Images from the Huffington Post Slide Show

On May 17th, Susan’s article “8 Anne Boleyn Myths Debunked” appeared in the Huffington Post. Originally, images were supposed to appear with each myth, but difficulties occurred before print time. Below, however, you can see the images that were originally intended for use. Enjoy!

Anne Boleyn. 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 rumor among her political enemies and have fed the imaginations of novelists, but the reality is that we know next 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.

History has left us virtually nothing that is indisputably in Anne’s own words, save a handful of letters, most of them inconsequential, and Constable Kingston’s record of the often odd comments she made in the Tower of London while awaiting her death. Her less fragmentary, straightforward statements—her speeches at her trial and at the scaffold—were recorded by onlookers, but the most interesting window into her ideas and spirit, a “last letter” to Henry, presumably sent via Cromwell, has been disputed as authentic. We aren’t even certain of what she looked like. The mythology, and many modern depictions, have her raven-haired; yet the few portraits that are likely to be based on originals show her hair as auburn.

Henry’s attempt to erase Anne from history is almost laughably a failure.  She is probably his most famous wife. Yet in many ways, the real Anne Boleyn is a missing person. The paucity of reliable information has not prevented us, however, from creating elaborate narratives about her life and death, many of which have become enshrined as “history”—although in fact they are much closer to soap opera: long suffering, postmenopausal wife; an unfaithful husband and a clandestine affair with a younger, sexier woman; a moment of glory for the mistress; then lust turned to loathing as the cycle comes full circle. Protestant rehabilitators of Anne’s image, more conscientious historians, and feminist chroniclers of women’s history have tried to revise the same-old script. But somehow, the mythology endures.

1.) Did Anne Have Six Fingers? The bodies have been brought up, and no, Anne did not have six fingers on one hand, let alone both—and a third nipple did not adorn her “pretty duckies” (as Henry called her breasts in one of his love letters.) Disfigurements such as these would have eliminated Anne as a candidate for lady-in-waiting, let alone queen. Where did these ideas come from? Defenders of the supremacy of Rome, most notably Catholic propagandist Nicholas Sander, endowed Anne with a multitude of witchlike flaws: projecting tooth, pendulous growth, jaundiced complexion, and yes, six fingers. Sanders’s credibility? Judge for yourself: He also claimed that Anne was the daughter of Henry and her own mother. Bottom line: A vestigial nail, perhaps. The rest: the inflamed imagination of Anne’s political enemies.

3.) Was Anne the Sister from Hell? Blame that one on novelist Philippa Gregory, whose spiteful, ruthless Anne poaches Henry from her tender-hearted sister Mary (and performs a lot of other loathsome acts as well.) The historical facts: If Henry did have an affair with Mary (which many historian believe likely), it was over before Anne entered the picture. And despite Gregory’s claim to have applied “very strict rules of accuracy” to the novel, it is flagrantly inventive. That’s fine in theory—it’s a novel–but Gregory’s own claims to accuracy and the postmodern blurring of fact and fiction have left many readers convinced that Anne was the ultimate mean girl. Add to that the glamorous verisimilitude of the Boleyn Girl movie and history teachers may as well give it up.

4.) Did Anne Hold Out Her Sexual favors in Order to Lure Henry into Marriage? Anne the manipulative tease is almost entirely the product of court gossip and enemy diatribes. The most influential contribution came from Eustace Chapuys, ambassador to Spain and Katherine’s fiercest defender. For Chapuys Anne was “the concubine” (when he was being polite; “whore” when he was speaking his mind) who corrupted Henry with her “French” ways. The pro-papal faction was ready to believe him, and early historians used him as a reliable source. Somehow, a lot of his venomous inventions made their way into many popular narratives, both historical and fictional. The facts: We don’t know who held out on whom (if either.) Most probably neither wanted to risk the legitimacy of a future heir by sex too long before marriage.

5.) Was Anne Distraught over the Birth of Elizabeth? Myriad novelists and filmmakers have depicted the birth of Elizabeth as an occasion for despair (on Anne’s part) and anger (on Henry’s.) The source of this scenario is Chapuys, who spun the event in the worst light for the concubine, describing a daughter as a “great regret” both to Henry and “the lady.” (Later, he would refer to Elizabeth as “the little bastard.”) Fact: Anne had promised Henry a son, the astrologers had predicted one, and a huge amount of PR had gone into trumpeting this prediction as justifying the marriage. When these predictions proved wrong, it did shake Henry’s worldview. But the child was beautiful and “perfectly formed,” and after Katherine’s many miscarriages, the birth of a healthy child was greeted with celebration.

6.) Did Anne commit multiple adulteries, including intercourse with her own brother George? The overwhelming number of the sexual encounters of which Anne was accused not only could not be proved, but would have been impossible. On the dates she was supposed to have been cheating she was either travelling with Henry, pregnant and confined, or had recently given birth. The most she appears to have been guilty of was some indiscreet banter, which Cromwell tweaked into treasonous talk. But proof wasn’t required in Tudor courts, only the “appearance of justice.” The jury was handpicked to exclude those who might be favorable to Anne. Those who served were aware of the verdict Henry, eager for Jane Seymour, wanted. And—as Wolsey once remarked—if the Crown wanted it, Abel could be judged to be the murderer of Cain.

7.) Did Anne Really Tell Henry Off as She Awaited her Death in the Tower? It’s one of the most famous scenes in pop Tudoriana, as Genevieve Bujold, eyes flashing, proudly plunges off the cliff to her death decades before “Thelma and Louise.” Not only does she reject Henry’s offer of mercy, refusing to declare Elizabeth a bastard and be spared the sword, but pierces Henry’s manhood with an arrow from his own quiver, leaving him wondering if she had really (as she lies to him) slept with every guard and stable-hand in the palace. “My Elizabeth Shall Be Queen! And my blood will have been well spent!” This was a perfect Anne for the rebellious sixties—and without a shred of historical accuracy. But who cares? If it didn’t happen, it should have.

8.) Did Anne Boleyn Really Say ““I heard say the executioner is very good, and I have a little neck”? Yes, she said it, although its meaning is unclear. Was Anne becoming mentally unhinged, as some actresses have played her? Or was it said with a sardonic humor meant to unsettle Constable Kingston’s flat-footed reassurances that “there would be no pain.” Anne also laughed when Kingston told her that even the king’s poorest subject could be assured of “justice.” And at her trial, she confessed only to not having had “perfect humility” with Henry—perceiving, it seems, that her true crime was not remaining in her proper place. These fragments suggest Anne had a highly attuned sense of how political her world was. Baffling, elusive, teasing, they nonetheless seem very “real.” Fragments of an actual person, set against centuries of mythology about “Anne Boleyn.”