JOANNE PAUL is impressed by an account of how the Tudor queen’s continental connections shaped her meteoric rise and dramatic fall
THE TUDORS
Draped in a jewel-studded gold cloak, the strapping king Henry VIII entered the lodging of Queen Claude at Ardres in the north-eastern corner of France. Not to be outdone, Claude was dripping in emeralds and diamonds, her splendour accentuated by the gold-clad ladies-in-waiting who surrounded her. It was June 1520.
The king’s attentions were, initially at least, directed towards Claude. But it would have been highly out of character for him not to have passed his gaze over her women, described as “the most beautiful that could be”. Among them was the woman he would later fall in love with, move heaven and Earth to marry, and – ultimately – destroy.
When Henry and Anne encountered one another for the first time, as Estelle Paranque’s new book highlights, they were in France, not England, and Anne was presented as a member of the French, not English, court. Far more than an affectation, Anne’s Frenchness was at the core of her identity and her interactions with the Tudor court. It was also, as Paranque demonstrates, at the core of her sudden and dramatic fall.
Thorns, Lust and Glory: The Betrayal of Anne Boleyn shifts the perspective on this well-worn Tudor tale by placing the French experience front and centre. This fits with a recent movement in Tudor popular history, presenting a more holistic, less nationally bounded vision of the period, more accurate to the politics of the time. State lines were mutable, royal families interbred (sometimes, at least), and a death, battle, marriage or birth on the continent often had dramatic implications in England.
The life of Anne Boleyn becomes a perfect canvas to showcase the importance of this wider European – and, at times, global – perspective. Born in England, Boleyn spent her formative years in the Netherlands before joining the retinue of the queen of France.
This is, of course, well-known. But Paranque imagines the effects this had on the young Anne, not the least of which was the influence of the many powerful women she would have encountered abroad. Boleyn was raised in the shadow of impressive queens: how cou
