Raven laughs today
May. 20th, 2005 08:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingboot469 years ago today Anne Boleyn was executed.*
Who cares? What makes it important?
Tis one of the greatest stitch-ups of all time. Accused of being an adulteress with 4? 5? 6? lovers (she who had withheld her body from the most powerful man in the land for years) a witch and many other things, this unpopular woman was utterly framed by the man she once trusted - a man who was an adulterer - and by the sycophants around him, some of whom had hated her, some of whom had been her earlier admirers, all of whom were used to eating out of Henry's colon. Bear in mind that he could have divorced her, he could have done a dozen things - but there was that business of ego. He had gone through so much to get her, and now he didn't want her. Best she look like a demon, or he might look ridiculous.
Down the years since, the ghost of Anne Boleyn is one of the most famous and oft-reported, seen in a coach, seen walking headless, seen - but only in gentle Hever Castle in Kent - as a little girl with long dark hair, playing in the gardens.
Henry won that time; He got his new wife and his little prince; justice was to come later, when the tables were turned on him. Catherine Howard, his rosa san spina was the real thing when it came to adultery - with 4? 5? 6? lovers. They say he cried, this old man, all those lies and deaths later, he blubbered like a baby as they told him. When she tried to reach him, he turned away; he could not face the girl he was killing. Poor Catherine, poor Anne. And Henry?
He discovered that Nemesis has a sense of humour.
Here's to kinder times, and being cool to each other. Rest In Peace, Anne.
*Thank youtudorengland
Who cares? What makes it important?
Tis one of the greatest stitch-ups of all time. Accused of being an adulteress with 4? 5? 6? lovers (she who had withheld her body from the most powerful man in the land for years) a witch and many other things, this unpopular woman was utterly framed by the man she once trusted - a man who was an adulterer - and by the sycophants around him, some of whom had hated her, some of whom had been her earlier admirers, all of whom were used to eating out of Henry's colon. Bear in mind that he could have divorced her, he could have done a dozen things - but there was that business of ego. He had gone through so much to get her, and now he didn't want her. Best she look like a demon, or he might look ridiculous.
Down the years since, the ghost of Anne Boleyn is one of the most famous and oft-reported, seen in a coach, seen walking headless, seen - but only in gentle Hever Castle in Kent - as a little girl with long dark hair, playing in the gardens.
Henry won that time; He got his new wife and his little prince; justice was to come later, when the tables were turned on him. Catherine Howard, his rosa san spina was the real thing when it came to adultery - with 4? 5? 6? lovers. They say he cried, this old man, all those lies and deaths later, he blubbered like a baby as they told him. When she tried to reach him, he turned away; he could not face the girl he was killing. Poor Catherine, poor Anne. And Henry?
He discovered that Nemesis has a sense of humour.
Here's to kinder times, and being cool to each other. Rest In Peace, Anne.
*Thank you
tudorengland![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-20 09:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-20 10:02 am (UTC)I do think there is a school of apologists for Henry; 'Manipulative'?what was there to see through? She was a girl when he first decided he wanted her; a girl who fell in love with Percy of Northumberland when Royal Henry first took an interest - didn't the big man scupper that little romance? And all so he could bed her in the same cavalier way he used her mother and sister; so what were her choices? Royal whoredom or manipulation? Guess which I'd have gone for!
I think the crow-witch of romance, with her six fingers and black velvet, is a much more popular villain than jolly, popular, lusty Harry. We don't like our kings being the bad guys...
My answer is to check out how he behaved all his life, in policy and in private. Henry was a very ugly being. I refuse to blame his victims for him!
no subject
Date: 2005-05-20 10:39 am (UTC)It's interesting, 'cos the stuff I've read about her suggests more than she decided that she wanted him and laid the approriate bait.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-20 10:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-20 10:16 am (UTC)I remember a wonderfully bitchy lecture a couple of years back by Starkey, where he laid into "women novelists with names beginning with A" for writing 'history' entirely from seconadary sources. He was trying to sell his own book - and did it so well that at the signing afterwards he had run out before I got to the head of the queue.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-20 10:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-20 09:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-20 10:10 am (UTC)1)Catherine Howard is even now just 16, sitting in a bus shelter with friends, cigarettes and alcopops, thinking about that boy she likes...
2)Anne is Hilary Clinton (see, karma too!)
3)Catherine of Aragon is Kylie Minogue.
4) Henry is in a very Catholic style hell being turd-burgled by a queue of demonic pope lookalikes.
Not that my view is prejudiced or anything...