I think that many people share the same opinion as I do, that I love Katherine of Aragon but dislike Mary I, and that I love Elizabeth I more than Anne Boleyn, even though I feel pity of her beheading.
When I was reading the first book, I wished that I had a time machine to go back to Katherine’s time to say,’don’t worry, highness! For Anne will be beheaded because Henry wants to marry Jane Seymour!’ For Katherine had suffered so much. But when I was reading this second book I felt like jumping back into my time machine to kidnap Anne Boleyn after Elizabeth was born to save her from her horrible death.
I must say that when I was reading the parts when Henry kept sending her love letters, I thought it’s such a bullshit, knowing what he would do to her later in life. Henry was a kid in a body of an obese, adult man who could never take no as an answer. When Anne was pregnant again after giving birth to Elizabeth, I couldn’t continue reading. I had to take a break as I knew that her child(ren) would be born dead.
Alison Weir did make history come alive. For if history is an interesting subject for you, I think you’ll enjoy reading the series. I must warn that if you’re new to history, or not familiar with the Tudor era, you’d probably be confused about the names mentioned in the book. But in every book of this series there are a few pages in the near end of the book dedicated to the names, who they were. Of course to get more information about the people mentioned, you need at least Wikipedia.
Whether the charges against Anne Boleyn and few other men were false or not I don’t think that we could truly know. We must either believe it or not. My thought is that Anne had waited for a few years to get married to Henry and to be a queen that it would sound ridiculous if she cheated on him. But then again, she needed to secure her status/position by giving birth to a healthy male heir, so I do think that there might be a chance that she did it with someone other than with the king, as the king kept throwing the fault to his wife(s). I think if he truly took care of Anne, their baby boy would survive!
Has Anne actually ever loved Henry? I doubted that. She wanted the crown. She loved Henry Norris. I don’t think that Anne was completely innocent of the charges. But I don’t believe that she committed adultery with George, her own brother.
