selenak: (Borgias by Andrivete)
selenak ([personal profile] selenak) wrote 2013-01-08 04:47 am (UTC)

I was massively let down by Anne Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl, because it was simply "Anne was guilty of everything anyone ever accused her of", short of having six fingers and a mole. Including the incest, which really was the most ridiculous charge. (Well, that, and her having sex a day after giving childbirth; Cromwell didn't even bother to come up with likely dates.) Not because you can't paint a villainous picture of Anne Boleyn - for example, Mantel does just that in her Thomas Cromwell novels, but the difference is that Mantel also highlights Anne's intelligence, lets her be genuinenly interested in reform (i.e. not just because it serves her cause) and above all doesn't use Anne's nastiness to paint anyone else as saintly. Making Mary the youngest Boleyn sibling when she was the older sister just so she can be extra victimized was extra cringe worthy. All this being said, there is nothing on that level in her White Queeen/Red Queen/Kingmake's Daughter novels.

(My favourite fictional Anne is probably the one from the ages old BBC series about Henry VIII, where she's played by Dorothy Dunnett and we see her first from Katharine of Aragorn's pov (negative) and then in the next ep from her own (positive), but it's still discernably the same woman, and a good mixture of flaws and virtues.)

Post a comment in response:

This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting