Nikki08, You will drive yourself crazy wondering why Henry did what he did.

 Anne was different from the rest of his Ladies.  She was intelligent, for one thing.  She wasn't just bedsport and Henry knew that.  I think they became great friends during those years and that friendship turned to love. As for only lasting as long as they did…well that was Henry's MO as he got older. 

Henry was trying to divorce Katherine before he met Anne.  He promised Anne marriage because he had decided he was going to end his marriage to Katherine one way or another.

We know that he wanted to divorce Katherine many times.  However, she was a Princess of Spain.  He couldn't just dump her.  And he certainly couldn't chop off her head.  I believe he did not know how to divorce Katherine and keep his European allies.  Henry was also 6 years Katherine's junior.  History tells us, Katherine did not age well.  Who would after all the miscarriages she suffered and the humiliation by Henry of prancing his women in front of her?  When she went into menopause, he wanted out for real.  When he found Levitcus, he thought for sure he had found the answer to his prayers.  When that didn't work, he became the Church.

After waiting so long to rid himself of his first wife, I think he was determined that would never happen again.  Hence, the moment Henry got disillusioned by any of the rest of his wives, they were gone in a shot.  (Whether they did something wrong or whether he imagined they did something wrong)  If he felt offended in any way, that was it for them.  They were made to disappear.

It's easy to understand why Henry would not have married one of the mothers of his illegitimate children – we know that DOES include Bessie Blount's son, Henry Fitzroy, and suspect that Mary Boleyn might have been the mother of one, if not two illegitimate children by Henry.

He simply did not want any sort of scandal attached to a future Queen. Plus, in these two cases, there was incontrovertible proof that Henry had been an adulterer – the presence of the children, IF we accept that Mary Boleyn's son and daughter were Henry's. Bessie's “indiscretion” resulted in the birth of a son, but Mary Boleyn had a very bad reputation from her time in France. She was called, in the letter of one ambassador, “a very great wanton,” and if Francis I is to be believed, an “English Mare I rode many times.”

Anne did NOT have this sort of scandal attached to her, because she did, as Nikki aptly put it, “kept her legs closed.” Given Henry's success with women to that point, it is no surprise that few believed that Henry did NOT get Anne, which gave her that terrible label, “The Great wh*re.”

As to what it was about Anne, one thing could simply be that she was the very first person to tell Henry Tudor he could not have what he wanted. More than likely, she would have wanted to be married before indulging in sex, which was expected of “good women” particularly women as religious as Anne herself, and Katharine of Aragon. Anne was hardly ignorant of sex, because that was all part of the flirtation games played in courts all over Europe, and Anne had been educated in the most sophisticated – Malines and France. Women had to know how to retort to sexual jokes and innuendoes, while still remaining chaste.

Henry himself was probably at a loss, and decided to move heaven and earth to have Anne. She was magnetic, charming, witty, intelligent, and feisty – things the more mellow Katharine had never been. Katharine was a Royal Princess, and was calm, quiet, educated, and above all, regal, as befitted her birth.

As to the debate about her looks, I wonder if it is possible she was not thought “the most handsome woman in the world” because unlike the beauty ideal, she was not a pale, blue eyed blonde of an English Rose, but was very physically attractive just the same.

Anne is not the only fascinating woman in history who is not considered a beauty. Apparently, Cleopatra was considered quite homely by Roman standards, yet she managed to captivate the two most powerful men in Rome, Gaius Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, by sheer force of her intelligence, wit, and charm.

Damn it, Paudie! Force me to re-examine my Henry hate, why don't you?  *grumble, grumble* All right, for Anne's sake…

I base this on Anne’s execution speech;

“Good Christian people, I have not come here to preach a sermon; I have come here to die, for according to the law and by the law I am judged to die, and thereof I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak of that whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the King and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never, and to me he was ever a good, a gentle, and sovereign lord.

And if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me.”

Read more: /resources/anne-boleyn-words/execution-speeches/#ixzz0n0Wb8S00

I have often found myself with close friends and family giving the respect I have for the one close to me onto their chosen partner. This is how I view Henry. I would like to try and understand the relationship between Anne and Henry and therefore understand Anne a little better. Henry has to have been more than the stereotypical bullishness of history and the life size portrait that hung in Greenwich. What did she see in him? She was in a relationship for seven years, surely, she would have walked if there was not more to the relationship on both sides.

I do not excuse Henry in any way for his actions, but the very one we respect most in this forum, Anne Boleyn did. How I do wish to understand.

Go on Impish Impulse, force yourself, it could be quite interesting!

Hi Jasmine – oh, man, could you imagine how it would have been, had Anne not been so worried about protecting Elizabeth, how she might have really torn into Henry for all of this? I don't know what other members of her family she might have been protecting – she definitely had no love for the Duke of Norfolk or her other Howard relatives, and for all she knew, the Boleyns might have been following her father's lead and covering their own butts. They didn't seem too terribly inclined to step forward and speak for her, that much is certain. I have never seen any source, contemporary or otherwise, where Thomas Boleyn actually made any commentary, one way or the other, in defense of either Anne or George.

I don't think Anne's scaffold speech, calling Henry a “gentle and sovereign lord” can be taken as evidence that she loved him. She was far more worried about protecting a pretty little two and a half year old girl named Elizabeth.

Henry was a romantic – but was he even capable of love? Look at the way he treated his wives, children and friends:

Katharine of Aragon was treated abominably, pretty much driven to her death. 

Their daughter, Mary, the apple of his eye he suddenly rejected, calling her a bastard.

Anne was beheaded as a traitor and adulteress.

Elizabeth was declared a bastard.

Edward was little more than the object of his quest for a son, and his mother posthumously became the “love” of Henry's life because she gave birth to that son.

Anne of Cleves was called a “Great Flanders Mare” and divorced because she was “ugly” – though she did get the last laugh, with a pretty sweet divorce settlement.

Kathryn Howard, a young girl who was in a situation she probably could not cope with, was beheaded like her cousin Anne Boleyn. She, like Anne, died with the taint of treason and adultery attached to her name.

Katherine Parr was nearly executed as a heretic.

Bishop John Fisher, the very good friend of Henry's grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, was beheaded as a traitor because he was someone who said “no” to Henry with regards to the marriage of Katharine of Aragon.

Thomas More, Henry's supposed best friend, was beheaded as a traitor, for the simple sin of not signing the oath of accession.

George Boleyn and Henry Norris were known to be good friends of Henry's but were beheaded for adultery and treason with Anne Boleyn. (Not sure of the relationships Henry might have had with William Brereton, Francis Weston or Mark Smeaton).

Thomas Cromwell, Henry's very able chancellor, was beheaded as a traitor, a trumped up charge for not being able to extricate Henry from his marriage to Anne of Cleves. Of course, this could be karma biting Mr. Cromwell on the heinie for the plot which ended in Anne Boleyn's execution.

All of these people, Henry supposedly loved, and yet he treated them horribly. I think I agree with Karen Lindsey's assessment that Henry wasn't truly capable of love. From the way he treated all of the people above, he sounded more like a sociopath.

Interesting,

There is still so much missing from the story as to what went wrong in the relationship. it seemed to be the normal “War and Peace” between Anne and Henry up to a short time before Anne was arrested. In previous posts, I have suggested that in the time of Henry's coma, after his accident in January of 1536, court must have considered what to do in the event of Henry's death. Who would rule until his children would come of age if Henry did not awaken from his coma? There is more to this, I do think. I do think Henry was capable of Love, he was also easily led.