Hayley Nolan - Anne Boleyn: 500 Years of Lies

Text copyright 2019 by Hayley Nolan

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Little A, New York

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ISBN-13: 9781542041126

ISBN-10: 1542041120

Cover design by James Jones

This book is dedicated to

every powerful woman

whose truth has ever been

suppressed and censored.

It is also dedicated to every person

who has had a hand in that censorship.

Sit down. Its over.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CAN YOU HANDLE THE TRUTH?

This is not a love story. I hate to be the one to break the news, but epic love stories dont end with one partner decapitating the other. The more we normalise and romanticise this notion the deeper down the great rabbit hole of self-deception we go.

If youre coming to Annes story fresh, let me fill you in on what youve missed.

Weve been sold a lie. All these years. Its been one vamped-up story after another in a desperate bid to keep the ever-growing legend of Anne Boleyn alive. But the lies dont add up. So many of the stories that have been spun just dont make sense in the media and movies, but even more shockingly, in the hallowed history books by those weve come to trust. Im angry and you should be too. Anne Boleyn has been wrongly vilified for five hundred years, her truth silenced and suppressed, with no one revealing the full, uncensored evidence of this complex, convoluted and contradictory story. Until now.

After four years of rigorous and exhaustive research, the archives have begrudgingly revealed that, contrary to popular belief, Anne Boleyn was not the smarmy and smug, cold-hearted scheming seductress weve so often been assured she was, in everything from sixteenth-century propaganda to modern-day mass-market history. Nor was she the ruthless mistress with lofty yet empty ambition, as she is repeatedly dismissed as being in the Tudor biographies. In fact, all these versions of Annes character clash spectacularly with the few fragments of evidence we actually have regarding her life: facts that rarely see the light of day because, to the irritation of writers the world over, they somewhat ruin the pantomime villain caricature they feel is necessary to sex up their dastardly Tudor plot.

Of course, the age-old story youll be familiar with, straight from the trusted wisdom of some distinguished historical sage, goes something like this: Anne and her father scheme to place her in the kings path, whereupon she oozes sexuality, her wit and foreign charm seducing the hapless Henry VIII. Then, being the devious mastermind that she is, Anne plays a blinder, telling the king that she wont be his mistress. Oh no, if he wants her... hell have to divorce his queen and marry her.

And for what?

For mindless power and selfish gain, of course; Tudor villains dont need any more motivation than that.

But there are several years of vital information either brushed over, dismissed or downright ignored that happen to ruin that entire theory. For why does anyone want power? So they can sit on a throne contemplating inwardly how powerful they are? No! Power is used to put policies in place and implement change. So what deceitful plans did the power-hungry Anne Boleyn enforce as queen? Surely this is where every theory regarding her true character either gains merit or falls flat? Indeed, it does, and as you will discover within the pages of this new analysis, every single one of Annes royal missions had charity, education or religion at the heart of it. A true sign of a terrible trollop, if ever I saw one.

The level of censorship that has taken place over the last five centuries and is still alive and well today, I hasten to add will shock, disturb and baffle in equal measure. Well, Im afraid I cant help you with the shock (perhaps try a sip of brandy), but I can help with the confusion by providing a groundbreaking re-examination of Anne Boleyn and her entire relationship with Henry VIII one that for the first time pieces their story together realistically, reflecting the true people we have hard evidence that they were, providing light-bulb moments for the questions historians have, so far, only managed to provide absurd and illogical answers to. As a result, Ive found myself tackling the first Tudor biography that mixes historical fact with psychological analysis; this, Ive discovered, is vital to finally understanding the two Tudor monarchs with whom society has had a mild obsession for several centuries now.

Already I can hear the academic reader guffawing at such a statement: we only deal with facts and evidence here, Ms Nolan!

Well, sure, if were talking about a study on the interaction of robots. But if we want to understand the human beings that were Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII, complete with all their seemingly irrational decisions and nonsensical actions, then we must also take into account the one thing historians tend to dismiss, and that is the screwed-up enigma of the human psyche. I mean, lets face it, no one makes the monumental decision to divorce a queen, start an international war, relentlessly pursue an annulment for seven years and fight to change the religion of an entire country without little things like emotions coming into play. Or an alarming lack of emotion, as you will come to see in the case of Henry VIII.

Which is why you should question anyone historian or not who tells you that true love can end in decapitation. When similar acts of violence are carried out as terrorism around the world today they are met with an appropriate level of horror and disgust, but throw in a Tudor king and queen and suddenly its the most tragic love story of all time. Often its presented to us so subtly that we dont even realise its a love story we are being sold; its the biographer who tells the tale of a passionate king fighting to marry his forbidden mistress, the researcher who calls Henrys correspondence love letters, the historian who credits the religious reformation to the lovers who changed history, or the news article that cites Englands break from Rome as the grandest romantic gesture a man ever made for a woman.

However, we need to ask ourselves what the more logical truth is: that all-consuming true love can end with a man cutting his soulmates head off because she apparently broke his heart? Or that the two were never in love in the first place and there was something else powering their dysfunctional relationship?

For indeed there was, and if ever there was a moment in history for the truth to finally be revealed, that time is now. Our bullshit meter is at capacity. Our tolerance for being lied to, manipulated and treated as the gullible consumers who will lap up anything has well and truly hit its limit. And so, as a consequence, Im here to introduce a woman youre unlikely to have met before. This isnt a woman youll recognise from the commercial or academic history that is readily available, where Anne is repeatedly relegated to the subplot role of love interest or opportunistic wife. But worry not, for this is a woman I guarantee you will grow to respect and admire, because a funny thing happened in uncovering the truth, and that is that Anne Boleyns story has now become more relatable and inspiring to the modern reader than we could have ever predicted.