There are few famous people about whom we have imagined so much, yet know so little. She wasn't royalty, so her childhood wasn't chronicled. Her teenage years with "the French" inspired salacious rumounext to nothing about what she said and did at Francis I's court. It is amply chronicled how Henry VIII pursued her for seven years, splitting his kingdom into bloody halves while he penned ardent love letters and tried to convince an obstinate Catholic hierarchy that his first marriage was a sin against God. But we don't know what she felt and thought about her royal courtier, for we don't have her side of the correspondence.
From the moment she entered Henry's life until well after the French executioner's sword ended her own, Anne Boleyn's behavior, personality and character were chewed over by the tongues and pens of political enemies, who saw her as a usurper of Katherine's throne and destroyer of the True Faith. Their later influence on historians has been nothing short of astounding--and greatly aided by the fact that Henry, eager to forget his second wife and begin anew with his third, tried to erase Anne into historical oblivion: destroyed her portraits, her letters, removed her emblems from the ceilings and entrances of royal residences.
No comments:
Post a Comment