The Tudors: Anne Boleyn
Anne Boleyn was an ambitious troublemaker. She was determined to marry King Henry VIII and become Queen Anne. But there was a problem: Henry already had a wife, Catherine of Aragon. Catherine had failed to produce the required male heir (MARY, BLOOD MARY was her only child), and Henry, never a faithful husband in the first place, wanted a new wife. Anne Boleyn set her sights on becoming that wife--whatever it took.
Anne was an interesting character to write about, but she was a wily schemer and it was not easy to make her sympathetic to the reader. There was another issue: because the actual year of her birth changed depending on which historian you want to believe, she could have been a sophisticated woman in her twenties who knew exactly what she was doing when she set out to catch Henry--or she could have been a devious teenager who also wanted to one-up her sister, Mary Boleyn, who'd once had a fling with Henry and borne him a son. Or perhaps something else entirely.
I found myself eventually drawn to this complex and deeply flawed young woman, just as I was drawn to Henry himself--a complex and deeply flawed man. In the end I decided that they deserved each other.
Anne was an interesting character to write about, but she was a wily schemer and it was not easy to make her sympathetic to the reader. There was another issue: because the actual year of her birth changed depending on which historian you want to believe, she could have been a sophisticated woman in her twenties who knew exactly what she was doing when she set out to catch Henry--or she could have been a devious teenager who also wanted to one-up her sister, Mary Boleyn, who'd once had a fling with Henry and borne him a son. Or perhaps something else entirely.
I found myself eventually drawn to this complex and deeply flawed young woman, just as I was drawn to Henry himself--a complex and deeply flawed man. In the end I decided that they deserved each other.