In Memoriam Anne Boleyn May 19th

Every year I mention her; she's fascinated me since I was 8 or 9. The cruelty of her fate, the saddness in her life, the isolation and fear she must have felt. I've written many papers about her, a poem, one novel, and I used to draw her all the time, and even created some paintings about her, a couple dolls, a shadowbox. I studied her trial, and gathered quite a library of books about her and the Tudors.

Today she is some romantic, tragic figure, swept up and destroyed by her passion, victim of a dashing but abusive husband, very The Other Boleyn Girl and The Tudors. I would argue that she was noble-born [with more Plantaget blood on her mother's side than Henry[, smart, educated by the most important women of Europe [one of her school mates was a very young Charles V]; proud, witty, and lively. She was taught to be outspoken, and this may have been part of her downfall. She was braded a "whore of the tongue" and supposedly reduced Henry to tears more than once. She was a victim of her father's ambition, as was were sister Mary, and her brother. She was related to the King through blood [her mother was a distant cousin] and through marriage [one first cousin married is illegitimate son, the Duke of Blount].

She didn't have six fingers or three breasts; the Spanish ambassador began that rumor, and I think he was nine when she died. He had never met her. Her enemies pitied her, and Catharine of Aragon and Mary I admitted they hated her, but that she had not done anything to deserve her fate. Catharine died in January 1536, Anne in May. C. stated before she died that she pitied Anne for what woudld befall her. She new her royal husband well.

Princess Diana's fate brought no light on Anne, with a rash of new bios and novels, and The Other Boleyn Girls and The Tudors. All tend to protray her as a victim of her own passion. I think she was more; she was well educated and knew it, loved her family, was a dutiful daughter, and content to marry Harry Nothumberland, and probably in love with her distant cousin, Thomas Wyatt, the great poet. She was no excellent woman who made tea in time of serving, but maybe she was. She did her duty and was suffered for it, and all that talent and beauty was destroyed on a sunny Spring day in 1536. Elizabeth I tried in her own way to resrotre her mother's reputation, and she kept her mother's ring and her mother's badge, The White Falcon all her life. In the tower today, in an isolated room, there is a rude sketch of the falcon on the wall, missing its crown. Defiled was her name full sore, and this is the saddest truth of all.