Название: The Final Year of Anne Boleyn
Автор: Natalie Grueninger
Издательство: Pen & Sword History
Год: 2022
Страниц: 248
Язык: английский
Формат: epub (true)
Размер: 31.9 MB

There are few women in English history more famous or controversial than Queen Anne Boleyn. She was the second wife of Henry VIII, mother of Elizabeth I and the first English queen to be publicly executed. Much of what we think we know about her is colored by myth and legend, and does not stand up to close scrutiny. Reinvented by each new generation, Anne is buried beneath centuries of labels: homewrecker, seductress, opportunist, witch, romantic victim, Protestant martyr, feminist. In this vivid and engaging account of the triumphant and harrowing final year of Queen Anne Boleyn’s life, the author reveals a very human portrait of a brilliant, passionate and complex woman.

The last twelve months of Anne’s life contained both joy and heartbreak. This telling period bore witness to one of the longest and most politically significant progresses of Henry VIII’s reign, improved relations between the royal couple, and Anne’s longed-for pregnancy. With the dawning of the new year, the pendulum swung. In late January 1536, Anne received news that her husband had been thrown from his horse in his tiltyard at Greenwich. Just days later, tragedy struck. As the body of Anne’s predecessor, Katherine of Aragon, was being prepared for burial, Anne miscarried her son. The promise of a new beginning dashed, the months that followed were a rollercoaster of anguish and hope, marked by betrayal, brutality and rumour. What began with so much promise, ended in silent dignity, amid a whirlwind of scandal, on a scaffold at the Tower of London.

As the light gently fades of an evening in the Great Chamber of Hever Castle, where Anne Boleyn spent much of her youth, the rippling moat which surrounds the fortress casts glittering reflections onto a sixteenth-century tapestry hanging in that space. Visitors to Hever have spent hours searching for the elusive face of Anne Boleyn in that tapestry, for it was believed to illustrate the wedding of King Louis XII of France to Princess Mary Tudor: Henry VIII’s sister. The wedding was an event that Anne Boleyn may well have attended in 1514, when she entered the French court. As the twilit luminescence dances across the many faces woven into the tapestry, one could be forgiven for believing that they had momentarily awoken from their inanimate state. However, just as light play can change our perception of an historical object, so too can the study of that object’s history and construction.

Through close examination of these intriguing events considered in their social and historical context, readers will gain a fresh perspective into the life and death of the woman behind the tantalising tale.