“Claire, why are you so obsessed with Anne Boleyn?” is a question that I’m often asked in YouTube comments and on social media and it’s always one that I like to answer.
Today, I want to share why I find Anne Boleyn so fascinating, why I find her just as fascinating and perhaps more so, today, than when I started The Anne Boleyn Files in February 2009…
Hi Claire!
I enjoyed your video, as always. I just wanted to write and say that because of your research, you changed my mind about Anne Boleyn. I came to “The Anne Boleyn Files” as a skeptic about her, and through your website, videos, and book recommendations, have become very interested in her life and just who she was.
One of the greatest things is that, because of you, I’ve been able to convey this to my students. Thank you very much! Please continue your work! It is very much appreciated!
Thank you so much for taking the time to comment and thank you for your kind words, they are so very encouraging.
Eric Ives once wrote of Anne Boleyn, ‘ she endlessly fascinates’ and so she does, she was just a commoner her father was servant to the king of England, and because of his obsession with her, he discarded his queen of many years and split his kingdom in two which ushered in the reformation, we never knew this intriguing woman she died four hundred and eighty eight years ago, we only know her history through sources covered at the time and the extensive research from historians throughout the ages, she is a name to us a person from a dead age, an age of gallantry and chivalry, a lost England of dense forests and splendid castles palaces and monasteries, of humble little dwellings of sickness poverty splendour and abject cruelty, her story is entwined with that of Englands most iconic monarch and in the end his obsession caused her own fall from grace her death which was as unprecedented as she herself, her timeless appeal lies in her own persona, she defied a king and ended up a queen, she was the cause of the religious turmoil and the deaths of many in the kingdom, because of her Henry V111 became head of his own church and her daughter became Englands best loved monarch, that is why so many of us are fascinated by this glittering and so tragic figure, she was completely and utterly human with many flaws, she was both vindictive but used her position to help others, violent tempered but merry natured, a loyal friend but a formidable enemy and she was capable of much courage, even her enemies admitted her bravery, her noble end on the scaffold is a credit to her, and tarnished the reputation of her merciless husband, I think her story will be told for many hundreds of years still with the same amount of fascination and horror that holds us today.