THE BLOG
Extra material for The Queen Of Subtleties
It’s a story with everything, isn’t it: you name it, but any list would have to include love and passion, heartbreak, scandal, rivalry, politics and the pursuit of power, revolution (kind of ie the reformation), paranoia, betrayal and murder. And – particularly good, in my view – it’s all true, too! A big plus for a novelist is that the story is populated by larger-than-life characters: not just Anne and Henry, who were, to say the least, huge characters, but also the amazingly unbending, dogged Catherine of Aragon (often much underestimated); the spine-chillingly awful Duke of Norfolk, snide, callous and calculating; Anne’s louche, saturnine brother George etc etc. The shape of the story, too, fascinated me: that so-slow rise (Henry and Anne were ‘together’ for seven years before their marriage), beset at every stage by problems, and then, after all that. the breathtaking swiftness of Anne’s downfall (which even she never saw coming).
Actually, though, my being drawn to the story was also about all the things that it wasn’t: it’s usually understood as the story of a middle-aged king leaving an empty marriage for a beguiling young beauty. It’s much more interesting than that, and I was keen to put the record straight. Henry wasn’t middle-aged: he was 35 and in his prime (and what a prime!) when he fell for Anne. The marriage to Catherine (all nineteen years of it – much longer than most people realise) had been of Henry’s choice, very much so: indeed, it was rather an odd choice, at the time (in other words, political expediency had nothing to do with it). Henry and Catherine had been close as teenagers and young adults, they were each other’s confidantes during difficult years (Catherine, at sixteen, was stranded in England, living pretty much in penury for many years after her widowing; and Henry had a very hard time of it with his father). They remained very good friends throughout their marriage. In the early years, they doted on each other, revelled in each other’s company, staying up until all hours to debate the various hot topics of the day. Catherine wasn’t dull – she’d had an unsurpassed education (as had her mother, the formidable Isabella of Castille), and was extremely clever. Nor was she a frumpy killjoy – she spent small fortunes on clothes, for example. She was clearly adored by people, inspiring lifelong loyalty from her friends and staff (despite the great danger for them) and most of the population of England in general. True, though: by the time of Henry’s falling for Anne, Catherine had quietened down, become rather sedentary and very religious. She was forty, and had had numerous pregnancies but only one surviving child, the princess Mary.
Anne wasn’t young, not by the standards of the day – she was 26 when Henry fell for her. She wasn’t beautiful, or at least not by the standards of the day (Tudor tastes were for buxom blue-eyed blondes; Anne was skinny, sallow, dark-eyed). It’s more likely that she had what we would call sex-appeal. She was no bimbo, though, but well-educated, well-read, politically astute and quick-witted. Very different from her sister, she had had no prior liaisons except for one serious love affair (to which Wolsey put a stop, for political reasons, and for which she seems never to have forgiven him). She resisted Henry’s approaches for some time. She’s usually portrayed in fiction as a harridan; but although she was mindboggling outspoken (something that drew me to her!), she could also be considerably charming (which is perhaps what drew Henry – and other men – to her). She’s often portrayed as calculating, cold, but it seems to me that on the contrary she was a passionate character (and she was passionate about her baby, by all accounts. One example is that she wanted to breastfeed Elizabeth herself, which simply wasn’t done). I think of her as a modern woman: ambitious and energetic, juggling her personal and public lives.