Merle Oberon As Anne Boleyn In The Private Life Of Henry VIII, 1933.

Merle Oberon as Anne Boleyn in The Private Life of Henry VIII, 1933.

(Check this film out: gorgeous costumes, hilarious and touching scenes, and an all-around great early film, especially since you can catch the whole thing on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX3i1SREp0A)

Jane Seymour + crowns in The Tudors(TV Series)

FTR, I expect historians to quote primary sources about the physical appearance of the focus of their biographies, but they do not have to employ the same fatphobic, sexist, demeaning language that sixteenth century contemporaries used, themselves.

“For three years of Anne’s reign, Chapuys’s correspondence had been filled with predictions of rebellion. Now, five months after her death, the predictions were fulfilled. First Lincolnshire and then the north rose in revolt. The rebels found a charismatic leader in Robert Aske […] [and they formed a list of demands]. The monasteries were to be restored. Mary was to be declared heir. Cromwell, Rich, and Audley were to be executed or at least exiled. And Anne’s heretic bishops, Cranmer, Latimer, Shaxton, and Hilsey, were to be burned.”

— The Queens of Henry VIII, David Starkey (via madamedepembroke)

“During spring 1532, Stephen Gardiner led the unsuccessful defence of the church’s liberties against Henry VIII, a stand which probably cost him his chance of becoming archbishop of Canterbury. During summer 1532, Cranmer did something even more crazy; he got married.“ 

–Diarmaid McCulloch, Cranmer 

“...this was in pleasant contrast to the harsh treatment she received from Anne on the few doleful occasions that she was summoned to the Concubine’s court.”

Except Mary was never summoned to the ‘Concubine’s’ (lol) court .... ?

“When Jane was Queen her persistent entreaties on behalf of Mary were the eventual cause of being allowed to return to court from Hunsdon, the latest of her many country-house retreats. On her return she was treated with much kindness, given costly jewels and in due course restored to her rightful dignity of princess; this was in pleasant contrast to the harsh treatment she received from Anne on the few doleful occasions that she was summoned to the Concubine’s court. Jane would have met Mary when she in Catherine’s service, for mother and daughter were not finally separated until the summer of 1531, and obviously she came to like, or certainly feel sorry for, this, small, rather plain and myopic girl, with something of a man’s voice and more moral courage than most men. She may have also been influenced by Mary’s devotion to the old religion, and secretly admired that unshakeable integrity, which burked all attempts to effect a full reconciliation with a father whom Mary never properly understood.”

— Ordeal by Ambition: An English family in the shadows of the Tudors by William Seymour