quick.

Did Tudor women have any expectation of equality in the way we think of it? Or did women just expect to told what to do by their fathers then their husbands?

Ian Mortimer's argument in respect of the 13th and 14th C is that place in the social hierarchy was more important than sexism.
Of course women all carried Eve's shame etc etc but on a day-to-day basis upper class women were essential in running estates and were often in charge for extended periods while husband was away. In theory women should be meek and mild but in reality they often demanded - and got - respect. I suspect you could extrapolate this forward to Tuder times.
Also it's worth bearing in mind that Galen's teachings were still popular then - the theory that both men and women needed to orgasm to conceive a child (another reason for the Phillipa Gregory / HVII disbelief?) and so it was generally held that as much as women needed 'the rod' every so often they also needed to be wooed and romanced.
Equality? No. But I do think women commanded a certain amount of respect in a way, and that they would have been able to have some agency in their life choices.