Two Annes, Different Results

I must confess to a fascination with the wives of Henry VIII, though their stories be a century along from my area of greater interest (Lancaster and York). Our century is a huge distance from the 19th, but I have yet to learn how different the 15th and 16th centuries were in practice. In any case, it was easy to read two novels about two Annes, "The Concubine" by Norah Lofts, and "My Lady of Cleves" by Margaret Campbell Barnes.

Anne Boleyn, briefly "The Most Happy" and Anne of Cleves, for awhile the least happy. Of all the wives, Anne of Cleves, initially called the Flanders Mare by her boorish self centered royal husband, and deeply insulted, turned out to be the only one who left Henry with her head and a comfortable home intact. The comparison between their respective visages is deceptive, the old story of the lack of the surety of surfaces. In Anne Boleyn's case, Henry is enchanted with a vivacious sprightly young thing, and in Anne of Cleves' case, he falls for what he sees in a portrait. He falls out of love in both cases, cruelly so, and all in a moment, as both authors describe the Annes' individual catastrophes.

Both of these women are presented very sympathetically, and it is interesting to speculate how their lives would have played out if they hadn't fallen under the royal eye. Would Anne Boleyn have been hardened by grief to dip into ambition due to the loss of young love in any case? Would Anne of Cleves have glided in the Flemish countryside unremarked? Anne of Cleves, in the royal bedchamber - "if he only gives me children" she could bear it. Anne Boleyn totally devastated by the birth of Elizabeth, and crazed under the pressure that was life and death.

I have ordered a biography of Jane Seymour, so my preoccupation with the wives will continue. What a collection of gutsy women! What a king trapped by circumstance and his view of his place in history.