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Winter is a perfect time to re-read Carolyn Meyer’s young adult novels, especially about the Tudor women. All those women possessed unique personalities, but it is Anne Boleyn who thrilled me most. She managed to keep King Henry VIII enchanted for several years and was the only queen from non-royal family to marry whom the king divorced his legal wife and broke from the Roman Catholic Church! Her daughter was known as one of the wisest women ever, and I am sure that she inherited her mother’s wit. Carolyn Meyer traces the path of this brilliant woman in her novel “Doomed Queen Anne“.
Per my quess, when Carolyn Meyer prepares the facts for her books, she tries to build the whole view on some unique side each famous woman had, at least in her novels. This is most obvious in the Tudor series as those women shared the same time period and spoke the same languages. For Anne Boleyn, the key word was PRIDE. Born as not attractive daughter of “newly rich” but ambitious father, she left home in early age, and she knew from the very beginning she was her sister’s rival. Trying to outrank her sister in every way, she set the difficult goal – the King of England! Anne determined to make him have her as a wife, and after achieving this but failing to provide the king with the sons, she died as a Queen, not as a common woman. She did much to be sorry of later, but she never regretted striving for power.
There can be doubts if the story is true to history; Wikipedia says not. However, there are a lot of versions about Henry VIII and his wives which allow different points of view, some of them fresh and interesting. The book is very sad, because Anne was very lonely, but I could not call her “poor”. Proud to the end, she died with her head high. And will be remembered as an extraordinary queen of the cruel time when men ruled, but at least one woman DARED to challenge them.
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