Anne Boleyn: 500 Years of Lies by Hayley Nolan

Author:Hayley Nolan [Nolan, Hayley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-11-30T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

THEN IT ALL WENT WRONG

During her first year of marriage, in which Anne threw herself head first into her humanitarianism and many issues of reform, her personal life began disintegrating before her very eyes. But try as she might, she was ultimately powerless to stop it; for, unbeknown to her, Henry VIII was entering the ‘devalue’ phase of his sociopathic relationship with his coveted new queen.

And so it is with a mixture of weariness and trepidation that we approach the part of Anne’s story that readers will be most familiar with. Indeed, the following tales of adultery and scheming are the only element of Anne’s married life that most writers care to focus on – not wanting to sully their story of sex and scandal with anything as dull as helping the poor and rescuing refugees. But even then, the facts get distorted, mistold and muddied with apologist theories to excuse Henry’s ensuing affairs (the old classics that she was ‘too argumentative’ or ‘too skilled in the bedroom’). After all, when a man has an affair it’s become standard modern practice to ask what the wife did to drive him to it.

Alas, as we’ve already discovered, Anne didn’t have to do anything wrong herself for things to fall apart as spectacularly as they did. All she had to do was enter into a marriage with a sociopath.

It was around early February 1533 that Anne would have started to suspect she was pregnant for the first time. This welcome news was followed by her coronation on 1 June, by which point she would have been approximately five months pregnant.

It was in these later months of pregnancy, when it is said that she suffered terribly with sickness, that it’s possible Henry took his first mistress. However, bizarrely, this is not an indication that their relationship was falling apart so soon. Of course, it signals the death knell of doom if you’re of the belief that theirs was the most tragic love story of all time, and indeed it would be a sure-fire sign in any modern-day relationship. But a sixteenth-century royal marriage is not like any other, and Henry only seemed to take a lover during the later stages of pregnancies, when his wives were ‘out of action’. I jest not when I say it was deemed bad for the health to abstain from sex, and yet frowned upon to have a little rumpy-pumpy when heavily pregnant. So what’s a man to do? This was a medical issue. Honest, officer!

We have but one reference from Chapuys to indicate Henry may have cheated during Anne’s first pregnancy, and that came the following year, when he wrote that Henry’s new fling was a ‘renewed’ passion for a former flame, whom we will get to shortly.

But on 7 September 1533 the hallowed day at last arrived. Anne went into labour with the king’s blessed child who had been anointed by God. This is what Henry had started an international war for. This is what he had left his wife and lifelong religion for.

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